Saw this driving home.
So how about clouds?
How do you react to a suspended bank of vapor, perforated with light, washed amber or gold on the skyline? For me, such sights are always an ethereal experience. The wonder—even awe—that descends on me is difficult to explicate.*
Care to explain me to myself? What would you say? Well, H20, in its vaporized form, undergoing a degree of solar illumination, triggers a biological reaction in our bodies…
Sure.
Give me a better clue. Maybe something like:
How do you react to a suspended bank of vapor, perforated with light, washed amber or gold on the skyline? For me, such sights are always an ethereal experience. The wonder—even awe—that descends on me is difficult to explicate.*
Care to explain me to myself? What would you say? Well, H20, in its vaporized form, undergoing a degree of solar illumination, triggers a biological reaction in our bodies…
Sure.
Give me a better clue. Maybe something like:
As golden light comes from the north,
so a terrible beauty streams from God.
- Job 37:22 (ASV/MSG)
Is there a revelatory quality in clouds and skies? I’d argue to that end...
At any rate, in explaining some phenomena, chemical formulas don’t cut it.
* Explicate. A formal version of “explain.” While you might explicate a phenomena, you would never explicate a joke. Synonyms include: interpret, spell out, expound, construe. This word appeared in association with The Vocabulary Reclamation Project.
5 comments:
Breathtaking, really...quite moving. It does result in some form of emotional reaction.
Really interesting. I like the photos and the words. But I'm afraid I'll have to buy a new and updated dictionary. :-)
Oh no, I don't want to obfuscate my chronicles with obscure verbiage! Um, actually, I really don't. I hope the vocabulary wasn't too much of a problem.
So Joe, what do you think causes the emotional reactions we experience over such sights? I guess that's the obvious "next" question in the dialogue...
[Perhaps due to a lack of understanding of naturally occurring phenomena]
My explanation would be that we as humans instinctively revere anything that we cannot re-create by our known means.
I have yet to see someone reconstruct a full-scale sunset or illumination of clouds :P
That said, it might also simply be that few on this planet cannot look at photos such as yours and think: "That truly is beautiful", regardless of the reasons for its appearance.
Hmmm...what are the implications of awe over things "over our heads?"(i.e. sunsets, the Grand Canyon..."creation.") Ultimately, why should one mere molecular structure be amazed at another? (whether or not we can control it)
And, to play devil's advocate, why don't we register similar feelings over other uncontrollable events - say traffic accidents or death by lightning?
BTW, thanks for the nice things you say about the photos... :)
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