I often sit and stare at the sky, watching the clouds drift and dissolve in silence. Bugs
furrow through the grass. Pools of shadow sift light. Branches murmur in the wind. Now and then, people cross on sidewalks, their soft strides pacing conversations as they pass away. Sometimes they wave.
Right now, I’m doing the same: sitting under my favorite tree on campus, looking at the brick buildings strapped to the ground, the drunken sky a whirl of cirrus and cumulous flooding the blue above. It’s summer and the quad is quiet and still–almost deserted. The buildings slumber, their windows dark, their doors closed.
Normally I feel lonesome in the slow trickle of strangers and the empty hours before me. I do today. But something deeper always opens in such moments, as if it requires the sun-laced stillness of an empty afternoon.
Backyard Philosophy 