And sometimes the wind is too loud, ideas disperse in high grey clouds, rain is sparse, best to let go. Time scatters, backward, forward, degrees of freedom lose meaning.
The ability to reconnoiter ambiguity – a measure of greatness, they say. No one is where they were, nor where they are going. Everyone lives in ambiguity, but never believe it until something big breaks through. It is present in every indrawn breath.
To a greater, or lesser degree, Windy people are possessed by ambiguity. Yearned for, shied from, flirted, skirted and full-out pursuit. No time for the furniture of life.
But oftentimes the wind is in the furniture, the grass, the work – a transit of energy – passing just beneath the surface of almost everything. Readily seen, but not with the eyes. You have to be there when and where the word drops out, where idea makes landfall, spreading so fast in all directions that the mind races off where the mouth is left to stammer.
To find those lifting, shifting, sinking places, roiling novelty – good or bad – to “go with the flow,” Windy people are like that.
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Last November I watched a crow against an altocumulous background. Shifty day, winds higher up buffeted the crow off its southward path in the sky. It maintained a general direction, struggling, past my visual horizon. I wondered about destinations, whether it matters precisely where you land, as long as you get there.
Come April, I watched another crow, its due southwest path unfettered by opacity or breeze, an arrow of time finding its way. As this one too passed beyond my sight, I considered the importance of precision, of that right connection, clear, unhampered.
Conditions, intent, timing. A slope, a curve of the universe. Arbiters of this sphere.
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A single swan rode the water, usually there are more.
The “Ugly Duckling” comes to mind, off-told tale of self-discovery from Hans Christian Anderson.
A classic motif – unknown, undiscovered soul, suffers wandering hardship until the moment of recognition that everything needed was within, waiting. Vital bridging between the yearned for external image and the internal gift within.
But which came first? The duckling or the egg?
It is easy to identify with the outcast, the wandering duck. Disenfranchisement is commonplace. Recognition of beauty, of the swan, comes from perseverance, courage. A hero’s journey of the avian world.
Misalignment of an avenue into the world, a swan in duck’s clothing, square peg, round hole, that sort of thing. Life energy stifled, the suffering of fluid sorrow that ever comments, ever works upon the problem of alignment.
So which came first? Duckling or egg – which is original?
Are the personal travails of the duckling unique? Did recognition of destiny rise from difficulty, or did it appear as image, the reflection of what was, and what once more shall be?
The egg, an embryonic pattern left behind by a larger world. It is a pattern that revisits the duckling throughout its misery, a pattern for which he yearns, but cannot articulate why.
It is to the egg, to the beautiful yearned-for birds, that the duckling later submits, accepting annihilation, and finding instead sanctuary, Home. The correspondence between original pattern and personal hardship becomes life-giving, rather than life-taking. And it is only secondarily that the duckling is astonished by his stately image, affirmation of his individual place in the world. The collective pattern left in the egg, returns in the personal image.
One swan, an oft-told tale.
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Sunlight rolls through shadow on the ball field. It is coming my way. Apollonian consciousness dramatically overtaking dimmed turf. Pale shadows become bold in brighter light, it makes me uneasy.
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The water under the bridge glittered like diamonds this morning. Heaven in earth.
The view coming over the rise, just before driving the bridge, breathtaking. Moving light embanked. With the bridge, a clean intersection of fluid and structure. Dividing the landscape, before and after, now and then. By extension river and bridge go on forever, incessant division coupling with moments of brilliance.
Water under the bridge glittered like diamonds.
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$300.00…an hour. The going rate of a good divorce attorney in my town.
If money be the medium of energy exchange in our culture, we can – over time – tally the cost of freedom, the price of consciousness extracted from decades spent plying arid, frozen ground once called marriage.
The profligate habits of X. a partner I married years ago left me with total life savings of $14,500. Embarrassed? I am humiliated. But it won’t change anything.
So after today, retainer and fee, $11,340. That’s it folks. Poverty is unquestioned, but can she escape X for even that? Will psychological riches gained through brutal self-reflection – years spent tortuously balancing pain and hope – require a broken hearth and home in the end?
What price consciousness? Stay tuned, the clock is ticking…
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Dysphonia has me again. Laryngitis. Voice, aural expression reduced to a whisper. Walking into an office, and known to be a gregarious sort, I was hailed with a hearty “hello,” today. The uneven squeak representing my intended response gave great merriment, to myself included.
How often do our words come out differently than expected, even with our best intentions? When misunderstanding, not merriment, holds sway.
Pivotal moments of human interaction turn on finely grained cues – tone, a word too many, two words too few, a weightless pause. Words are fickle tools, especially in an uncertain voice.
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Walking Man spoke today.
Walking Man is part of a small subculture of people who regularly walk my neighborhood on any given day. I belong to that crew, as do my children, by extension.
It surprises me, from time to time, when I meet people who know me, yet we’ve never met. “I see you walking,” they say. I ask if they are out in their yards, and I have somehow missed them. “No, from the window,” they say. Ever sociable, I encourage them to come out when I walk by, but we both know they won’t.
Walking Man moves from north to south and back, I am circuitous myself. Found at almost any time of the day, young man, late teens, moves with loping gait, eyes straight ahead, no expression, no words, irritates the gentry by cutting across their lawns. Rarely out after dusk.
I cross paths with Walking Man frequently, usually on different sides of the street. It is not for exercise that Walking Man walks, nor for me. His motive I cannot guess, I walk to keep moving – toward something, away from something – each step punctuates a new experience entirely. Process, I guess.
Sunny and cold, Walking Man and I happened to be on the same side of the street this day, going opposite directions. We both said “hello,” and smiled. Walking Man looks younger with a smile. And Walking Man spoke. Punctuation.
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I almost stopped the car. Gusting wind haphazardly first blowing, then slamming, a storm door open and shut. Disconnected, unattended violence in front of a worn grey front door, locked tight.
The springy flexibility of the door long since blown, it controls – admits or denies – nothing. Just a futile, quiet screaming as it flew from one end of its range to the other. Slammed open, slammed shut.
Those in my car saw nothing, I saw a hole in the universe. Sometimes that bothers me.
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