clouds

In Difference and Repetition, Gilles Deleuze talks about how repetition opposes generality, rather than reinforcing it:

“Repetition as a conduct and as a point of view concerns non-exchangeable and non-substitutable singularities.”

If I have a 50-pound bag of small white rocks, that’s a lot of rocks. I buy the bag of rocks because I want them all to look the same, and they do. But as I start sorting through them, looking for the perfect rock, I realize how singular each one is, even though they are all made of the same basic crystalline structure.

I’m looking for a rock to throw. I don’t even have a target in mind–I just like to throw rocks–so my action is not about the result, but about the process: the combination of the rock’s form, my body’s mechanics, and the planet’s gravity. No one I know throws just one rock. Because even after the perfect throw, there is the possibility of another, completely different throw that will be just as perfect.

Clouds are a much more elegant illustration of this concept. Ceaselessly repetitive. Unfailingly unique. Anti-generality. So are we.