The Cloud of Record

We people possess records, like gravestones, of individual clouds and dates on which they have flourished.

In 1824, John Constable took his beloved and tubercular wife, Maria, to Brighton Beach. They hoped the sea air would cure her. On June 12 he sketched, in oils, squally clouds over Brighton Beach. The gray clouds lowered over the water in failing light. They swirled from a central black swirl.

In 1828, as Maria Constable lay dying in Putney, John Constable went to Brighton to gather some of their children. On May 22 he recorded one oblique bluish cloud riding high and messy over a wan sun. Two thin red clouds streaked below. Below the clouds he painted disconnected people splashed and dotted over an open, wide coast.

Maria Constable died that November. We still have these dated clouds.

(Annie Dillard, “For The Time Being,” page 20)

I was walking with my almost blind grandfather zt”l in 1971 when I observed him looking up at the sky. “Zeidy,” I asked, “is there a reason for the shape of each cloud?”

“I’m not the one,” he said with a smile, “who has a vision problem. Tell me about a cloud you remember.”

Remember a cloud? I looked up at the clouds determined to remember them. (I still do!)

He pushed me to think: “What about the cloud over Mount Sinai?”

“I never even pictured that cloud in my mind,” I said.

“When you can picture that cloud, you’ll be able to picture Mt. Sinai. Your learning will change.”

I did. It worked; my learning did change. Now, even clouds speak to me, but never as forcefully as does that cloud over Sinai