Dark clouds are a thing of the past: I am now amused by the clouds
When I was a young girl, my mom used to have a lot of good luck. Well, as much as a very poor person can have in the South Bronx. She was the only person in our area that listed to country western music which really made her seem odd to those around us in our 6 block neighborhood radius. Everyone was listening to Michael Jackson or Prince and wearing those red pleather jackets. She listed to Johnny Cash, Hank Williams Jr. and Willie Nelson to just name a few. I didn’t really know better. So, it seemed cool to me. Till this day, I can sing along to many country songs as well as Britney, Depeche Mode and the X Ambassadors. I have a wide varied music taste.
Anyway, back in the day my mom had good luck. She would call in to the local NYC country western music station and win. She won often and a variety of things. Then one day someone gave her the evil eye and her luck turned a bit. She no longer won and the neighborhood got a bit rougher. She would go around saying that we lived with a dark cloud hanging over us. Then one day, a few decades later, I had a horrible business trip that included a plane with yellow-taped seats and a kamikaze cab driver. While we were driving back to the airport there literally was a dark cloud hanging over us all the way there. I shook my head and wondered why there had to be a dark cloud.
Then I started taking more and more road trips during which I brought my camera. I would peer out my window with camera at the ready. I slowly became more and more fascinated with photographing clouds. The clouds became my muse out on the road. Clouds in the morning and at night, dark and light all capture my eye. This past summer roadtrip solidified the status of clouds as my muse.
I used to fear the proverbial dark cloud. Now it serves as my muse.
Categories: childhood, photography, Psychology, Travel
psychologistmimi 
I like this post about clouds, Mimi. I’ve always been fascinated by them. My favorites are the small, puffy clouds so often seen in the South Florida sky. They portend a good weather day.
Love your reminiscences about your Mom and her varied, eclectic music preferences. 🙂
I believe, as you have found out, that even dark clouds in the sky do not mean they are there for you only, and will not mean bad things will happen. It’s all in the mind! 😉
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I love clouds too and a great thing about them, besides their varied characters, is that we physically look up. If we physically look up it may help us emotionally look up too! Seems it helps some of us!
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I love that perspective. .. pun intended 🙂
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Two things come to mind with this…
1) Growing up as a church pianist (still am today), there was an old catchy hymn that I would play called “Love will roll the clouds away.” It would go “…turn the darkness into day! I’m so glad, I now can say… Love will roll the clouds away!”
2) Of course, the commonly used saying: “You have to get through the rain to get to the sunshine!”
Cheers!
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Made me think of my painting. I had always wanted to paint. Bob Ross type painting with happy trees and mountains that knew where they lived on a canvas, it all seemed so perfectly soothing to me. But then my husband actually got me an artists set of paints with an easel and canvases. I was so excited until I realized my trees weren’t happy at all and my mountains could never find their way onto my canvas. The only thing I could paint with conviction was a sky. I could rock some sky backgrounds, now. Then I got courageous and tried a cloud and I was the cloud QUEEN! Fast-forward ten years and I now paint for Hospice patients. Isn’t it funny how a little bit of fear can catapult you into an obsession…
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I remember Bob Ross! That is such a great story. thanks for sharing and thanks for what you do for hospice patients!
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You might like the newer country song “Every Storm (Runs Out of Rain).”
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I will check it out thanks
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