At the end of the world, where the winds all end up, there's a giant little boy who eats all the clouds. With his mouth wipe open in a hungry grin and his oversized knife and fork in his chubby hands, he shovels large chunks down his throat into his bottomless gut. He seems friendly enough, though he never talks (as his mouth is always full). He seems content to just sit and eat, if you can call content such a voracious appetite, never satiated or satisfied. Scientists study all of this with great dismay, shocked at how wrong they had been about so many things. Parents line the fences and, peering past the signs that warn, "Don't Approach the Boy," they teach their children how the world works. "This is where the clouds go, children." "And where do they come from, mother?" "From evaporation and condensation!" screams a scientist, all red in the face. The giant boy hacks off a massive hunk of cumulus with his knife and, spearing it with his fork, stuffs it into his happy mouth. All the winds blow to this giant boy, bringing him clouds to eat, here at the end of the world.
I think Texas, at least where I live, inspires ideas about clouds and wind and sky. It's everywhere out here this time of year. We're covered in sky. Clouds grow on trees around here. Most people associate trees with other places, but some places have so many trees that you never get the sense of them, can't see the tree for the forest, you might say. Here, in this part of Texas, a tree is a solitary thing. It has a shape and a choreography. Every tree here has a different personality and a different voice and a different political philosophy. Most lean to the left, but not your left, my left. Left is relative, after all. What was I talking about? I think the wind has blown all my thoughts away into the clouds. There certainly are a lot of them around here, winds and clouds, I mean. I wonder where they're all going to in such a hurry?
One day, when we run out of clouds, the cloud boy will become angry. In his hungry rage the world will be destroyed. It will happen on a clear and lovely day, without a cloud in the sky.
Hello, friends. How are you today?
Later. Love.
