Cloud Complaint
a prose poem I wrote early in the year.
DEAR READER:
It has been a while since I posted here. I am in my new house, surrounded by painting supplies, books in the living room, and dying yellow-red chrysanthemums on the table, working on refreshing this newsletter as a space for more of my creative writing — essays and poems, and the occasional dispatch to let you know how the book project is going. If you are a supporter of this newsletter with your dollars, know that I am grateful to you beyond measure for the faith you have placed in my writing practice, and it is for you that I am undergoing this renewal of my writing practice. Ah, who am I kidding. I’m doing it for me! But thank you, thank you, dear readers of all types, for your support of this work! Here, at last, is a piece from the archives, written about seven or eight months ago, in stream of consciousness poetic prose. Enjoy!
Love, Mariya
Cloud Complaint
A wisp of white moves gently in the pollen haze. The sun is above it at a 30 degree angle, maybe 10 o clock. See how thinly the water molecules gather themselves, not even making a coherent smear but just an amorphous scattered impression of white on blue. I imagine it is providing the barest service, the barest reminder for the trees that rain will come again. Do the trees appreciate the reminder? Do they sense this useless cloud above them? I am reminded of the Diamond Sutra, only with less oomph.
So you should view this fleeting world -- A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream, a flash of lightning in a summer cloud, A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.
This particular cloud is getting harder to perceive. It is a remnant, thinning even more. It is as much not-cloud as cloud. It could split off from itself, give birth to other clouds, but it won’t, at least not in the time that I look at it today. It bores me. The sunlight is striking everything more clearly than I thought at first. It must be the breeze, which is cutting through the haze and sweeping aside the yellow-green particulates to let light through. Still, though, it is noon. Some of the sun’s most intense rays are casting straight down, reflecting off the cloud. The tree branches sway more heavily than they did a month ago. They bear a load of new leaves, tender but not light. A month from now those leaves will lose their tenderness and flatten, and they will need the clouds even more.
But let’s be honest: nobody really needs clouds. They need the rain, the snow. The clouds themselves are a visibility blocker, a barrier to the sun’s light, a drain on everyone’s vitamin D. The clouds make it harder to enjoy our lives, sometimes. I guess they throw off pretty colors in the sunrise and sunset. They gather to mess up our plans. What are they here for? A drifting, dissolute, entropic smear like this isn’t doing anything and barely exists. I can’t see the point of it, except to filter out a little of the sun’s intensity. The only good thing I can say about it is that there aren’t many of them in my sky, today.
I’m out of ideas. I’m out of ideas. I’m reminded too of the interview I watched with Ocean Vuong, when he said that he has seen that being a Buddhist is incompatible with writing so unless he has another book inside him begging to be written, he will stop. And that one day he will stop writing altogether so he can give himself fully to mindfulness and Buddhism.
And I thought: He has no children. Only a child has time to apprehend a cloud, to notice its contours and wonder about its contents. This is so because a child’s needs are met by other people. When you are consumed by having to meet the needs of others, or even yourself, you cannot see a cloud.
See how annoyed I am even by the cloud I did manage to notice. It lightly mocks me for not being a child anymore. For not having ready access to that part of myself that did used to pay attention. The attentiveness demanded by the Buddha -- I am not capable. It’s too much. Perception is too much, and anyway, the assignment isn’t clear. I want to push back. But the cloud is a perfect thing to challenge me to perceive it. It isn’t even a thing! I couldn’t push it if I wanted to! Only the wind can shape and move it, it has no materiality. No mass. It’s vapor. What is there to say? What’s the point of this vapor that swirls along on the breeze until it dissolves and disintegrates entirely? It cannot bear witness, it cannot continue to exist, it does not breathe, it does not provide, it reflects, it drifts.
Photo by <a href="/photographer/marganz-55286">marganz</a>.