The weight of clouds
She is free but her freedom is so heavy
A cloud weighs between 500 and 1 million tonnes. She looks so effortless. She is free, untethered. Envied. Admired and photographed from airplane windows and mountaintops. They stop in the streets to get a glimpse of her colours dipped in honey, painted with purples. What a marvel! What beauty! Body light as a feather, you wouldn’t guess that her bones are heavier than a blue whale. You want to be her. You want to be a cloud. Do you have what it takes? Can you break your own heart? Can you overturn everything you believed to be real? You want to speak your truth. Keeping your integrity means losing people instead. You will lose belonging. Lose place. Lose your tether. And suddenly, freedom becomes a burden. Freedom is an honest place, and a lonely one. Is it really freedom then? Do you have what it takes to be free? Can you carry the weight of freedom? Or are we really prisoners of it? What happens when your freedom starts crushing you?
Like a cloud, you never arrive at a destination. There is none. You don’t have a place to land. Forever cursed to float float float. She is free but her freedom is so heavy.
(Maybe you will find other clouds who are also floating. Maybe you can float alongside each other. Maybe the weight of freedom is the weight of love too.)
I really like where you have been going with your writing recently I know you said you were feeling a little blocked, and it seems like instead of stopping, you are digging deep inside of yourself and pulling out even more creativity. I admire your approach, and your own and the way you tell stories with your words. Keep going!
As someone who has written about the wind and clouds before (and is also an Air sign), I loved your angle here. Who’d want to be a cloud after understanding the invisible burden it carries? But to be free alongside another, two clouds floating side by side, sometimes merging, sometimes drifting…well, that looks and sounds a bit like heaven. The notion that I’ve always had my head in the clouds has suddenly taken on a whole new meaning. I don’t think a cloud could live any other way, even if it wanted to, even if it envied the mountains and lakes. Clouds get to touch everything, dissolve and re-incarnate, living a thousand different lives. You make it sound lonely (and I know it is), but what else has the power to turn gaseous, liquid, AND solid, depending on the mood and weather, and still return to its own space after each cycle. The joy is in each touch, each transformation, without the burden of being tied down. I’m pretty much rambling now; but thanks for the thought-provoking post!