Looking Up

One very fine day, when I was a kid, I was riding my bike home from a friend's house. I remember it well. Beautiful day. The Arizona sky was pure blue but for a few fluffy white clouds. They were the kind of clouds I loved to stare at. In them I might see horses, or a waterfall, or horses slowly transforming into a waterfall, or something else astonishing and magical.

And that's exactly what I was doing while riding my bike home that day. I was looking up. I imagined walking on the clouds. I saw little kitten clouds separate from a bigger cloud, as if the kittens were jumping out of a basket. I saw an arm reach out from a huge reclining body.

At least, that's what I was doing until I ran my bike into a mail box.

Yes, I was that kid.

But I want to defend that goofy kid for a moment. Except for the bike, she had it right. We might all benefit from spending a few minutes each day with our heads in the clouds, freely daydreaming. Looking skyward, we remember we're on this planet together, under the same canopy. Watching clouds, we try to make sense of something amorphous, and for a while we can, but then it changes and we have to try to make sense of it in a new way (psst...just like in real life). Looking up, we think about not only what we can see, but also about what lies beyond what we can see.