Reports From Unknown Places

We report late in the morning: the weather is perfectly typical today, temperatures not one degree above or below the maximum and minimum average for the season. We find genuine and profound thrill in this medium, mediocre, conventional, common, classic bit of normality.

We report: It is jarringly sunny today, to the point we cannot help but bring it up in all our conversations. We are standing downwind to a rapeseed field, and the flowers’ sticky smell is permeating the air. It remains in the back of our nose when we walk away.

We report during the half hour in the evening when birds cannot help but sing. Recently, a few more species have joined the sparrows that kept on chirping through winter. We can only really pick out the blackbirds in the mix. It gets late, and dark, and the birds do not quiet.

We report: new moon on a clear night. Since the last time we saw the stars like this, a lot has changed. Some of them are gone, new ones have appeared. We ought to remember what spring constellations look like, but we barely do. It is too cold to try and jog our memory tonight.

We report in between rolling waves: it is difficult to tell the difference between rain and ocean spray. Our expert is walking in front of us, and we cannot make out a word they say. There is all around enough chaos that we eventually yield to the weather, and head back home.

We report: every year, we look at March closely with the hope of understanding what it is. It never makes sense the way we want it to; it is never another month of winter, nor is it ever really the first month of spring. We have to be here each day, and try to make it ours.

We report this morning: our expert was up early looking at mysterious graphs and maps that we could not figure out. They tell us that they are tracking space weather. We watch the sun rise, struggling to walk straight in the wind, and we think we have enough weather down here.

We report: our expert, who inexplicably owns several sets of keys, is trying to find their house key in the dark. We look up while we wait. Somehow, the sky is never as lovely of a sight as when we see it in a stolen moment. We lag behind even as the door is opening.

We report in troubled waters: the crashing waves of the sky make no sound, but they are no less impressive to the eye. We always expect the whole world to stop when the clouds reach a certain level of oddity; most of the time, nothing happens. The sky always clears up, too.

We report: mid-March, it still gets properly cold. It is freezing out here, especially when the sun is gone for long stretches of time. The wind is whipping our hair into our eyes while we watch bright green surge out of the ground; a strange colour after all these months.

We report late in the evening, in a pre-sunset kind of situation. It is a consolation sunset that happens when the sky will be too overcast for the genuine sunset, later on. We are not very upset; it is very windy, and we can feel the rain coming on in the weight of the clouds.

We report: the humidity has fallen on us ravenous with the night, and we feel it in the sharp edges of the air (our expert’s nose is very red). There is something a little eerie about this moment; the sky already dark, a few stars out, and yet the clouds are still bright.

We report about a day when the sky was always either almost or completely full of unspun wool. As unspun wool does, it would tangle and catch; the pure white of sunlit clouds always rolled up into the dark greys eventually. All of this, and only a countable amount of raindrops.

We report: no sharp edges on the clouds today, nothing ever very committed or decisive in their movements. We walk alongside a few of them, and it is a leisurely pace. On the way, they repeatedly dissolve and build back up to the same fuzzy shapes, and we never get anywhere.

We report a few minutes after the sun has gone down: the sky has been hazy all day long for some reason. Because of the surprisingly low volume of humidity, our expert thinks this could be dust, or sand suspended in the air. As a result, the sun was sunset orange for a long time.

We report: it is a real, authentic drizzly morning. It is raining just enough for the surface of the water to break. The air is layered with the smell of wet earth, pond water, and whatever is unique to this specific morning. We see something move underneath the duckweed.

We report as the weather turns all the ways it is able to turn. Once again, we got a little too confident in thinking we knew much of anything about the workings of the sky. We think this is always how it goes when the seasons change, and the patterns become unrecognisable.

We report: there is some kind of symphony composing itself in the sky this morning. We can almost hear how it goes just by looking at it, abstract sheet music changing from second to second. It is a little colder than the past few days, and the wind feels bracing.

We report at the end of a strange, warm, sunny day. We spent it attempting to reconcile our idea of an early March day with the lukewarm wind we felt on our face. As the sun is setting, the crisp humidity is swallowing half of the thermometer in one fell swoop.

We report: come March, the moon starts moving out of range of our window, and it becomes a bit more difficult to seek it out. Even then, it is impossible to miss the way the sky becomes brighter and brighter every night in its waxing. Tonight, we lean far over the windowsill.