Walking for heart and joint health, I take off every morning at about 7:00 a.m. In this part of Texas at this time of year, it is the time when the sun is just coming up.
A new day. A new dawn. As with the beginning of your life, it should be entered into completely naked, completely open, and immersed in the great wide world. Of course, if I try to walk in our park nude, I will get arrested almost immediately. There is an elementary school on the other side of the stand of trees on the right. Besides, I am old and vulnerable to the cold and too much direct sunlight. So, I took the picture with my phone and later made it into a cartoon. Poppy and Dewey are my imaginary walking partners. They can be naked the whole way because I alone can see them.
I am a dedicated nudist. I love to be naked in nature, though my days of being nude are much more limited than I would like. Health problems and other peoples’ ideas of nudism prevent me.
Every new dawn is a celebration. It is an unexpected gift. And each one I collect now, at this age, is precious and priceless. It is a gift I have somehow earned. As the turtle told the panda, “That is why it is called the Present.”
Catch a Falling Star 
Skyscapes of the Cloudy Mind
I admit it. Even though I collect pictures of sunrises to glory in the fact that I still have another day of life in this world, I rarely snap a picture of the cloudless sunrise. It is very possible that this has something to do with what ultimately gives life value and makes it worthwhile to live one more day.
If there is no pattern, no color-changes, no contrast, no variation… then why bother? And this doesn’t only apply to living your life. It applies to taking pictures of the sky too. Solid blue or solid yellow are about as interesting as a minimalist painting. (Have you ever seen the big beige squares and red squares that fill entire walls of the Dallas Art Museum? Like a picture of a polar bear in a fierce blizzard or an extreme close-up of the side of a tomato.)
Yes, sunshine and happiness are all well and good… but you don’t get a satisfactory skyscape without some clouds in it. In fact, rain clouds provide the most fascinating patterns and colors. What would the picture be without a little drama splashed here and there to make a center of interest or a counterpoint to the happy ending? They say that variety is the spice of life. And when they say that they probably mean cayenne pepper rather than parsley or oregano. If that’s not what they mean, then why the hell did we bring food into the discussion?
So, I am thinking, there have to be clouds. (Notice, I said “clouds”, not “clowns”, because… according to the song, there “ought to be clowns”, not “have to be clowns”.)
It is true that clouds can mean sadness… that the rain is coming, that your vision is obscured, that something has come between you and God’s eye. But without clouds, the sky would be plain and boring. Better to burn bright and explode in a short amount of time than to linger over a plain pale blue.
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Filed under clowns, commentary, foolishness, humor, photo paffoonies
Tagged as clouds, humor, metaphor, sunrises