Reports From Unknown Places

We report after the last train, in the empty station. We punched in the code for a can of iced tea on the vending machine, and it came out lukewarm. We shared it with our expert while the stars rose from the ground, the fields before us unfathomable in the twilight.

We report: with the apparition of asperitas clouds, even the more discrete ones, we still unconsciously expect a big storm, or at least big rain later on. In the end, today, like most of the times we’ve encountered asperitas, they dissolve without much of a fuss.

We report: now that the temperatures are closer to the seasonal average, the sky has gotten more familiar to us. It is not so much about specific clouds, but rather the diversity, and the changes, the uncertainty. We realise we are not very fond of the certainty of a clear sky.

We report: for a while, as we walk down the street, the buildings and trees are too tall to let us get a good look, but the sunset’s glow is everywhere. It is incredibly damp, the amount of humidity barely under the point of saturation; sometimes, we feel a lone raindrop.

We report: after the bit of rain that we had yesterday, the night sky is clearer than it had been in some weeks, much less hazy. We leave the constellation names aside, and let ourselves sit there and pretend each moving, blinking satellite in the sky is a shooting star.

We report: we wait and wait for the rain, and once we stop waiting and hoping, the rain comes. Immediately, with the sky heavy, and the air saturated with water, we feel lighter. It goes on like this for hours, and even when it stops, the sky remains overcast. We breathe easier.

We report on the horizon: a weak imitation of a squall line is helpfully displaying stages of the lifecycle of cumulonimbus, and in chronological order, too. Our expert finds it a valuable teaching moment, and spends some time pointing out the calvus and capillatus species.

We report: something has gotten in the air - smoke, sand, humidity, the whole lot - and it has captured the sun some hours before dusk. A veil is drawn across the sky. There is a bit of a chill there, or at least, what counts as one these days, a little shiver in the half-light.

We report: it got very windy during the afternoon, sudden gusts that had us looking up every few minutes. The sound of the rush of air in the dry brush is sharp, and loud, arresting in the way things out of our control can be. We still hear it as we are trying to fall asleep.

We report: no rain, it barely feels humid, and the mammatus pass over us as though following a large storm we never saw. Over our head, the structures that had created the contours of a map slowly disintegrate. Perhaps we intruded on a rehearsal for something larger.

We report: it is early evening, and the sun’s journey through the atmosphere is getting longer and longer. The heat has made us feel sleepy, and we are finding it difficult to care about anything but the movements of the clouds. We are here for hours, in this specific moment.

We report: threads of light are trailing after the sunset, and the dry air is becoming more breathable. It has felt like noon all day, the intensity of the sun, the narrow, sharp shadows. Our expert, remarkably, manages to feel a little cold when a light breeze shakes the wheat.

We report: only the brightest stars remain - of which, all things considered, there are many. Mirfak, Hamal, Aldebaran and Menkar, most of the Auriga constellation, and of course, Mars and Saturn are visible. For some reason, however, we cannot look away from the moon.

We report: we are expecting a clear sky throughout the day, but at sea, early morning, the horizon is nowhere to be found. Through the fog, the light is dull as to make the ocean look solid. We lean over to look more closely, but the surface of the water is utterly impenetrable.

We report: the sky speaks of vanishing patterns, past conditions of humidity and wind shear. They only remain in washed up waves of cirrocumulus. Lately, we find it difficult to interpret the movements of the clouds as we usually would. Signs of change instead induce stillness.

We report: summer heather is blooming on the outskirts of the town. In silent streets, a flock of swifts comes and goes in flurries of shrieks. The cirrus are getting thicker, but also more difficult to see as the sun sets. We feel warmth radiating from the asphalt on our ankles.

We report: when we get to the shore in the blue hour, the gulls pay us no mind, their shrieks too loud in our morning ears. The sand under our feet is dry, but feels liquid for how cold it is. The sky is opaque, waiting for some pink to bleed through in the next half hour.