The Face in the Clouds

It was a starkly cold morning, with a blindingly bright sun in a pale blue sky. I was driving home along the lake boulevard that runs all along the way to our house. The sun slowly was easing its light into some soft grey clouds that started to gather high above the lake. The process caught my eye, because the sun morphing into the clouds gave it a shape of a long moon like face, with features reminiscent of an ancient warrior. The face evolving looked strained, proud. I liked it. Autumn is always a transition for me emotionally, and I longed for the face in the cloud - sun as were it a long lost friend. I was surprised at the intensity of my reaction. There was something instinctual about it, a timeless primeval yearning to connect to the mystery of creation, to the mystery of life, my life. Odd how a vague sensation can bring into focus something so specific. The face the sun was showing through the lens of my musings was sad looking, but also wise, and at peace. Instead of fighting the deep melancholic response to the artistic vision I was mesmerized by, I decided to accept it like an unexpected gift. Instead of intensifying the sadness, I noticed accepting it, softened the pain, and eventually it faded, just like the stern but beautiful face of the cloud shrouded sun. It was a cool experience, one that somehow lifted my own acute sense of aloneness into an awareness of profound acceptance as to the inexplicable intricacies and contradictions of our individual lives. I felt a oneness with everything around me, as if my breath was part of the wind I felt through the slightly opened car window, part of the sun light, part of the clouds, the sound of a solitary bird swooping by, part of the oncoming season of winter. Beyond words, beyond meaning, I realized I was a part of everything around me, not just a solitary observer ,but a participant, however minute in the scheme of things, however invisible, however quiet and overlooked, but a part nevertheless. All sense of sadness left me, and I started singing along with the song on the radio, and I smiled, and reached over to gently pat my sleeping dog Yara in the backseat, understanding with strong conviction that she had figured that oneness bit out already a long time ago.