A dramatic spring sky where the clouds take on exotic shapes, this one taking me back to grade school when I first learned about plate tectonics, the idea our earth was once supercontinents that broke apart, that you could fit them back together like puzzle pieces.

This cloud above me now was like Pangaea, all the continents joined together as one. As a young boy how fascinating the idea, the earth could be brittle like that, prone to snap like a biscuit.

And I’d seen that twice myself, once in an earthquake where the ground seemed to bubble, and another time on a golf course at night on LSD. And both times it was liberating and horrifying to recognize that solid ground wasn’t solid at all. Not for where we put our feet, not for any notion of reality. The ground loosened the same as the clouds, always changing form, drifting on. Any stability we perceived was imagined and temporary. All of it a farce.

I had this all mapped out in my head before I sat down to write it, I could see it as clear as the shapes in the sky before the clouds broke apart and the sky was just the sky again. The sun, just the sun. All the pieces fit together as they should. And when I sat down it broke apart again.

Categories: prose, writing

Tags: creative nonfiction