SIGHT UNSEEN

I woke up at 7 and in my usual Saturday morning ritual went to the patio to nurture the beauty of the plants and savor the open skies. No breakfast can nourish me better than the sight of my hanging baskets - creeping charlie, glodfish, hoya lacuna - the two giant ficus trees across the street, and the huge expanse up above which Toni Tiu called the palette of God, first thing in the morning.

Something caught my eye. The clouds were utterly beautiful, extremely breathtaking that I might as well describe them as atrocious, and they were somehow comparable to one weekend afternoon when the skies were filled with patches of cotton aiming the shapes of zoo animals: a kneeling camel, an elephant with its trunk pointing upwards, a bear or a koala, and an eerie pattern of birds like boomerangs flying in a magnificent V formation.

But this morning they did not look like animals. The clouds did not look like anything at all, not even clouds, and we will all be for the better if I leave my scant knowledge of clouds on my patio doorstep for now.

I am a photographer. I am, in particular, a cloud photographer, but this morning I saw no need to grab my camera for a great photo-op. I wanted to leave the sight to my memory for much the same reason I usually don't watch a haunting movie twice.

I was happy, extremely happy, when I woke up this morning after a good sleep, a cooperating back, an unclogged sinus, and a particularly spontaneous morning prayer -so much so that the sight I laid my eyes on were probably just my own happy perception - others may not have seen the clouds the same way, not noticed the fantastic patterns the same way. In which case I may have been the opposite of R.W. Emerson's guy who, in his moment of melancholy, lights a fire and sees nothing but sadness in the flames.

The feeling of my own Saturday morning happiness is not fully explainable - nature's gain is my language's loss - and you might as well fathom my discourse through Emerson's own words after going to the wilds and seeing the beauty of wildlife:

"The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me, and I to them. The waving of the boughs in the storm is new to me and old. It takes me by surprise, and yet is not unknown. Its effect is like that of a higher thought or a better emotion coming over me, when I deemed I was thinking justly or doing right."

And so on this note, a very happy weekend to all!