The storm is out. Out there, everywhere. The birds are tumbling up! Considering the laws of gravity apply to us all, one would assume one can only tumble down but right now it’s difficult to do so. The wind outdoes the laws of physics, waves take temporary flight in the water frequently, on the coast there are duels between waves from different directions, battle fronts emerge by force, gale force, wind stream lines. The tide is high and the waves are high. We are holding on, and the birds and bushes too. Everyone and everything is trying to counter the wind, stem the tidal air-flow, the high tremors.
The answers may be blowing in the wind – that’s what Bob Dylan promised us – but they fly by too fast for us to catch them, so their messages are unheard and overblown. Interwoven with unknowing like waves blowing because wind is blowing. It’s a blow-up, tumble-up, an up-rising, I get wet. Oh tumble, can’t you dry me! Now I’ve blown it, the waves had got to me. I escape, going home, blowing home, being blown, now the wind is helping me, I get home faster. there at last, now there, now there, now here, and stop, keys out, this is my door! My friend, the answer is out there, blowing in the air, but did you manage to hear it? I couldn’t.
The following day, even the following week, there is still storm – though it’s not keeping still, but it’s still out there, well oh, not still, we go round in circles, we don’t know what to say but it’s still, erm, persistant. Even the house is loud with storm. Storm had been going on for a while now, blowing, whistling by, and by, repeatedly.
I am thinking about the distance one again between places, and how fast the storm gets from A to B, wherever that may be – and how long it takes for us to do the same, less elegantly so but more kindly!
We walk whilst the wind flies and the world is in motion! It gets everything going, the trees, objects, and, repeatedly, the waves in the sea. Wind manages to make mountains out of molehill-waves, and ephemeral walls appear in the water. Now, are they water-walls, or sea-walls, wave-walls, or what? Waves and walls are so frequent that they make ridges among them – ridges until they break. Break open like some kind of volcano, or is it an implosion rather than an eruption? This is the view from the promenade, here is the wave-show from a safe distance (and I had been wondering about the distance – between places, hadn’t I?) Here I can see more than just a rough dance and a roaring wave-rave. The whole sea like a jaccuzzi, or as if there’s a whale underneath, or as if it’s trying to give birth. Wild birth on a wild sea caused by the wild wind, exaggerating the high tide. What now? What more can the wind throw at us but itself, its energy which is too much for us.
Wobbly from the gale force, I let myself be blown homewards. I am on way to seeking refuge, from the waves to the cave of my home.
The week after that, it’s cold outside and the wind is – guess what, strong! And once, again – I am now on repetition-mode – I can hear it, seems that I can feel it too. It sounds like it wants to come into the house. Or break in, make its way through the wall, this time the house-wall, not its own water wall, as if it wants to tell me something important, and it’s very urgent. The message is blowing in the wind, getting more and more intense, now screaming. Maybe it’s an answer, blowing in there. I think it’s possible that it might have all the answers, the wind, but I have to be able to decipher them, and to decide what I want to know, what questions I should ask it.
Though it might not need me to ask. That’s wisdom for you: it tells me what I need to know. If I could only identify the meaning of its blow. I guess it wants to blow our minds, open them up, refresh them.
The wind, the message, the mystery. What has it got to say when it’s speaking in blows, must we communicate, us and the wind.
This storm, it could blow our mind easily! It does feel refreshing.
It’s so cool!
But is it, really, I ask, and might even be bold enough to wait for the next wind that’s blowing for an answer. This is the kind of stormy communication I got used to. Airwaves, and waterwaves too, like radiowaves. The transmission is enormous, the radius reaches wide and far – though it’s doubtful whether that has really answered any questions we have. I think after the storm- even after so many storms, reinforced by a multitude of waves, we still don’t know very much.
Image by Ursula Troche
The Cabinet of Heed 