“What wouldn’t I give now for a never-changing map of the ever-constant ineffable? To possess, as it were, an atlas of clouds.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

After riding around the city I sat on the platform at the Union Station DART train stop, waiting for the Red train to take me back to Richardson. It was late in the day (I had not brought my lights and had to get home before dark) and the sun was low in the sky. A late afternoon thunderstorm began to explode upward, the rising hot air spreading skyward, fanning out in a semi-circle that covered the sun. Still, the light filtered through, glowing like a fireball over the reflective ridge of the Hyatt Regency Hotel.

Rising cloud over the Hyatt, downtown Dallas, Texas

It was a brief image, an ephemeral phenomenon – the water vapor boiling away as I watched. And then my train arrived.

“To make myself understood and to diminish the distance between us, I called out: “I am an evening cloud too.” They stopped still, evidently taking a good look at me. Then they stretched towards me their fine, transparent, rosy wings. That is how evening clouds greet each other. They had recognized me.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Stories of God: A New Translation