Cloud gazing a ballast to the neurosis of daily life

In the middle of the noise and fury of social media, CloudSpotting & SkySpotting Singapore is a place of wholesome refuge.

This Facebook group for cloud and sky enthusiasts was born amid the pandemic, in mid-2020, and now has about 55,500 members.

Every day, there are new vistas to admire - be it photos of wispy cirrus clouds, rippling rows of altocumulus or fair-weather puffs. The group is full of good cheer, the sort you find among people who wish their friends "Good Morning" on WhatsApp daily.

As a member myself, I've derived much solace from these photos, as well as in spotting clouds with my own eyes.

During the pandemic, one of the best things for my mood has been the large square of sky outside the window of my Housing Board flat in Pasir Ris. I don't live in a high-rise unit, but the lack of tall buildings near the airport has left me a decent view of the sky.

Working from home, I've found there to be something deeply consoling about tilting my head upwards to look at the clouds.

They inspire calm and wonder, but best of all, they are vast, indifferent and a ballast to the neurosis of modern life.

I have lost count of the number of times a view of the clouds - seen, in my case, through the grid of window grilles - has pulled me out of a funk because it reminds me that there is something bigger than me and my problems.

A big proponent of cloud-watching is Mr Gavin Pretor-Pinney, a British graphic designer who founded the Cloud Appreciation Society in 2004. Members of this online forum come from all around the world, and number in the tens of thousands. They bond over photos, videos, poems and art related to clouds.

Clouds, in Mr Pretor-Pinney's opinion, are underappreciated. Many people don't realise their beauty, while others associate them with doom and gloom or absurd fantasies. See expressions such as "clouds on the horizon", "having one's head in the clouds", and "living in cloud cuckoo land".

"We believe that clouds are unjustly maligned and that life would be immeasurably poorer without them," asserts the Cloud Appreciation Society's manifesto.

Joni Mitchell sings in her 1960s song Both Sides, Now: "I've looked at clouds from both sides now/ From up and down and still somehow/ It's cloud illusions I recall/ I really don't know clouds at all".

Who knows clouds at all? These nebulous shapeshifters (regarded as auspicious motifs in Chinese culture) have long held a certain appeal because of their mystique.

Just look at names such as Cloud City (Star Wars), Cloud Forest (Gardens by the Bay) and Yun Ding (the Chinese name for Genting literally means "roof of clouds").

The closest I ever got to the clouds - with my feet still planted on terra firma - was during a month I spent in Kathmandu, Nepal, several years ago during the monsoon season.

A day trip from the city to the hilly nearby town of Nagarkot, about 2km above sea level, gave me and a friend the chance to quite literally walk with our heads in the clouds.

Back in Kathmandu, the clouds continued to work their beguiling magic, like mirages in the desert. On one of the clearer days, I suspected I had caught a glimpse of a snow-capped Himalayan peak. Or it could have just been an oddly shaped cloud.

Clouds also captured my imagination when I was in primary school, because in Chinese, there is a phrase, "gu ren yun", which means "as the ancients say...".

"Yun", which is used as a byword for "say" here, is more commonly used to mean "cloud".

We used this phrase in our school compositions when we wanted to impress our teachers with flowery expressions.

To give one hackneyed example: "Gu ren yun: yi cun guang yin yi cun jin, cun jin nan mai cun guang yin." ("As the ancients say: It is hard to buy an inch of time with an inch of gold.")

I would hear this and imagine the words of the proverb travelling on a cloud - like the mythical Monkey God on his "somersault cloud" that carried him 54,000km in a single leap.

Since clouds are so mysterious, it can be fun to try to pin them down.

I am fascinated by their etymologies: alto, as in altocumulus, means "high", while cumulus refers to a heap or pile - think "accumulate". A cirrus is a "curl", and a nimbus a rainstorm or cloud.

Dutch artist Berndnaut Smilde, meanwhile, has created miniature clouds in indoor spaces such as museums.

These ephemeral displays, which are captured in photos and created using smoke machines, last only a few seconds.

"Clouds are quite universal," an article in Wired magazine quotes him as saying.

"Everyone can relate to them, but by putting them indoors you kind of change the context. It can become strange or even threatening. They can stand in for the divine, but also for misfortune."

Maybe cloud-watching isn't as fluffy as it sounds.

Mr Pretor-Pinney, in an article for American news site CNN, makes a case for this carefree pastime: "The digital age conspires to make us feel busier than ever. Cloudspotting, by contrast, is an activity that legitimises doing nothing."

The Dutch have a word, "niksen", which refers to the act of purposefully doing nothing. It has been explored as a way of reducing stress and tackling burnout. There is also the Norwegian penchant for "slow television", where people spend hours watching a broadcast of relatively ordinary scenes such as a view from a moving train.

Perhaps Singapore could take a leaf out of their book.

We set our children, early in life, on the hamster wheel of exams, classes and "enrichment", followed by more years of hoop-jumping in tertiary education and the workplace.

Surely, in the middle of all this busyness, it would be better for our health (and creativity) if we had more time to be "idle" - to feel bored, and just daydream.

One good way to not lose our grip on ourselves might, somewhat paradoxically, be to spend more time with our heads in the clouds.

Best of all - it can be done anywhere you can see the sky, and it's free.