Jack came across a photo of Jessica Simpson recently, on her way into or out of some hotspot: she was clutching a copy of The Book of Clouds, a canonical work by Jack’s old friend Dr. John Day — the Cloudman, as he’s known. Turns out Ashlee’s big sister is planning a book of her own cloud photography — combining sky-snaps with extracts from her journal. “If Jessica Simpson begins to talk about the sky . . .”
And a part of him, too, is still reeling under that first revelation — the moment when the sky announced itself to him. Grace is known to have its own temporal economy, but still — it’s only human to wonder about the time wasted.
“That’s what I can’t get over,” says Jack. “It was ragingly, screamingly present for 49 years before I even looked at it. It was there all the time! Where the fuck was I?”
James Parker can be reached hovering just shy of Cloud 9, or at jparker@thephoenix.com.
Cloud quiz answers: 1. High Stratocumulus, 2. Altocumulus, 3. Stratocumulus, 4. Cumulus of Fair Weather, 5. Cirrus, 6. More Cirrus, 7. Altocumulus, 8. Swelling Cumulus, 9. Still more Cumulus
