Object Writing #4, Clouds

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Pick an object at random and write about it. Dive into your sense memories and associations surrounding the object. Anything goes, as long as it is sense bound. Write freely. No rhythm, no rhyme. No need for complete sentences. Use all seven senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, organic, kinesthetic.

I decided to do Exercise #1 a bit more before I continue on to chapter two. This time, I wrote about “Clouds” in about 15-20 minutes. I actually like it enough to post it up, and it’s probably the best I’ve written so far. 

I’m aware that one of my stronger points is vivid imagery (especially nature) and narration, but now I’ll have to learn how to do express all that fluency in a song. What I don’t like most about lyrics is the feeling I have to condense information, but maybe its limitations are what will bring out my creativity. 

Without further ado, “Clouds”: 

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The blue, boundless sky was a bare canvas for the smoky white wisps of clouds dabbled across its surface like perfectly malleable clay. Sometimes the blobby, blubbery clouds twirled and twirled — as swift as an effortlessly twirling ballerina — into randomized, dizzying formations. Of course, clouds came in many shapes, and sometimes we kids would play a fun game of imagination, and boast about the things we’d see in the sky. I would quickly point with my fingers and say, “A dragon! Do you see that?” And one would rebuke with, “No, you silly, that’s obviously a cute puppy.” Nothing really went beyond the simple tresses of our daydreams in those gone-by days. Of course, when clouds brought a wind of nostalgia, they also carried along the salty smells of the sea and then! — pitter patter. White, pure clouds suddenly bunched up into stormy, dark ones and Zeus above would send a huge bolt of lightning. The ominous sky would resonate with thunder, and rain would come racing down. Pitter patter, it continues. While clouds didn’t have feelings, you couldn’t help but think that the rain became a fitting soundtrack for your sad, sad day.

But you know, that brings me to something else. I don’t know quite what to say about a cloud’s taste. When I was little, it was my impossible dream to bring down that great big ball of cotton to my mouth and then… munch! — “maybe it’d taste like sweet cotton candy?”, the inner me would wonder in amusement. I stood in heavy fog for the first time and to my disappointment, clouds tasted much like a dish of good ol’ bland nothing. On the plus side, every inhalation and exhalation  brought a refreshing breath of air to my lungs. It tasted of air, of refreshing air. But maybe that’s the beauty of it, because clouds aren’t quite the most obvious things, are they? But they’re here, in all their invisible glory.

We admire the ones hanging high in the sky and gaze dreamingly up to Nature’s ever-changing canvas for that drop of inspiration, only to forget the beloved clouds already here, lightly enveloping themselves around us.  

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