Shapes in the clouds...

When I was a child, my friends and I would often lie in the grass and watch the clouds to see if we could find shapes in them. In the film A Beautiful Mind, there is a scene in which John Nash is on a date with his future wife and he shows her that he can find any shape in the stars. This scene reminds me of my cloud-watching days.

It has occurred to me that clouds are also a form of book, since they can move and form shapes, and these shapes can tell stories. However, to tell stories, someone else (like one of us children, for instance) must project these stories onto the cloud shape. So are the clouds really telling a story, or are we? It's an interesting concept to think about: is the book really telling the story, or is the author telling the story?

Cloud shapes can be interpreted in many ways. In the picture below, for example, I see a polar bear. I asked my roommate what she sees, though, and she said she sees a dog. I think the fact that cloud shapes can have multiple interpretations also qualifies them as a form of book.