Weekly Skylights (Sept. 14): The Tripod Looks to the Clouds

Joey Cifelli ’23

A&E Editor

There are shadows plastered against the wall of your bedroom. The small light in the corner, a miniature snowman holding a single bulb of frosted glass. Warm light rolls off the bulb and forms the dark shadows, the heavy shadows. They sink into the cracks and corners of your bedroom. Outside is the waxing gibbous moon. You can see it through your blinds, cut into little strips. And through the blinds filters in the moonlight. It’s piercing and weightless, and the shadows that spread away from the places it touches are smaller, and they lie on the smooth parts of the wall like lazy moths, flapping once or twice. The streetlamp on the curb is there, like always. You feel the battered old light’s humming and occasional creaks. The light that makes its way through the windows is electric and yellow, washing over your bedroom like a coat of lacquer. You watch from your covers, thinking, and after some time you begin to drift off into sleep, your head filled with kaleidoscopes and emptiness. 9.2/10.

“What do you think of the colors?” the purple one said, “looks a little sparse to me, frankly. Too much blue. Too much white.” They leaned back into the sofa. “It doesn’t have anything to say. You’ve got to say something with it, otherwise there’s no point.” The pink one thought for a second. Then they said, 

“I think they’ve been chosen well. Looks at the patterns, for example. They look natural, but there’s a lot of thought put into them. I’m impressed. I think the point is that you don’t need so many colors.” The pink one sipped something from a cup and took a bite of something else. “Plush-mmfph, exshcuse me,” the pink one said, full of crumbs, “plus there’re those green bits at the edges. That definitely adds.”

“Suit yourself,” the purple one sighed. They checked off a box on their clipboard and piloted the saucer away from the Earth. 7.4/10.

Almost always, I try to get some trees in the bottom or the sides of these photos. I think they add some stability and can be a pleasant textural and coloral contrast to the sky. Usually they stay on the fringes. I’ve been looking at this photo for a while now, however, and I am enjoying the mound of tree rising out of the center. The image feels so spacious now that the typical borders are gone. It’s like the slope of the leaves are pushing the sky outward, sort of splitting your vision off to the sides rather than drawing it toward the center. This probably sounds like I’m fawning over nothing, but for all the shifting of the sky, the format on this end hasn’t changed in a very long time. Here’s to trying new things. 7.8/10.

ATTENTION. ATTENTION. THIS IS A PUBLIC BROADCAST: Attention citizens, this is a public broadcast. There is a chameleon hiding in the air. I repeat, there is a chameleon hiding in the air. What you see above you is the distress pattern of the chameleon. Beware the aerial super-predator. Beware. Do not engage the chameleon hiding in the air. Any deaths caused by engaging with the chameleon will not be eligible for tax deduction. You have been warned. This concludes the public broadcast. Your performance has been rated: 7.2/10. ATTENTION. THE PUBLIC BROADCAST HAS ENDED. RESUME ACTIVITIES. BEWARE. BEWARE.