Zazen over Glasgow

Cloud and mist, they are mid-air transformations; behind them eternally shine the sun and the moon.

A Taoist Priest

To be sure, a Glasgow without clouds is not a Glasgow I am familiar with. Personally, I feel very fortunate in having these great shapeshifters pass through the city. They offer a sense of transformation, shifting light, transfiguration even! Glenn Gould, the Canadian pianist once said that his moods bore an inverse relationship to the degree of sunlight on any given day. 'Behind every silver lining', he said, whenever things threatened to get too bright, 'there's a cloud'.

In the harsh florescence of science and reason ('it's not the sleep of reason that engenders monsters but vigilant and insomniac rationality', wrote Deleuze), and a western modality that pays little heed to that which cannot be fathomed, mystery returns in the presence of clouds -

The slow burn activity of cloud-watching or simply acknowledging their presence (without the anorak) can lead, as Gould well knew, to a deeply satisfying inner calm. 'Landscapes wrapped in cloud seem altogether more vast, more sublime,' wrote the German painter Caspar David Friedrich. 'The eye and the imagination are generally more attracted to the hazy distance than to what may more clearly be seen close-up'.

Lighthouse (Glasgow's Centre for Architecture & Design), Mitchell Lane

 'Supercell over Cessnock'

May not the great cosmic events in the universe have their effect in the 'sensitive' surfaces of contact in the atmospheric mantle of our earth?

Theodor Schwenk, Sensitive Chaos