Weekly Skylights: The Tripod Looks to the Clouds (Mar. 9)

Joey Cifelli ’23

A&E Editor

When I see puffy layers in the sky like today, I think of a recipe for homemade, down-to-earth biscuits. The kind that’s sturdy enough to handle a rough mashing into porcelain, so that you can collect every last drop of gravy. These are homebuilder’s clouds, made for rough and tumble adventures. They’ll sit there cooling in the sky while you run through the forest chasing a leprechaun or sidle up to a freight train and grab on as it leaves the yard for the great unknown. In biscuits, the best ones come from the first pass of the dough cutter or punch. The remaining scrap can be rerolled and punched again, but they’ll never puff as high or split so cleanly. Some people don’t even use it. What happens to that forgotten dough, laying at the bottom of the garbage, soggy and spoiled? What happens when doughs die? Fluffy spirits in the sky. 8.0/10.

For the fish that glances past the ocean’s rippling surface and sees the sky on a day like today, what does it see? An ocean so shallow it stays light and blue forever. Substance so thin it can’t hold a fish at all. Does it wonder, where does the water go at night? The weightless blues poured out on the ground to reveal another body better defined by absence than presence. Another ocean infinitely deeper and darker than its own. Does the hunger ever cease, for predator and prey, just for a moment, while they gaze above and wonder what might be swimming there, beyond the veil, casting a glance back with a starlit eye. 7.4/10.

I wonder how many of us walk around each day wishing that we had said something to someone. That’s vague, so I bet that many of you feel that way. Maybe it’s because I’m sitting here in my room, alone, that thinking about this puts some sadness in my heart. Why are we so afraid to let others know what we feel inside? Don’t we all cherish the moments when we’ve been able to understand one another, or at the very least, know someone’s honest thoughts? I know there are a million billion reasons why we feel that fear, and yet sometimes it seems so simple. I think the world is a better place when we’re able to share our real selves with others. As a parting thought, if you find yourself in the position of wanting to say something nice to someone, go for it! You’re making the world beautiful. 6.8/10.

The snow has been melting on campus for some time now. Each day when I walk by the shrinking piles I see them get a little bit dirtier. It’s hard not to feel a tiny bit of melancholy at that, when the fresh stuff is shockingly clean and smooth. But dirty snow is beautiful in its own right. There’s texture in the grains of minerals and swaths of mud that end up splattered on the surface. The contrast between snow and dirt is so high it exerts an ocular gravity that forces you to observe it. That is a real fact. Another real fact: jumping on ice to see if it will break is humanity’s oldest form of gambling. Roll the dice this week everyone! 7.7/10.