#sky man

From Die Muskete, 1920.

Project, project, project, project. I was no longer having a good day. In fact, I was no longer thinking about if I were having a good day. Since 5 am?, I had been working. I had finished typing on time, but it was taking hours to paste every page onto construction paper. Beautifying it, as I called it. It was third block by the time I got to school, but because it was AP Lit., I was still working. Lunch time, still working.

It was one of those nice trick days where walking through the air, you felt cold, but if you stood in the sun against a brick wall, it was perfect. I leaned my back against one such wall and continued working.

I was pretty involved, and I was more determined to finish the project already than to go back to class, so I didn’t take any notice when simultaneously, everyone outside got up and left. Really, I was waiting for the bell, but when I noticed the silence I looked up. As I did so, I took note of the sky. When I first entered the courtyard, there were a couple of stray cirrus clouds floating around. Now I noticed there are a lot more. With some curiosity, I stared at them for a while.

Suddenly, one of them began to change color right before my eyes! It happened so smoothly, I imagined it to be a trick of the eye at first, but no, it continued. Then, to reassure me, the cloud next to it also turned rainbow. I had no idea what was going on, so I thought “Wow, am I witnessing the formation of a rainbow?” Of course, that was a silly idea, and I dismissed it. And yet, cloud after cloud began changing color until a very faint arc was established.

“You know what it is?” Came a voice. “Cirrus clouds are made of ice crystals, right? I think what’s happening is that the sunlight is reflecting off of that and becoming dispersed, thus the partial rainbow.” Oh, thanks smarter me. The strange thing is that I was the only one in the entire courtyard. I had a really strong urge to run inside and drag people out, but either I assumed everyone had gone back or I was afraid to miss this rare phenomenon, I simply stared. It was nice, after working constantly, to take a break. It was almost as if the sky were telling me “It’s okay, Ijay. You’re not such a bad kid. Have a circumhorizontal arc to cheer you up.” I didn’t even bring my phone camera. It's as if the sky wanted me to seem crazy. No witness, photographic evidence, a rainbow that formed part by part -- sounds like I made the whole thing up.