Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘wind’

The Spinner

Posted in memory, Reflections on the everyday, The Garden, time, tagged , , on September 26, 2022| Leave a Comment »

About 4’ in height, the garden spinner has three wheels of descending size.  Polyester ribbons affixed to each wheel were once brightly colored.  The flag at the base of the spinner, a stitched red ladybug atop a green leaf, points to the direction of the wind.

For the last 20 years, the spinner has held court in the corner of the summer vegetable garden using the breeze, or the winds blustering through, to proclaim its presence. A gentle breeze moves the largest of the wheels first.  A thunderstorm madly propels all three. 

The spinner delighted young children playing in their sandbox or tending the garden. It gaily provided ornamentation at their high school Open House celebrations.  And it stands now, bereft of color, but still fit, in its garden corner.

The spinner has welcomed and harvested the winds of two decades.  It awakens in the Spring, grows quiet as Summer goes to ground in Autumn, and dreams away the Winter in the garage.

At first glance, it is now a tired old spinner whose day has passed.  Is it an artifact too long held for its memory?  While it enjoyed its sunny days, the bluster that overtook this place blew away its color and its more nimble nature.  Visiting this summer, my oldest remarked on its longevity and rightful place in the garden.  Just now, a puff of air moved its wobbly wheels, as it easily pivoted to reveal the direction of the unseen quality that powers it.

The spinner remains.  As stalwart as the day I assembled its plastic and polyester pieces, it fulfills its purpose to translate what is unseen to the visible world.  Not as pretty, but still a structural, kinetic marvel that defies a date with the landfill.

Things change, and sometimes, things remain.

Read Full Post »

The Wind

Posted in Psycho-Bubbles, Reflections on the everyday, weather, tagged , , on December 12, 2021| Leave a Comment »

From dawn to dusk, strong winds and fleets of rain.

At sunset, the instability blew off. The sky is bright on the western horizon, clouds lit with rusty pink ageing to pewter grey.

On a walk with the dogs, the streets are empty, the very air animated.

The wind is playing where children usually do, rolling balls down the street, pushing over trash cans.

Passing a swing set, the single swing flies high back and forth, ghostly in its trajectory, as if weighted by a child.

I swung a small child in such a swing once.  The child and that swing have long blown away.  The wind is like that.

Read Full Post »

In between

Posted in Nature, Reflections on the everyday, tagged , , on October 2, 2015| Leave a Comment »

On Walkabout at dawn.  The moon leads Venus and one trailing star westward as the sky lightens.

Curious autumn wind stirs still fully-leaved trees.

Ceaseless rushing sound, swirling, piling up, rolling on.

The trees are like ocean waves. I try to hear, what they try to say.

Read Full Post »

Try this at home

Posted in Nature, Psycho-Bubbles, Reflections on the everyday, tagged , , on April 21, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Find the time and space to look out a window.

Twilight grey rain falls lightly enough to dot the window panes.

Through the window, a pond, patterned by rain, ruffled by wind.

Trees downed over winter cleared space, the opening enclosed by newly leafing trees.  Green, green lawn fills window to pond.

A squirrel seeks supper, dun-grey female cardinal does the same.

A piano piece, Comptine d’un autre été, plays in the background, notes rain down.

When you find that place, real or imagined,  I will be there.

Confluence in the splendid, despondent, wholeness.

Never more myself.

It will be good to see you.

Read Full Post »

Persistent

Posted in Nature, Reflections on the everyday, tagged , , on January 9, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Red berries persist on trees standing deep in glistening, blowing snow.

Sunny wind-whipped frost could as easily be ocean spray.

Wave after wave, while we persist.

Read Full Post »

Spring wind

Posted in Nature, Reflections on the everyday, tagged , on March 15, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Spring wind is quixotic, my favorite kind.  Coltishly tossing dry leaves off the ground or moving like a tide through bare trees, it has a curiosity and willingness I admire.

Tuned through objects fixed and transient, spring wind makes its thoughts audible.  A song of springtime.

Full moon upcoming, vernal equinox next week.  Onward.

Read Full Post »

Soul and Shadow

Posted in Nature, Reflections on the everyday, tagged , , on October 31, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Do you see it?  The trees are stirring, shrugging in strong breeze, coloured leaves drift down, only to whip upwards, their journey uncharted.  This realm is browning, rich russets, gold and purple hues spread thickly where the greenwood grows.

 Do you hear it?  The wind has gathered confidence, pulling at homes, across waves, pushing on those who resist.  The gaps in windows and doors give wind voice, easy to believe it is speaking to you.

 Darkness and decay, wind that tears, these things frighten humans, with good reason.  They speak of impermanence, of what seems solid but is not.  Restless landscape, few times speak to the transitory nature of life better than emergence in spring and descent in autumn.

 The Celtic autumn is at an end.  Come October 31, the festival of Samhain (“Sow-in”) celebrates the beginning of the Celtic winter.  With November 1 comes the new Celtic year.  Apropos that winter births the New Year, as all things Celtic begin in the dark.

 There is code in the wind, uniquely translated by each soul, shaped by age, experience, wisdom. Howsoever you cast your eye on that which cannot be articulated creates the image that draws toward you.  You are the world you see—a promise, a gift and a curse—or more simply, what you see is what you get.

 There is no hell as great as that which humans create for themselves right here on earth.  Hell was never the ground of Samhain.

 Do you understand it?  Warmth in the darkness, wildness on the wind, things are as they should be.  What is chaos but creation?  As things end, others begin, impermanence a force to be counted upon, not feared.  Samhain greetings to you and yours.

Read Full Post »

The Wind in the Willows

Posted in Psycho-Bubbles, Reflections on the everyday, tagged on April 21, 2010| Leave a Comment »

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.

Read Full Post »

Cloudy with a chance of…

Posted in Reflections on the everyday, tagged , on January 29, 2010| Leave a Comment »

It’s cold today, the snow is dry and humorless. 16 F, without calculating windchill.

Bitter temperature, wind that bites through any coat? Must be time for a walk.

A vast field of stratocumulous is broken here and there by the solar disk. I cannot help but wander along those edges.

One side of those clouds faces toward the sun – too brilliant to look for long. The other side surveys the passing of life below, a dichotomy familiar to any airplane passenger.

There is sometimes vast space between those two places, up and down. The air traveler can be mesmerized, or terrified, by descent through clouds.

The half-light provided by cloud cover is distinctly different from that of twilight. Cloudy half-light, by reducing brilliant glare, enhances visibility of what is already present. Twilight reduces visibility of what is present, by giving thought to what is coming.

Around the corner and down the street. The wind has frozen my upper extremities while the powdery snow has made quick work of whatever heat my footgear was advertised as holding in. I can only laugh.

Through the air comes the high tinkling sound of a wind chime, like the song of a kachina, arresting, disconnecting, an ornament perfectly forgotten.

The solar disk is on the move and I keep going. Another chime further away, rich, sonorous, infrequent. The rustle of leaves still gripping bare branches keeps time with the wind. This language is one I only half understand. So much talk, so piercing – painful – not for its discord, but for its beauty. The depth of it is killing.

Of stratocumulous, my Field Guide to North American Weather reads, “[s]tratocumulous represent saturation and instability in a shallow layer near the surface of the earth.” That sounds about right.

Read Full Post »