Dear Cloud,

Please be my messanger. Here is the message. It is inscribed on the surface tension of water. (I heard that if you drop water on pennies, the drops will hold pretty tight-- so heres some pennies I'll toss up with the water. Consider it a tip if you hustle fast enough.) How can I personify clouds after a metaphysics class? Only human beings have free will. You, cloud, will have to go as fast as the wind determines.

Whats the message? Who is it for? Well first let me tell you what you will see as you go about your way. You'll travel first down Kingston Pike, a road that streaks like a comet's tail west from downtown Knoxville. Its a lesson in universals, as most stores along the pike is a store one could find anywhere else in the U.S.... even South America and Europe maybe. McDonald's-ness.

And as you go past the long road you'll see little cars like metal scooters that shuffle in definite patterns. My mother and father's house is along the way: a brown geometrical shape on a green lot. The contractors and realators used the word "lot" to describe the space my parents purchased to build. I personally prefer the word plot, but for some reason no one says it any more. "Lot" is the preferred word, Personified Cloud. And is a GPS devise not just, after all, an attempt to personify a cloud? Or to atleast to inhabit a cloud? Since I have seen my parents' house from GoogleEarth, Personified Cloud, I can tell you what you will see. You'll see the driveway. And since you are not frozen in time like Google Earth, you will see the current season laying with the landscape--winter. You might see Frankie's truck parked near by. He is an independent contractor from Cuba who does a lot of work for my parents. Pass by all this, Cloud, pass west to the I40 split towards Chattanooga. Then I75 south.

Soon the Appalachian greenary will yeild to scrubbier varieties of trees. The land flattens out... Which could be expressed in some metaphor about ribbons or folds, or water pooling sideways but why should I bother.

Go south, south, souther still. Theres cities along the way; feel free to check them out. I think they may burn your eyes, as they reflect the heat from the sun, and the light. Mostly the light. Its white like you are. Clouds and city-sun reflections share the universal "white-ness". But if it doesnt hurt you too much to look on, Cloud, you will see toddlers going to class. And Star-Bucks employees smoking on their ten-minute breaks. The clouds from their butts wont make it just yet to join you. You'll see not much. Outside cities, cities like Birmingham, theres the interstate. You can count the roadkill you see, Personified Cloud. I'm sure somebody does. I'm sure its a graph somewhere, so don't worry if you are the worrying type (thats discouraged BTW): the roadkill is being managed. I wrote that in the passive tense so we don't know who is doing the managing. It diffuses the tension that way.

So focus now, not on the two-thirds deer in the margin of I-75: her eyeball reflecting your shape overhead; focus on the horizon. And say a prayer for the dead animal. Prayers are as universal as McDonald's. On the horizan you'll see jets and commercial flights. Like, birds, I think of clouds looking down, but you must look up as well, Personified Cloud. You can look up to the sun , as a mentioned before, and now as night is falling you can look up to the stars (dont be fooled, they are much bigger than you, Cloud, just not right now. They are bigger and smaller than you). Do you have any closer insights to space? When you look up, it must be full of things you do not see. The ozone layer, or other sphere layers that cushion the Earth's raw bulge, for one.

Even further South, you see the city New Orleans. But even before you see it, you hear its noise. The sound spills out chaotically from the West Bank, the Causeway, Frenchmen, like crayon marks scribbled outside lines from a coloring book, even when that kid was trying to be careful (you're welcome for that metaphor, Personified Cloud.) The Monarche butterflies migrating to Mexico from the Northeast skirt around New Orleans. Thier stealy constitutions are limited by their delicate wings... they do not trust their little bodies to make it unpunctured or unsmooshed in that tragic place. No one in New Orleans has seen a butterfly before. But you go there, Cloud. To places with palm trees against red bricks: the vision so startling you forget any other time you've seen a brick before, or a palm frond-- this only counts as the first in history.

Whats the message? Who is it for? Forgive me... I forget.