 It's windy at my thoughtful spot, truly windy after several weeks becalmed. It's the sort of wind that makes you realize just how accustomed you've grown to the stillness. Stillness in the air is a beguiling thing, a nourishing thing, it is restful and sleepy, and gives permission, somehow, for everything around it to be still too, to be easy. The seedlings grow straight at the sun, effortlessly, without dancing to the wind's rhythm; the birds plot their course from tree to roofline without hindrance from a passing current; small fledglings perch on thin branches, their balance unchallenged by a visiting breeze; and my bike routes are free of headwinds, yet unenlivened by tailwinds. Even thoughts themselves seem to slumber sometimes in the stillness, or perhaps to just step comfortably along from daily duties to daily delights, happy and hobbitish, without much concern for meandering down rabbit trails, or delving into definitions, or racing through possibilities. But stillness cannot last forever. Today the wind has returned, and now I realize just how much I missed it. I saw you toss the kites on high /And blow the birds about the sky; |
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The rich meadow-grass seemed that morning of a
freshness and a greenness unsurpassable.
- Kenneth Grahame, Wind in the Willows
While watering the other day I had to laugh at the determination of these flowers. A generous handful are blooming, not in the flower bed where they were planted, but from fallen seeds that have sprung up through cracks in the pavement. The plants in the carefully prepared and watered bed were struggling in the heat and dryness, their heads drooped and leaves furled in on themselves. But the stout little volunteers in the pavement, unwatered but courageous, grew with stems straight and heads held high, heedless of drought and sun.
Summer afternoon - summer afternoon; to me those have
always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.
- Henry James, quoted by Edith Wharton in A Backward Glance
Then last night the rain came. The first heavy rainfall in over a month washed all complacency from the air, and all those smudges that you never know are on the window glass until you wash it have suddenly vanished from the face of the world. The day is still in its cooler hours as I write, all green and lively, and it is back into this clean, refreshed world that the wind has come. Lusty and glad, with those slowly building breezes that seem lazy at first and then turn into great gusty billows that soar through open windows to slam doors shut and send papers sailing from desk to floor. It starts as a coolness on the back of your neck and then fairly bowls you over in a wild crosswind, gleefully including you in its return to the still world. It's intermittent now, like an ocean breeze. If I close my eyes perhaps I can smell the sea, perhaps this wind has been there, before it visited me.
Listen! The wind is rising, and the air is wild with leaves...
- Humbert Wolfe, Autumn Resignation
The leaves on every tree are turning backflips, and an odd little crowd of carpenter bees appear to be hovering in midair as they wend their way directly into a sturdy wind. It flies back and forth through this space where I sit, as though bringing thoughts and ideas from its travels, dropping them in my lap and then running off laughing to find new ones, a childish zephyr sharing simple treasures.
Burst into my narrow stall; / Swing the picture on the wall;
Run the rattling pages o'er; / Scatter poems on the floor;
Turn the poet out of door.
- Robert Frost, To the Thawing Wind
I've always loved southern summers. I love the humidity that adds just a touch of a curl to the straight flyaways in my hair, the warm evenings alive with bullfrogs and crickets in competitive chorus, the midsummer sunshine that burns through every cloud, and I do indeed love the stillness and the calmness and drowsiness of the world as it wades patiently through the warmth towards September. But stillness is not selfish, it lets the wind take its turn. And when the wind returns, even if only for a day, it's impossible to linger in the peaceful calm. One simply has to wake up.
I am going to see what the sky and the air are doing, and to hear the messages of wind and water from the hilltops.
- Bilbo, J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
