June 28, 2025

Good morning!

It’s Saturday. Yesterday afternoon, I was sitting on the porch thinking deep thoughts about nothing in particular when I noticed a long, feather-like cloud forming in the otherwise clear and cloudless sky.

There was something strange at the end of the cloud, a hint of red perhaps? Slowly the red widened, and then more colors appeared, until this long wisp of a cloud was filled with pastel hues.

I was looking at cloud iridescence, an atmospheric phenomenon that’s about as rare as a four-leaf clover. It involves diffraction and droplets and crystals and angles and wavelengths and other things that are far too complicated for this early in the morning. But I prefer to think of cloud iridescence and rainbows as x-rays of sunlight. They reveal a skeletal structure composed entirely of color.

“Let me, O let me bathe my soul in colours; let me swallow the sunset and drink the rainbow.”

—Khalil Gibran

Onwards,

Clara