Cloudscrying: Finding Meaning in Clouds

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Clouds might be nonbinary icons. They are neither liquid nor gas. Gasses diffuse, liquids flow. Clouds do both and neither. They ride with the air, are resting sites for droplets, and become visible through solid ice crystals and the dust particles they form on. They trouble the idea of “phase changes,” a metaphor so fundamental, based in the very matter of stuff. Clouds have taught me that there is no fixed destination but a continual flowing back and forth. But clouds, too, make foggy metaphors.

Cloud scrying is one of the first forms of divination I engaged in: lying down in the grass, watching stories take and lose shape in the sky. Reflecting on my cloud obsession, my friend Jacob said that my research is a process of finding meaning in finding meaning in clouds. My research into cloud scrying is itself an act of cloud scrying.

I’ve been looking for many things in clouds: a subject, a muse, an elemental medium, a psychic friend. The title of this channel, “cloudscrying,” can also be read as “clouds crying.” There is something in the mishmash of subjectivity and agency that I’ve been very drawn to.