And I have a small confession. The Sebald quote that opens this essay is only a fragment of his original sentence. It continues (and indeed I purposefully cut it in half for my own purposes as all writers do with the texts of others, quoting, misquoting, dragging into new contexts) and combines his own moment of worldly reflection upon a mystery observed through a window, with a speculation on a literary predecessor for whom Sebald holds a distinct fascination and with whom he holds a common burden of interest (and for whom a vapour trail, he surmises, would also be a mystery)—his sentence continues:

     [F]or Thomas Browne too, who saw our world as no more than a shadow image of another far beyond. In his thinking and writing he therefore sought to look upon earthly existence from the things that were closest to him to the spheres of the universe, with the eye of an outsider, one might even say of the creator. His only means of achieving the sublime heights that this endeavour required was a parlous loftiness in his language. (18-19)