When this last weather system blew through there were some breathtaking skyscapes. Sometimes I have to say I prefer clouds to clear skies. These clouds weren’t really all that threatening. It was like a crowd of clouds just mulling around in the sky. Like Democrats, they were all sort of just kicking around individually, digging their own cloudness, each expressing its own version of what it means to be a cloud, ultimately blowing over prettily, but impotently, unable to gather into a storm like those angry thunderhead Republicans, to rain on everyone’s parade. Sometimes we need a storm, but these little clouds–multitudes of them–couldn’t muster one.

My friend Robert dragged me out to the “mega-maze” near Clinton, Mass., on Labor Day, where I took these shots:

The maze was a nightmare, by the way. I thought, how difficult can it be to find your way through it? They said it could be done in half an hour. Don’t believe it. We were wandering around in circles for over three hours in there. I kept telling Robert, “always go right!” But he was sure the rule was “always go left!” We never settled this dispute. The fact is, after about an hour, I didn’t care whether it was right or left, I just wanted out. Robert took this as a victory, and we took every left for about the next hour before he, too started to question his dogmatic approach.

I thought, if we ‘d had the foresight to position a couple of gay guys at the exit, we could use our gaydar to get out, but lacking that, I really had no plan of escape. It was clear to me, though, that, as is the case outside the maze, the dogmatic approach was not the way inside it, either. Hour three brought a decided shift in policy to pure pragmatism–the whatever-it-takes approach–including but not limited to bribing and then threatening the snarky high school kids who work in the maze and know all the shortcuts, brazenly cutting through “no access” passageways, and finally screaming “help! I’m having a baby!”

Ah, the mega-maze. It was a lot like my mega-life. The thing I have to say I enjoyed most about it was watching dads with their families in tow totally losing their shit. You know, these dads were like me, thinking, this is kid’s stuff–we’ll be in and out of here in no time. They start out all confident–shouting “This way! That way! Straight ahead!” Then two hours later you’d see them looking all knotted up, just this side of furious, about to go postal. They should probably think about having metal detectors at the entrance. There were some old-school dads in there that were the type that can’t ever be wrong, and can’t be contradicted. It was hardest on them, of course. You made way for them when they were tearing through, with their frightened brood struggling to keep up. You knew everyone was gonna get a whoopin’ that night, for no other reason than all-knowing dad couldn’t find his way out of the mega-maze, and totally lost his shit.

If you’re on the edge, the mega-maze is not a good idea. Really. Because, obviously, it’s just too easy to see it as a metaphor for life.

But there were also new-school dads who were perfectly happy to have mom take charge and get lost. And there were plenty of people who apparently enjoyed the challenge of finding their way through the maze. Bully for them, right?

We had not eaten lunch before entering the maze at noon, and I was starving and sunstroked by the time we emerged, and babbling about a minotaur. Robert gave me a firm smack in the chops and told me to snap out of it, it was nonsense–we could not have encountered the Minotaur because we were in a maze, not a labyrinth! In the first place. And secondly, there was only one Minotaur, and he was in King Minos’s Labyrinth (the original labyrinth) in Crete, not outside of Clinton, Mass in the friggin Mega-maze. We did, however, see Paris Hilton and Fabio in there. I am sure of that.

Back in my beloved Dot, the clouds continued their magnificent march across the sky:

Clouds have been a source of such fascination through time. They have inspired artists and poets since the dawn of time. The tradition lives on on the web, of course, in places like the Cloud Appreciation Society (CAS for short). They have a poetry section on their site, as any “appreciation” site worth its salt should. I liked this one, From Duncan Edwards in New Orleans:

closer than breath through a telescope,
dreams lie in wait.

blessed impermanence writ,
up there,
a bit.

(Glimpsing clouds, uptown New Orleans, April 2006)

What is it about clouds and dreams? Actually it’s not hard to figure out, is it? They pop up, change form as they drift across our mind’s eye, and dissolve, leaving nothing in their wake. Ouch.

Clouds as dreams. Clouds as emotions. Political clouds. Little Democratic nimbus clouds: drifting hapless, passive, “that can quietly watch and no more.” Or the “bulbous cumulus” Neocon cloud “that/thinks to force the world to be/and then blows itself out.” Clouds that look like cats, butterflies, a mother’s smile. Thieving clouds. Mocking clouds. Phantasmic, arty-farty, musical clouds (hmm). Shangri-La clouds. Clouds as God “thinking aloud.”

I don’t know if clear skies inspire as much poetry as cloudy ones. But I suspect not.

QOTD: what’s better for contemplation: cloudy or clear skies?