Reflections on a story
Over the years, I’ve experimented with different forms of writing. I’ve written poems, essays, personal posts, and more recently fiction. I’ve never written fiction before, and needless to say, it’s been incredibly frustrating. This has me thinking about my relationship to writing, and the point of writing this story.
Throughout the day, my head is full of semi-random ideas and impressions. They usually have some basis in a problem I’ve been thinking about, a recurring feeling, or something else that seems intangibly relevant to me.
One such impression came to me when I was taking the train down to NYC. I was staring out the window at some clouds, wondering about nothing in particular. I then thought it’d be interesting to live up there, if it were possible. What would that really be like? That’s when Sid came to mind.
Sid lives a precarious existence because his life is built upon the nebulosity of clouds. They are constantly changing, and as a result, he has no friends. He has no steady sense of home, and he doesn’t even know who his parents are. The cloud dwellers live in a state of constant drift, hoping one day to be graced by stability. Most of all Sid yearns to be like the mountains, like the ancient trees that he observes daily.
Later, Sid meets Amelia, a motherly pilot who raises him on Earth’s surface after a chance encounter brings them together. She teaches him how to fly planes and identify cloud formations. She shows him the stars and all the hidden wonders beyond the sky. Sid is enamored and falls in love with his newfound life, but it isn’t long before his primordial yearning returns. Looking into the vastness of the sky reminds him of something lost, of something that has always been out of reach.
He wants to go back. He wants to reconnect to his original roots. And yet he also feels that Amelia is his refuge, that Earth is his home. Here are his mountains. Here are the forests that protect him from constant exposure to the elements, unlike the clouds. Every choice has its tradeoffs, she says to him one day while handing him her plane keys. Will you continue dreaming or will you fly? And here the story ends.
Honestly, I like this caricature of my story more than what it currently is as a work of fiction. It feels more natural to write in this way, as a form of reflection. I suppose I’ve always written for this reason alone, to better understand myself.
If it isn’t obvious, I am reflected in Sid, a kid who is intimate with longing. Part of me wants to move somewhere new at this point in life, try something different, grow into someone I’m unfamiliar with. And yet, having moved around so much, constantly bouncing between various pursuits, people, and projects, I know the cost of living in the clouds. I know the pain of never feeling quite certain about anything. My head is often elsewhere, in a safe space of my imagining, dealing with abstractions, navigating impressions, playing with myself. This fuels my yearning for something like what Amelia represents: steadiness, stability, connection, community.
The trick is knowing how to balance the two. My spiritual practice helps with this—living with uncertainty, maintaining awareness of emptiness. But there are also times when one must lean head first into each side of the duality. It’s okay to play around with the ephemeral for awhile, to dream and daydream, even if they never manifest as a fully-formed cloud.
What is a cloud anyways but a matter of perspective? It’s both a thing and nothing at the same time. Knowing this brings me straight back to the truth of reality. It is the home that has always been there, no matter where I go.