Homeless in Vancouver: A cloud writ large

Earlier this week, I looked up into the southern sky over Alder Street and thought that I saw sky writing of a sort. But I admit that my judgement may have been clouded by my imagination.

Skywriting is normally understood to be a process of using small aircraft to create giant-sized text messages of few characters high up in the sky where everyone can see them—airplanes as ballpoint pens, with the “ink” being white oil smoke.

What I saw looked more like a hand holding a long-bristled number 8 calligraphy brush (I never worked above a number 4 myself), with a hint of scroll but nothing to show what was being written on it.

Just as well. I probably couldn’t have read it anyways, given that it was definitely being written with a Chinese calligraphy brush.

My, those clouds do get around.