I’m obsessed with clouds. Unlike my family in China, who experienced the initial lock-down in the depth of the winter months, I find myself “sheltered” in an affluent Maryland suburb as the temperature rises to outdoor-friendly degrees. When the staggering numbers of the cases and deaths and the discourses around who is to blame – “China,” according to many, some for better reasons than others – become too much, I step outside to look at the clouds. Such a privilege to have found more time to observe their changing patterns, their capacity to blur and clarify at the same time. As usual, I post pictures of them on social media, tagging them #cloudporn. But somehow in the time of the pandemic, they enable me to see how little I have lost compared to the majority of the world. Sharing them does not resolve the contradiction in my feelings of content and helplessness. Perhaps that’s what necessitates the “porn” categorization. Here, then, is to more cloud porn…