August 25th
We report: we ask our expert what is the name of the arc above the sun, and a few minutes later, they are talking about the shape of ice crystals and their orientation. Amidst all this, we manage to obtain the name: upper tangent arc. We look at the sun dogs through our fingers.
August 24th
We report in late light: late August, and we are losing the sun faster. If only for that reason, the nights are not quite as warm when the darkness lingers for longer. The ground is covered in leaves fallen too soon, and our steps lift dust off the path; the season is turning.
August 23rd
We report: the stars came out easy in the night, with no moon to take over the sky. There is no traffic, no headlights to distract our eyes; our expert has brought their red torchlight. Within half an hour, we forget a world that is not the starry sky, and its timeless echoes.
August 21st
We report: here, the grass is still tall and green, and the bees are hopping from the camomiles to the thistles at the foot of hedgerows. The skylarks are equally busy, passing us time and time again as though they were making a game out of it. It smells warm and dry.
August 20th
We report from behind a hill: we cannot seem to get around this slope, and the sun is setting too fast. We are giving up on it with every inch that goes dark. Down here, the humidity left over from these few days of rain is alive and well, still seeping into the ground.
August 19th
We report: after the storm cleared out, the rain remained through twilight. It was quiet rain, the kind that blurs out edges and angles, white noise rather than a drumbeat. We see minuscule beads of water catching on our expert‘s hair as they refuse to put their hood up.
August 18th
We report about business inside of clouds. We are somewhere below a cumulonimbus, full of strong electric charges of opposed signs, and above the ground, in turn positively charged by influence. The result is loud, colourful, and has us standing a safe distance from trees.
August 17th
We report: by the glassy sea, where the wind does not blow, the sun grabs us in its searing claws and does not let go. On the winding coast path, we carefully pick blackberries amongst the thorns, and they are warm in our mouth. We feel the back of our neck reddening.
August 16th
We report in the shade of this day, still warm, still a heartbeat there. We forgot to do many of the things we had set out to do, we missed a lot of the clouds, we opened doors and never closed any of them. None of it waited for us to come back, but we get to try again tomorrow.
August 15th
We report: we have been sleeping under the stars for a few days, trying to see the Perseids, but as it happens, we mostly got dew-sodden sleeping bags, mosquito bites, and a constant feeling of exhaustion. Now that the peak has gone, we hope our expert’s passion will relent.
August 14th
We report on a stormy morning: we had been expecting this weather last night, or even yesterday afternoon, but it came late. We were still waiting for it. The first bit of thunder is long, uninterrupted, like a drum roll. It is still far away; we can wait a little longer.
August 13th
We report: the train station was especially crowded this morning, but we still found fold-up seats on board, side by side with our expert. The windows are cracked open, and the sound of the tracks is incredibly loud, yet the rhythm of it, and the vibrations are somehow soothing.
August 12th
We report in the gathering of night clouds: summer heat has returned in the past few days, unremitting, hazy. Every bit of breeze that comes to move it along feels magical, so when the wind rises tonight, it takes at least a few sneezes from our expert before we go home.
August 11th
We report: the stars show up amidst the clouds like precious stones in a velvet jewellery case, a cracked geode. They twinkle and shift in colour with the wind, and we cannot see the constellations they belong to, but they seem important and special enough on their own.
August 10th
We report in the worn out afternoon, around the same time as the day before. After everything, the churning, tearing and whirling of the clouds, it comes back to this: tired blue and faded light filtered through the dust and the damp that live in the sky. We breathe through it.
August 9th
We report: we are reaching the end of the afternoon, and the weather has not been decided today. We have been witnessing a back and forth, some of the clouds dissipating as others are building up. There is static electricity in the air, and we get a jolt when we touch our expert.
August 8th
We report yet another iteration of a classic summer scrape: on a hot night when the heavy air keeps us awake, we open our window. In the morning, the cold, humid air leeches all the warmth away, waking us up. We grouse as we go to close it, but the smell of dawn is a joy.
August 7th
We report in the light of a waxing gibbous moon, a grand two percent short of full. Our expert is complaining about the ongoing attacks of mosquitoes, but they are the one who suggested this moongazing spot. Up here, the wind rattles the seedheads in the tall grass.
August 6th
We report on a day when the cloud cover is thick, has not budged all day; yet the sunshine has found a way down here. When we stand still, we hear the summer insects living their summer lives, even on this windy, cloudy day. The crickets jump in front of our feet.
August 5th
We report: it does not always feel very right, naming clouds. Sometimes, it seems inadequate, not to mention a hardship, to point at a mirage, and to call it out in its most transient, liminal form. The words are never enough to define what is never static, always ephemeral.