Shocking Shadows

The sky today is completely cloud-covered. No visible rays of sunlight are reaching the grass or trees or brick pathways. The patchiness and varied thickness of the cloud cover however allows for areas where the sunlight does manage to make those thinner, whispier clouds glow with intense white light that is difficult to look at for a long time. However, that white light is contained within the cloud barrier and does not reach the ground.

The visibility of the trees, grass, and pathways is still really good despite the lack of intense, direct sunlight. Additionally there are still some shadows cast by the trees, indicating that shadows can be cast even with little to no direct sunlight. Beneath the left tree, a soft-edged, faint shadow stretches across the grass to the left of the trunk. The trunk of the right tree appears to be sitting in a shadowy pool; the grass around the base of the tree is a darker green, a browner green, than the rest of the lawn. This pool of shadow spans the entire length of the tree’s branches, mirroring them.

Now that I’m looking more closely, I think the shadow being cast beneath the left tree does not belong to the left tree at all. Based on where the sun should be sitting at this time in the afternoon, I believe that the shadow is being cast by a small tree situated to the left of the larger tree (out of view in my picitures). When the direct light is less intense, when you can’t exactly tell where the main light source is coming from, it is difficult to understand the placement of shadows. It’s difficult to understand how these shadows exist at all with such little direct sunlight. But there they are. I would have guessed from just looking at the sky today that there would be NO shadows at all. But I would have been wrong.

I feel nervous. Antsy. Anxious. Like something is brewing. Something is going to happen. This patchwork of glowing white, pale gray, and darker gray clouds in the sky is foreboding, as if the sky had at one point glowed completely with sunlight but then was taken over by the darker clouds.