Apotheosis

I took this picture from the passenger seat of our moving car yesterday as we drove out to Worcester. I had never seen anything like this in the sky. In the midst of these insanely textured clouds was a perfectly circular opening. It was like a Greco painting in which the portentious clouds heavens open up to admit some worthy soul.

Somehow related, although obscurely, to my apotheosis sightings, is this fantastic thought taken from Hawthorne's "The Custom-House" sketch: "The moment when a man's head drops off is seldom or never, I am inclined to think, precisely the most agreeable of his life."