Skyward

Everyone looks at clouds to see shapes of castles, animals, dragons, familiar faces and unfamiliar heads scudding along. That is part of our nature and our imagination that makes us want to see what we can find and its our inclination to always find new frontiers. In reality the sky is that thin envelope, on the solar scale anyway, that keeps the breath of the earth inside. The sky isn't even blue, that's only a reflection, but isn't that what looking up into the sky is all about?

Seeing ourselves reflected there, our wishes, our hopes, our dreams and our aspirations. What is looking up and finding familiar shapes in the clouds but a great cloudy Rorschach test, with cumulus, cirrus and all the other c clouds, instead of inkblots there as molds and forms to wrap our imaginations around? And when it comes right down to it, isn't a great cloud so much nicer than a blot of ink. And wouldn't it be nicer for a psychiatrist to ask a patient to step out and look up at the clouds, than to look at some smeared blots of ink?

Maybe Rorschach tests don't seem to produce positive results because they reduce the human mind to a blot of ink, instead of a noble cloud, a great formation of air around which the light shines. When you look up at an inkblot, you see an error, a mistake, something dirty and wrong. A cloud by contrast is filled with hope and potential. In Rorschach inkblots people may see their mistakes, but in the islands of the sky, their dreams take wing.