Charles Burchfield, Journals, July 31, 1914

An unobtrusive day.  If one did not purposely take note of weather conditions he would see nothing.

The wind from the north-east has spent itself.  Scarcely a breeze stirring now + a moistened finger grows cold on the south west the quickest.  Sky as much as shows is a which blue.

The clouds today came in two layers.  Next the sky are dappled + pebbled clouds.  Lower down, tho we know they are lower only because we see them pass across the dappled ones above, as they seem as remote, are motley clouds seeming to have no particular characteristics unless that is their characteristic.  They have the appearance of thunderheads, but are too small.

Blue morning glories just withering at noon.

Cicadas heard again this noon.

Nature without wind tends to become stagnant.  The clouds seem unmoving. The air is clogged with a murky haze which is perhaps a compound of dust clouds sent up by a myriad vehicles + the smoke of a thousand factories.  The very sunlight is dimmed as we look at the obscured trees we imagine we can see dust sifting down thru the blue air.

And so too, does life grow sluggish when the winds of idealism + ambition have ceased to blow.

And so the sunset hour is one of dead calm.  The stillness of the air may be noted from a bank of smoke which hangs perfectly motionless like some spectre.  It o’er shadows the air, for I felt something dark was in the air while my back was to it.  And yet the clouds up overhead are visibly moving.  Is it a high air current or do they drift as an object does in a calm sea?  Most of the clouds have vanished those that remain are high + scatters + even they, as twilight deepens, disappear into the sky.  Of what are they made that they thus dissolve. 

The sky is a forget-me-not blue + the clouds an opaque yellow.

Sounds only accentuate the silence.

The oddity about the cricket chorus is that we can never determine its location – peculiar ventriloquent character.  Who is the leader of their orchestra, that they keep such perfect time?

There is rain in the air. The freight trains roar is close at hand.

Charles E. Burchfield,  July 31, 1914