Cloud Watching

When we pause to look up from our earthbound scurrying, we will see that the skies offer an ever-changing drama.

Clouds shift and flow and move: the sky is never the same two seconds in a row.

As the sun moves, so the colours change and the interplay between the wind, the temperature and the sun create spectacles of infinite variety.

Clouds will form themselves into fantastic shapes, even for a second appearing to resemble an object from our world: a rabbit, a saucepan, a dragon or a heart.

Then they are gone, ever-changing, formless yet with form, solid yet fluid at once.

Clouds are natures poetry.

"Look up, marvel at the ephemeral beauty and live life with your head in the clouds"

"Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add colour to my sunset sky" ~~ Rabindranath Tagore

When I was visiting my friend in Christchurch, New Zealand in February 2012 the sky often put on a display like the photo above.

Music, Poetry, Nature = Beauty

I don't think anyone would argue with the fact that ours is a dizzyingly visual society, or that many of our readily available criteria for beauty are less than skin deep.

Yet, for all that, the need to be in the presence of beauty and to soak it up emotionally is strong in most people. So is the need to be active in the creation of beauty, even if this is achieved in small ways.

To sit in an ugly or neglected room, to look out onto a parched, bleached landscape or to look at ourselves or other people through eyes that are so critical that all intrinsic beauty is lost is to risk feeling significantly emotionally bereft.

Conversely, to take the time needed to do something "beautifully", or to absorb and appreciate someone else's efforts, is invariably uplifting. In fact, when someone is clinically depressed, often one of the first things they lose is the pleasure and sense of participation that comes with appreciating or creating beauty.

But acknowledging how crucial beauty is to our souls and emotions doesn't in itself solve the question of what beauty is or the extent to which our "eyes" and, therefore, judgements are socially conditioned.

Music, poetry and nature in all its many moods are unfailing sources of beauty in my life. I love domestic gestures of beauty also: the trouble a friend takes to arrange spring vegetables on a platter; home-picked flowers; a favourite painting in a new spot. I feel we need such moments on a daily basis.

Beauty of "character" is also priceless.

"I pull you from your tower, take away your pain. Show you all the beauty you possess, if you only let yourself believe.”
Sarah McLachlan Canadian Singer and Songwriter


I visited the Muogamarra Nature Reserve last Sunday and filled my camera with these wonderful images.....nature in all its glory. This is one of the trees I hugged!!!



View from the Reserve overlooking the Hawkesbury River, Cowan, Sydney