Within the sky, or without?
Weekly Writing Prompt No. 82
Hello everyone and welcome to this month’s writing prompt. For anyone new to The Writing Shed, this is the core of my activity on Substack.
A writing prompt for anyone who has managed to avoid them thus far can never be right or wrong. Its only purpose is to help you exercise your creative writing muscle, and it does this by taking you out of your literary comfort zone. So dive in, try something new and above all have fun.
Between the 1st of October and the 9th of November, I kept a sky journal as part of an exercise intended to create a primary source for use in an essay I submitted last week. As well as writing, I took photographs from the back of my home looking out over the houses behind. Throughout the weeks of writing, three things stood out:
The first was the language I used, I realised it was anthropomorphic in the sense that I was looking for meaning, it was poetic and it revealed a much deeper emotional response to the weather in particular than I had noticed at the time.
The second was the effect of cloud cover on the amount of light and, as a result, the depth of colour visible to the naked eye. This also threw up another anomaly in the difference between what I observed and the photographs I took of the same sky. The question about the nature of reality was never far from my thoughts.
Finally, it got me thinking about thought itself, and how alike it is to clouds that form and reform endlessly, never the same from moment to moment. My thoughts (and maybe yours too!) are the same, they are in constant motion.
I thought I’d share a couple of entries below:
26th October 2024
The sky is pale blue, clouds are light and fluffy. They act as a filter to the light, diffusing it and making the colours paler. They look like the upswept stroke of a paintbrush on canvas. The photograph captures more definition than I can see with the naked eye. The colours are stronger and sharper than they appear to me.
They (the clouds) are floating slowly northwards, but there is barely a breath of wind here at ground level. I wonder where they are going, a cloud convention perhaps, no, that would be a storm!
27th October 2024
So to my naked eye, the sky looks clear, blue and full of promise. Today, the photo reflects what I see. The clocks have moved to GMT overnight so I’m writing this an hour earlier than usual. The night was clear and I watched the plough wend its way around the pole star. It’s still!
An hour later a cloud bank is bubbling up behind the houses. It looks like the start of a giant wave crashing over the horizon.
28th October 2024
Overcast, wet, thick blanket of cloud. I am reminded of On Autumn by Keats and its line ‘of yellow mists and fruitfulness’ it isn’t like that today instead it’s more like Pooh’s little black rain cloud!
29th October 2024
The sky looks heavily pregnant but it’s not threatening as it is before a storm. It feels expectant somehow!
Half an hour later it’s lighter, brighter and blue in patches. The sun is glinting on the windows opposite me and I watch the clouds like a movie on a screen from the front of the house playing on their window screen at the back.
And thirty minutes later it’s all changed again. I realise that sky-watching is the ultimate spectator sport, you cannot influence what happens, and how the game is played, you can’t shout for your favourite cloud, egging it on to win the race. There is no race, just endless cycling and recycling sifting and twisting.
There’s a peacefulness in knowing I’m a part, but apart from what’s happening above me. My place is small in the world, I don’t cover vastness, and I am diminished. As I watch I realise I’m paying attention to other things too. The tick of the clock, the sparrow tapping on the end of the tree, the dogs on the stairs. Somehow I am more alive, I’m present.
The Prompt
Gavin Prator-Pinney said during a TED talk that ‘we don’t live beneath a sky, we live within it’. As I wrote my sky journal I noticed I was paying more attention to the sky and clouds in particular and to my environment in general. It was as if I re-noticed that I am part of nature and not separate from it.
Think of a character who lives ‘within the sky’. How do they experience the world? Write a narrative to show how different their way of being could be from other characters seeing the same thing.
If you feel like sharing your thoughts please leave a comment as I’m always curious to read what everyone creates.
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With love, light, and laughter
Linda
x
(Image by Linda)
Hi Linda. I have a friend who flies airbus 380's and he made a video on you tube called why we fly It is a flight into Queensland airport through the mountains. I wrote this based on what he has told me over the years.
THE MASTERS OF THE SKIES.
My name is Nick, and I am a pilot. Today we left Heathrow on a cold but sunny day. The tower gave us permission for take off and we accelerated up the runway. Perhaps lumbered might be a better description. At 540 tons and with upwards of 600 people on board the Airbus is a big old bird. We left the ground and cleared the perimeter fence at a mere 140 mph. The forecast was for bad weather and out over the channel we hit the first storm. The wind buffeted the aircraft and rain streaked down the windscreen. We climbed towards the storm clouds, and they gave us a good shaking as we passed through them on our way up to our cruising hight. Another 10 thousand feet and we broke out of them. They retreated below us as we climbed to our cruising hight of 30 thousand feet. As we broke through them into the bright sunshine, a calm descended over the cockpit. At this point I generally amble aft for a coffee.
So here we are another boring long haul. Hours of just sitting and monitoring gauges while the autopilot does most of the work. Me or my co-pilot changing direction and hight as instructed by ground control. At this hight it feels like you are on a ship in a sea of white cotton wool. Moving a bit faster of course, at 560 mph. Ships are liners. Planes are airliners. The ship and the plane both have captains. The only difference I suppose. Is if a ship sinks and hits the sea bottom, you may be still alive and floating in the sea. If we fall out the sky and hit the ground. It’s a morning with the undertaker.
Today we are approaching Queensland airport, and the sun is behind us reflecting on all the mountain peaks sticking up out of the sea of cloud below us. They are lit in brilliant gold and pink sunlight. It’s a pity that most people will never witness this beautiful scene. We are turning right and heading for a huge peak right ahead. It is the last thing we see as the cloud envelopes us. I can feel the aircraft banking and all the gauges show a turn to the right and a loss of altitude. As quick as we fly into the cloud. We are out of it and flying down a valley towards the airport. It is a dismal day with low cloud and rain. Below 500 feet the world seems to speed up. The rain is lashing the screen, and the runway lights are a welcome sight. I hear the altimeter countdown 100ft, 50ft, 20 ft, 10ft, 5 ft. We touch down doing 150mph. Time for some reverse thrust and brakes, I think. We have arrived.
Maybe it is because I was brought up by a meteorologist that I have always been sky-conscious. The light, the shapes, the speed; all these communicate their secrets to me. 'How long before it rains?' is still our favourite and most consistent game (although we never keep score; we don't play to win, just hone our skills and value the companionship of our shared interest.) I will never see the sky without thinking of my father: past, present, future, all writ large. A private world of memories, on full display and yet unseen.
'Are you anything like me?', mum asks.
'Probably', I expediently reply. I hate to disappoint. The sky will always be there.