A topography of clouds
One year on substack
Today I’m writing from a zinc countertop café on West 72nd Street in Manhattan, near where I’m staying for the next few weeks as I perform research at the Center for Book Arts on the topic of cartographic and landscape practices in the Center’s fine art collection. I woke up this morning with the idea — the urge — of writing you. . .
Then, I realized that this month marks one year of my activity on this platform. Over the past year, I’ve shared updates, meanders, and projects on a irregularly periodic basis. Amidst the mix of travels, studies, and a daily practice of writing morning pages, my substack has taken the shape of a showroom of complete works, rather than the works-in-progress, reflections, and wanderings that I intended this space to serve.
I’m careful about what, and to what extent, I share. There’s a wisdom in keeping secrets, yet there’s so much that I want to share with you! What if I substitute one or two private monrning pages a week to sharing here, on substack, with you? What might I be able to learn about making public, while maintaining a level of privacy in my artistic and personal worlds — especially those that that are nascent, still becoming, and far from complete?
To mark my first year on substack, I’m recomitting to a regular public wirting practice — one focused on ideas and experiences rather than discrete works. While I’ll still make room for my accomplishments and projects I’m proud of, these will no longer be the main affair.
My flight from Ottawa to New York yesterday was on perhaps the least populated plane I’ve ever taken — I believe there were thirty people on the hundred-seat aircraft. Lifting up through the dense layer of overcast clouds blanketing the sky, we reached the other side of the stratocumuli after a shaky handful of minutes. Unlike the flat, smooth bottom layer of clouds, the top side was uneven and fluffy. The air was smooth. The clouds seemed to barely move beneath us — almost static in the surely frigid air.
The sky is supposed to be gas, no? Then what are these clouds, and why don’t they seem to move the way I suppose gas should move?
Clouds — masses of liquid and solid water coalesce around particles of dust and other fine particulate matter (like volcanic ash and atmospheric microplastics). Clouds — at once solid, liquid, and gas. Watching the clouds from above yesterday — for maybe the hundreth time — I marveled in their topography: their peaks and valleys, vast planes and mountain ranges, and atmospheric architecture.
Writing about the clouds reminds me of Ayane Kawata’s Time of Sky and Castles in the Air (trans. Sawako Nakayasu), which
introduced to me via her eight-week Like Dreamers Do workshop in summer-autumn 2023. Part abstract poetry collection, part dream journal, I’ve returned to this collection periodically over the last few months when I need to be reminded of condensed language’s power (Time of Sky) and honest writing against a culture of shame (Castles in the Air).(Using the word “honest” to describe the kind of dream writing that Kawata exhibits in Castles in the Air feels loaded. I’m not sure if it’s the right word, but it feels right to me. Is her prose really a true representation of her dreams? What is a true representation? Might honest writing necessarily include a level of fantasy, imagination, or deceit on behalf of the writer?)
Luv u darian