Clouds in a Parking Lot

Tonight, just after the sun set, I stood in the parking lot of Whole Foods and observed the clouds. I can only describe the color as a pinkish magenta-though this does not nearly do the activity represented by the dance of light, eye and the visual cortex justice. The stratus clouds in the southern sky were a blanket, drawn back from the horizon, ruffled in subtle waves. When I first parked and walked toward the automatic sliding doors, I turned to see the clouds in their rosy luminescence, but I felt awkward, self-aware, as if there were people noticing this bearded disheveled man in dirty, paint-stained and torn khaki work pants and khaki vest and bland olive green skull-cap staring into the southern and western skies over the parking lot of mid-sized SUV's and hybrids and the hum of I-25 just beyond. So, I turned back toward the doors, my presence demanding their nearly silent sliding compliance. After shopping and buying my four items and returning to the parking lot, however, the sky was even more majestic and my mood even darker. I stood unabashedly and tried to observe the sky without a thought cluttering the perception. I tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to allow the color and the forms, the dynamics of the moment, to seep into me- tried to allow the divine wisdom in that collection of moisture diligently refracting the sun's light, forcefully refusing passage to the spectrum of color presented in the dome above, bouncing it around and sending it back toward earth. I stood for an immeasurable amount of time, minutes or seconds, and then my attention was drawn to the mountains in the west. There, a tincture of the color present in the blanket of clouds above glowed with a vitality generally reserved for living things. There, I imagined, the sun had just glided behind the mountains and was allowing one last revelry, a call to the clouds above, an invitation to continue in the glorious display. To bring this moment, this moment soaked in an attempt to be completely in the present, to bring this moment into relationship to the future- in searching for the call from that mysterious tomorrow- all I have is the concept of hope. The hope that the relationship between human beings and beauty and attention will prevail over all that is dark, morbid and immoral working in the world today. The hope that people will continue to stop in parking lots and stare into the sky in wonder and perhaps see the reflection of their own divinity, the colors of their own soul, in a blanket of clouds and the echoing call of the sun beyond the horizon.