Postcards from the Pale Blue

For weeks I kept a notebook open to the sky. Not the dramatic sky of storms or sunsets, but the pale, ordinary blue that sits over the hill like a held breath. Looking up is an underrated discipline. The clouds drift through your attention like unread postcards, each one carrying a different weather from a different place. You learn to read the sky the way you read a friend's face — for mood, for change, for the weather that is coming. The blue is never quite the same blue. That, I think, is the whole point.