Tag: opacarophile

🌥️🌎🎨🌦️ Gaia, the Artist 🌥️🌎🎨🌦️

🌦️🌎🌥️ Pleasures of a Pluviophile 🌦️🌎🌥️

The clouds were beautiful on this summer day, and though I had a row of deadlines to meet, I took off cloud gazing. As I walked towards my regular haunt admiring the riverbed nearby, I felt a few plops of satisfying raindrops.

Raindrops in July – even the sparsest of sprinklings – is a blessing. I took my time, strolling and savoring every drop on my face. The pleasures of being a pluviophile in the Bay Area means that, that part of me only gets to come out and play rarely.

By evening, the clouds could scatter and be gone. The next day was forecasted to be scorching. And yet, I had no option but to turn back and take care of my work, instead of doing what the avocets and bluebirds were doing. Swooping and swaying to the mild breeze and enjoying the weather.

🌥️ 🌥️ 🌥️ Is there a task more important than cloud-gazing? 🌥️ 🌥️ 🌥️

Duty beckons. Life is earnest. I tried telling myself. But it was no use – how could there be anything more important than cloud-gazing? I wonder.

When I have a classroom, I shall have a marvelous lesson on clouds, replete with cloud-poetry, art, and a science lesson, on beautiful cloudy days. Cirrus, cumulonimbus, cumulus, stratocumulus. The poetry writes itself, the paintbrush yearns, and the moisture droplets coalesce, weigh into Earth without pressing down, and all of it is science and magic.

I went home, and finished up my tasks in a tearing hurry so I could step out for sunset again, all the while praying that the clouds would still be there in the evening. They were. You see? The summer thus far has had its share of sunsets with not a speck of a cloud. I know because I gaze longingly for clouds every time I step out at sunset.

🌥️🌎🎨🌦️ An Evening on Earth  🌥️🌎🎨🌦️

I sighed a gusty sigh as I saw the beautiful fluffy cirrus clouds on the horizon. No deadline was going to keep me from this sunset now. The birds chirped in agreement and the breeze swirled its approval of my decision. So, this time, I took my time. I savored every streak: every elegant swirl of grey, every blushing splash of pink, watched it turn into a brilliant orange, and then bloom into purple.

I watched the diamonds of the evening twinkle from in between the clouds.

I watched the planets shine, and hours later, the stars sparkle and tease. If I could send a snippet of this to fellow beings on other planets, I would. For what greater magic is there than the birds flying home, the crickets chirping their evening greeting, the California poppies slowly closing their petals as though trapping that last drop of golden light in them, and the deer stopping to gaze at a being admiring a sunset?

An Evening on Earth.

Sunrises and Sunsets: An Opacarophile’s Notes of Magic

Every time we go on vacation, I proclaim proudly the first night, “I am going to go for a sunrise walk in the morning. Do not look for me!”

It is old hat by now. The children and the husband exchange amused looks and say, “Sure! Of course!” Followed by a chortle of such mirth that it should offend me. But vacations and all that – I let it slide. You see? I am rather a slow starter in the mornings. The caffeine tries, the shower tries, the folks around me try. But it takes a good hour or so before the spirit can rise and shine and birds chirping can become song to my ears and all that.

This time though, I surprised everyone including myself.

I set off on my sunrise, sunset and starry strolls every day I was there. It was marvelous – one morning, I sat trying to discern all the hues and colors in the sunrise, the shapes of the clouds, the fast disappearing mists that were clinging not a moment ago, making way for the humid day ahead of us.

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I could hear my heart rise in song without emitting a single chirp – trying to keep in tune with the little palm warblers, and the mynahs reminding me of a silly rhyme we would chant as school children, giggling ourselves silly every time.

One for success

Two for a toy

Three for a boy (giggle, giggle)

Four for a girl (giggle, giggle)

Five for a letter (we were in a boarding school)

Six for something (can’t remember)

Seven for a secret (Secret Seven By Enid Blyton must’ve inspired that one!)

And on and on, it would go.

I smiled thinking of that rhyme – something I hadn’t chanted in three decades, and yet, it came to me that morning looking at the little birds hopping about the island. The brain really is marvelous. Scents, images, words, phrases can all evoke associative memory – it truly is powerful.

Taking in the slow way in which the island is drenched in its beauty, I walked back to our cozy lodgings, feeling very smug, and proclaiming that all those who missed the sunrise .. well, missed the sunrise.

“The sun will rise again tomorrow, Mother.” the children chorused looking gobsmacked that I had taken a sunrise stroll. 

I somehow managed a sunrise stroll every day that we were there. On the last day, the husband joined me, and the island, to show us how special that was, even greeted us with a rainbow by the Buddha statue overlooking the ocean.

We were quiet for sometime wondering how a simple play of light and moisture can produce something as beautiful as that. Even the birds seemed to have fallen silent. Then the birds chirped, and the husband chattered again. 

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An opacarophile is a lover of sunrises and sunsets

A solist is one who loves events of the sun (sunrise, sunset, eclipse) etc

A heliophile is who loves the sun

A photophile is a lover of light

I feel the importance of this quote – for both sunset and sunrises

“Never waste any amount of time doing anything important when there is a sunset outside that you should be sitting under.” – C Joybell.C

🌈Irisophiles?🌈

February is really the month of Love. Not just because of Valentine’s Day, but the rainbows!

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February has been the month of rainbows – at least here in the Bay Area. Even if we know the Science behind rainbows, they are special. We’d glance outside, and see the sun peeking out after the rains, and I’d run to see if the magic is there. That in itself is surely magical.

While there are many words to describe the love of sunsets, clouds, starry skies, the sun, the moon, eclipses, forests, rain, thunder and lightning, there isn’t really a word to describe the love of rainbows. No one word to capture the soaring of the heart when it spots the multi colored ring of the Earth’s horizons. The squealing of the young and the old as they charge outside to catch the magical light of this beautiful universe. Imagining how marvelous it must look to hummingbirds and those who can see a larger spectrum of light.

Rainbow Tales

Of course rainbows have enamored humankind for centuries. 

🌈I can’t help thinking of the silly fable about the fox marrying the crow and throwing the garland up in the sky, and that is how a rainbow is formed, every time we spot one. 

👰Greek myths have a goddess, Iris, who is both a messenger of the gods and a personification of the rainbow. In Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series, the demigods are able to use drachmas to communicate with the gods through a rainbow.

🍀The Irish, of course, have a quirky tale about finding gold at the end of the rainbow.

That is why I was this surprised at not being able to easily find a word for a lover of rainbows in a world filled with them.

Should we call ourselves Irisophiles?

🌇Opacarophile: lover of sunset

🎨Chromatophile – a lover of colors

⚡Ceraunophile – a lover of thunder and lightning

🌩️Nephophile – a lover of clouds

☀️Heliophile – a lover of the sun

🌜Selenophile – a lover of the moon

🤽Limnophile – a lover of lakes

🕯️Photophile – a lover of natural light

🌧️Pluviophile – a lover of rain

🌊Thalassophile -a lover of the sea and oceans

🌳Nemophile – a lover of forests

💛Xanthophile – a lover of the color yellow

Here are a list of words to engage any nature-o-philes:

Words for lover of Nature and Weather

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What do you think? Should the lover of rainbows be called an Irisophile. Or what other words would you suggest?