What does it mean to look at clouds? To look at them and just look, letting the impression sink in and the thoughts amble as they please? To sit, stand or lie for a moment, not doing anything in particular, not thinking in any particular direction, just – in the broadest sense of the word – looking?

Similarly: what does it mean to spend time in the company of trees? What do they say with their rustlings and murmurations? What do they whisper as we walk past them, sit under them or touch them?

On that note: what stories do rocks tell us, about things on timescales human and geological? What secret histories can be gleaned from these inanimate – yet enduring – objects, were we just to pay attention?

Jacobus’ book is a very specific book about very unspecific things. To be sure, the subtitle a tree, a rock, a cloud mentions three specific things, but the book is not about these things. It is about the unspecific processes that takes place when we as human subjects behold and confront these things – looking at the sky, listening to the wind, prepondering a giant rock. The subtle sense of self on the one hand and the world at large on the other, and the sublime dialectic between the two.

We all feel this to some extent, sometimes more than others. On particularly shitty days, when things just seem to keep on piling up, it is all we can do: just look at the clouds for a moment and process, until we have recovered enough momentum to carry on. On less stressful days, we might slip into a spell of introspective musings, looking upwards and inwards at the same time. Some days we might even – time permitting – set aside for just being under the sky, doing nothing in particular.

These shared experiences are very much nothing out of the ordinary. Though, these experiences are shared only in the sense that they occur to each and every one of us. They are seldom talked about; indeed, it would be met with mild incomprehension to openly say that the next thing on the agenda is to watch the clouds or listen to trees. For being shared experiences, they are notoriously difficult to share.

Not least in the light of the fact that there is always something else going on; the demands of capitalism and/or the immediate social situation impose themselves, prompting our attention and participation. There always tends to be something more immediate to concern. No time standing around doing nothing.

Jacobus manages to write about these things in very specific ways. Trees, rocks, clouds; these things stand in as representations of the process of subjectively experiencing. In relating to these things, we relate to ourselves. The process wherein we do so is not mechanical or neutral, but rather a subtle web of relating, relationships and associations which eventually find themselves reflected in who we (think we) are. Things never just are; there is always someone in relation.

Traditionally, these things have been the domain of poets, painters and philosophers, and thus it is no surprise that Jacobus draws upon these discourses in her discussions, primarily Wordsworth and Derrida. The gift Jacobus presents to us in the form of this book is a way to relate subjective experience with the thoughts found on paper or canvas. Looking at clouds becomes connected to the world of art and philosophy, like we always knew and suspected it was; and here, in this short book, we can see the connections made plain, available for further ponderance. And further discussion.

It is quite an accomplishment.