I.
Today is the kind of day I dreamed of as
a little girl in southern California – a gem of a day, giddy-making. A day for
frivolity and excitement. A day for coziness – except the exhilaration is too
much for sitting still. I take a few photos looking out the rain splattered panes,
the same view that drew me in as that young one peering out from my bedroom window
to the world outside. The perspective shifts – focusing up close on the
droplets, oblong little crystals on glass; focusing on the view of the wet bark
and sodden leaves of the tree across the street. But my greedy attempt to
capture, hoard and pause the praise of the moment – a token for later when
everything has changed – is futile. This is a process, what’s happening within
me and outside of me. The dripping, beautiful, fat orbs - some quietly still,
others rolling down the transparent barrier between my warm haven and the
electric outside – and the blowing wind through yellowed and barren limbs
captivate me. I put the camera away as soon as I remember that the pinpricks of
sound (dry beans down a bamboo “rain” tube) and the clean slice of wet wind
will never make their way into image form, ever elusive, ever tantalizing.
II.
Oh and the wind! The perfect, blessed
wind! How could I know the synchronized bits of Life that would instantly and
easily transport me back to an autumn I’d thought I had lost; I cried when I
thought I would not see fall this year. This last move placed me back in the
center of my passion, during the season of my bliss. I am glad that I grieved
not having autumn for the first time in three decades; relocating back out of a
Mediterranean climate and into the familiar one of cool, wet, wind, and
changing, falling foliage has restored my heart to fullness. Without the
anticipatory grief I would not have been able to muster so much now-by-now
appreciation for each shift of light, each day and week of diminishing leaf
cover, every wind gust that is now blowing through here. The grief helped me
recall – deep in some crevice of my heart – just how softened I am by the fresh
surge of wind. I am brought back to a moldable place. I am wet soft clay in the
potter’s hands. And I return from the windy time recreated, reshaped, made
pliable again: a vessel open to receive.
I know many who batten down the hatches against the wind.
III.
I just went outside to see if I could
find words for how it feels to be in the wind; “I am one who goes out into the
wind.” I crave it! As I squatted with haunches above the
mud-with-sprouts-to-become-grass, hands pressed into wet earth, I faced the south: the origin of the wind these few stormy days.
And while I expected to feel “blown” - rumpled, hit – with the force of it, I
really just felt soothed and caressed. With each god-sized breath of wind, I
felt surrounded, enfolded, embraced. I wanted to laugh, and to cry. I wondered
what I would miss if I stayed out in it for hours.
IV.
I knew what I would miss if I went back
inside.
All blog photographs taken by Jennifer J. Wilhoit unless otherwise noted.
