The cloud looked like a ship sailing between worlds, suspended above the apartment blocks and the dark hillside. Daniel stood on his balcony and watched it drift. He thought about Joni Mitchell’s song about clouds.
As a boy, clouds were castles, dragons, and promises. Later, they were weather forecasts before road trips and first kisses. Then they became omens of storms approaching, years slipping away.
Now eighty, he watched the gray vessel crossing the evening sky, still marveling at how the clouds painted the sky.
The sun broke through behind it and the cloud became light.
And so did Daniel.
(100 words)
Written for Rochelle Wisoff-Fields’ Friday Fictioneers prompt. Photo credit: C. E. Ayr.
From darkness, a hand extends Pale flowers held toward the light A gift suspended between worlds Where clouds forget the ground
The door to a crumbling house The threshold without a floor Only sky below and sky above And someone is waiting, still
To be received
This post was written for Sadje’s What Do You See prompt. Photo credit: Mehrab Sium @ Unsplash.
This image to me is surreal, so I was inspired to try my hand at poetry, something I rarely do, in an effort to describe what I saw, rather than trying to make any sense out of it.
John Steiner, the blogger behind Journeys With Johnbo, has this prompt he calls Cellpic Sunday, in which he asks us to post a photo that was taken with a cellphone, tablet, or another mobile device. He encourages us to participate in this cellphone photo prompt by creating our own CellPic Sunday post and linking it back to his post.
Like John, I visit some exotic sights, and the photo I’m sharing with you today was taken in one of the most exotic places on Earth: my backyard.
I took this photo at 7:00 pm this past Wednesday evening. I was taking our dog out for her after-dinner business trip around the backyard when I looked up at the sky. This is what I saw:
I thought, Wow, what interesting clouds those are in the evening sky. I need to share this with my blog friends this coming Sunday. And here we are, on Sunday. I do hope you find this photo as interesting as I do.
Anyway, that’s it. Enjoy what is left of your weekend.
As usual, the photos used in this post have been resized (shrunk) to make them load more quickly and take up less space in my WordPress media folder.
For this week’s Song Lyric Sunday theme, Jim Adam has asked us to find a philosophical song.
Back on February 28, 2021, I featured this same song on my response to that day’s Song Lyric Sunday prompt. The song was “Both Sides Now” by Joni Mitchell. On my response today, I’m not going to do my usual background story on song and singer. If you’re interested, you can read that here.
Instead I’m going to focus on why I think Joni Mitchell’s 1969 song is a great example of a philosophical song. “Both Sides Now” examines how perspectives shift with experience, and how the nature of reality and truth changes as one matures.
The song deeply explores the nature of perception, change, and the limitations of human understanding. Mitchell structures the song around three central themes — clouds, love, and life — and for each, she examines both romantic illusions and harsher realities, ultimately concluding that, despite seeing “both sides” of all of them, she still doesn’t truly understand any of them.
The song’s hallmark is its meditation on duality. Mitchell considers each topic from opposing perspectives, yet acknowledges the uncertainty that remains. This refusal to claim certainty, and the acceptance that knowledge is partial and ever-evolving, is profoundly philosophical. It echoes existential ideas about the limits of perception and the inevitable coexistence of opposites.
“Both Sides Now” resonates as a coming-of-age reflection on how ideals and lived experience often contradict, and wisdom can be found by embracing those contradictions. The lyrics capture a “philosophy of impermanence,” inviting listeners to accept the complexities of life, love, and loss. Mitchell’s own interpretation underscores this, as she has described the song as evolving from “a meditation on romanticism to a kind of surrender to reality,” reflecting how the song’s meaning deepens across a lifetime.
By admitting “I really don’t know life at all,” the song crystallizes its philosophical heart: true wisdom comes from recognizing how little we know, even after experiencing the world from many angles.
I believe that this beautiful song has endured for decades because it captures something universal and deeply human: the bittersweet tension between youthful idealism and the disillusionments that come with experience and age.
Here is the song, followed by the lyrics.
Rows and floes of angel hair And ice cream castles in the air And feather canyons everywhere I've looked at clouds that way
But now they only block the sun They rain and snow on everyone So many things I would have done But clouds got in my way
I've looked at clouds from both sides now From up and down, and still somehow It's cloud illusions I recall I really don't know clouds at all
Moons and Junes and Ferris wheels The dizzy dancing way you feel As every fairy tale comes real I've looked at love that way
But now it's just another show You leave 'em laughing when you go And if you care, don't let them know Don't give yourself away
I've looked at love from both sides now From give and take, and still somehow It's love's illusions I recall I really don't know love at all
Tears and fears and feeling proud To say "I love you" right out loud Dreams and schemes and circus crowds I've looked at life that way
But now old friends are acting strange They shake their heads, they say I've changed Well something's lost, but something's gained In living every day
I've looked at life from both sides now From win and lose and still somehow It's life's illusions I recall I really don't know life at all
I've looked at life from both sides now From up and down and still somehow It's life's illusions I recall I really don't know life at all
Unattached to a tower, untethered by wires, a clock hangs in the sky where the moon should be, suspended like an omen above the slow grind of traffic.
The clouds are puffy cotton tufts stitched into a comforter, as we sleep dreaming of a world where time is weightless.
Buildings rise like silent witnesses, their windows blind, their edges rigid against the softness of the sky.
And below, a thousand lives crawl, encased in their streel and leather cacoons, all headed forward in a rush to get to anywhere else but where they are.
The hour is midnight. Or is it noon? It matters not. It’s merely another moment balanced on the edge of something we have yet to name.
Written for Mike Jackson’s Only Murders In My MindWeekly Writing Prompt. Image credit: no attribution.
In the little burg of Waterville, clouds were carved from watermelons, and instead of water, the sky spilled seeds. Farmers cursed the slippery mess, but poets praised the absurd beauty.
The children, oh the children, they danced in seed showers, slipping on the slick black dots and giggling as they caught them in buckets. Old Mrs. Cantelope told the younguns that each seed held a wish, but only if swallowed whole.
One village boy, Jack, planted a seed in secret. By morning, a vine had grown all the way into the watermelon lclouds. He climbed it, of course. But he found neither a golden goose, any golden eggs, nor a mean old giant who bellowed, “Fee-fi-fo-fum.”
In fact, no one has seen Jack since he climbed that watermelon vine, but with every seed rain that falls these days, there was the faint smell of dreams.
The passenger plane slices the silence of space, its silhouette stitched against the swollen eye of the moon.
Somewhere inside the plane, a child gazes out of the window, believing stars are close enough to touch.
Photo credit: Adam Azim @ Unsplash
Return
The ancient voyager slowly pulls itself from the deep, leaving a trail on the pristine sand.
The ocean, a gradient of blues, whispers secrets to the vast sky and the aloof clouds in a moment of quiet grace.
Written for Sadje’s What Do You See prompt. Sadje’s new format for WDYS presents us with two photos. I created separate very short stories for each image — the first of space and the second of shore.
Wouldn’t you like to expose your newer readers to some of your earlier posts that they might never have seen? Or remind your long term subscribers of posts that they might not remember? Each Friday I will publish a post I wrote on this exact date in a previous year.
How about it? Why don’t you reach back into your own archives and highlight a post that you wrote on this very date in a previous year? You can repost your Flashback Friday post on your blog and pingback to this post. Or you can just write a comment below with a link to the post you selected.
If you’ve been blogging for less than a year, go ahead and choose a post that you previously published on any day this past year and link to that post in a comment.
This was originally posted on April 25, 2018
WordPress Photo Challenge — Lines
This week’s WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge is all about lines. We are supposed to “share a photo with a composition dominated by lines — hard or soft, straight or curvy, vertical or horizontal, or made in nature or as part of a cityscape.”
Maybe my first picture is taking the word “lines” a little too literally, as in long lines of people waiting at the California DMV.
My next picture shows the lines of wood planks in a backyard table I am refinishing.
And then there is this one when my wife and I were shopping for tiles for our kitchen’s backsplash.
And here is the line of ducklings swimming in Swan Lake at Golden Gate Park between their parents.
How about the roof lines of the De Young museum in Golden Gate Park the foreground, the tree lines in the Music Concourse field, and the street lines on the hill on the right?
And finally, the lines made by a formation of clouds.
“When I go, you guys follow closely behind me,” Sergeant Davis said. “And try as best you can to be as quiet as a mouse. The moon is behind a cloud right now and if we can make it about two football fields before the moon is out again, there are some old foxholes that we can dive into for cover from the moonlight.”
“Do you really think we can make it, Sarge?” Corporal Kline asked.
“If the moon stays behind the clouds, it’s within reason that we can make it to the forest. But if that bastard moon starts shining bright, our odds drop considerably,” Sergeant Davis said. “But as POWs, our mission is to escape from this hellhole prison camp. Are you ready, Kline?”
“On your signal, Sarge.” Kline said.
“You good, Kowalski?” Sarge asked.
Good to go, Sarge,” Kowalski replied.
“Okay, now!”
The three men ran as fast as they could in an awkward position, trying to stay as low to the ground as possible. But with another fifty yards to go before they got to foxholes, the full moon came out from behind the clouds, making it much more likely to be seen by the prison guards.
“Flat on the ground, men,” Sarge commanded in a loud whisper. The three laid perfectly still for about four minutes. There was no commotion coming from the prison camp, no large floodlights illuminated, no sirens sounded.
“There should be those old foxholes ahead maybe forty or fifty yards,” Sarge said. “Work your way there in a low crawl and once there, jump in and stay low and quiet. We’ll stay there to catch our breath and then with any luck, the clouds will once again cover the moon and we can make a dash for the trees. Now move out!”
This post is in respone to a prompt from TN Kerr at The New Unofficial Online Writer’s Guild. TN’s prompt is called OLWG and he posts two or three prompts from his vast collection of writing prompts weekly. Our task is to choose one of them, choose all of them, or choose none of them and incorporate them into a story or poem. This week, his three prompts are:
Facts, Fictions & Fantasies 
