The clouds at sunrise on Wednesday morning were incredible (above)--even through a double layer of my not-to-clean plastic window. What you are mostly seeing here of altocumulus clouds--a mid-level cloud that hangs out between 6,500 ft. and 18,000 ft. But of course these aren't just altocumulus. They are altocumulus stratiformis opacus duplicatus. They are stratiformis because they cover a large area (as far as my eye could see here); they are opacus because they blocked the sun; and they are duplicatus because just below them--and out of the photograph because we hadn't hit cruising altitude yet--is a parallel layer of these altocumulus clouds.
   What I experienced (but most of my sleeping-upright-with-their-mouths-open family did not) were the few moments where our plane flew in between the two layers. It was stunning and surreal and made more so by the fact that at the space where the clouds seemed to meet on the horizon (the vanishing point) was suffused with orange light of the sunrise.
  It was like flying inside a grilled-cheese sandwich. The bread represents the two parallel layers of  clouds;  the orange cheese, the sunlight; the plane, a small piece of aluminum foil that accidentally got in the cheese.
   So it's not poetic, but the image works for me. I hope you never look at a grilled-cheese sandwich the same. 
    The Friday after Thanksgiving, I was planning to head into D.C. to see an exhibit at the Corcoran Gallery of Art called Spencher Finch: My Business with the Cloud. I had read a review of the exhibit by this American artist/photographer/collagist and was intrigued by the photograph (above) of Passing Cloud (2010) I had seen in a magazine review.