The Morning Commute
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During my 50 mile commute south this morning, I had an interesting thought. Above the freeway due south, I could see faint, long and thin cirrostratus clouds masking the rising sun. And just below it, a big splash of red and blue and green was there as the sun's rays shone thorugh the cloud's ice crystals. It was that kind of intense, iridescent colour you don't see often in nature.

The only place I ever remember seeing it was when I was out in the middle of the South Pacific and we had caught a 45 pound tuna. If you looked at the fish's scales shining in the sun, you could see the exact same intense, iridescent colour.

The sad part was the fish had to die for us to see this. And once the tuna was dead 5 minutes later, the color was gone. Without the life force of the fish, the scales had no special colour.

I got to thinking that maybe there was something up there, in the clouds, that was alive. Maybe there was some being floating around, looking down on me. As I traveled down 280, which weaved its way along the peninsula's hills, there it was right above me, then gone as the road curved east, then back again as 280 curved south. It kept changing and glowing and growing.

The engineer in me said that it was simply the clouds scattering the sun's rays, leaving only the blue and reds and some greens. The poet in me disagreed and argued for something alive being up there, like that fish.

I'd much rather listen to the poet.