The Winds They Are A-Blowin'...

"It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by.  How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? For the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop."

- Vita Sackville-West 

It's Fall here. Though you wouldn't know it most days, through the 80 degree weather and endless (ENDLESS) sunshine. You might scoff, you of the darker climes, but it is inhumane to live in a place where the weather never changes.  Sunshine, or no sunshine.  Two days ago we had our first bout of the Santa Ana winds...all night long they rattled windows and blew down unsuspecting plants. There is something unsettling about so much movement in the air, but I was grateful for it. Some weather, any weather, is a blessed event after this long, hot, summer.

(And as the winds blow outside, the winds blow within.)

Our apartment has been invaded with critters. Yesterday a cricket fell from the ether right smack into the middle of my keyboard and then hopped merrily off. The crickets are staging a coup, I'm sure of it. And the creepy drawer-dwellers, and the spiders, and even, the other day, a praying mantis, perched on our curtain rod.  Last night I spent twenty minutes trapping and releasing a giant brown spider that had housed itself in one of my scarves. All that work to keep it alive and away from the house, and then as soon as I let it free on our porch it tried to scurry back in. At which point I grabbed a notebook and whapped it, and whapped it, ready to kill.

Lucky for him, I missed.

I find myself, lately, thinking and thinking. Thinking of all the things that need to be done, thinking about all the time I don't have to do them in, thinking about where I'm going and where I've been, thinking about how I'm going to get to the next place, and why I'm not there yet. Thinking about my friends and my family, wondering how they are and what they need, thinking about my mind and my heart, thinking and thinking and thinking and in the midst of the thinking feeling nostalgia for this very moment as it passes me by, unacknowledged.

In a conversation earlier this week I confessed to someone, "I think I ought to be more present, but then I worry that if I'm present, I won't know what needs to be done next and how to do it." And she said to me that I only have this moment to deal with things, anyhow, and that I would just have to trust that I will know how to handle things, when and if they come up. And that in the meantime, there is nothing to do but be in my life.

And I thought about this for days, afterwards. I turned it over. I let the winds wash it around. And I discovered that she was right.

I can only be inspired in this moment, I can only affect circumstances in this moment, I can only take action in this moment, and I can only react to my life, in this moment.  What happens in the future is an unknown whether I'm preoccupied with worry about it, or not. It will come and present challenges and openings, whether I've been thinking about it, or not. But this moment is already here. This sun is already shining. That bird on the wire outside my window is already there. This morning is already upon me. This breath is breathing me, keeping me alive, and this silence is the only one I get. So, you know...use it or lose it.

I trust these winds. They are appropriately timed, all in preparation for the great hunkering down of winter. I will let them blow through and shake free the last dead leaves of summer.

Whhoooooooosh! I love you!

Do I need to apologize for being so long in posting?  I don't know!  I'm sorry!

Ugh.

Sometimes I just, you know, run out of things to say.  And I figure it's best to spare you all my rummaging around for a straw to grasp, and just let there be these (sometimes) necessary silences on the ol' blog-a-roonie.

But now I'm back!  I've thought of something to say!  Hooray!

Okay, so, last week, as many of you know, there was a crazy weather event here in Los Angeles...on Wednesday night winds of many many miles per hour (up to 40 knots) hit most of the city.  It was very exciting.  All night long we could hear the wind shrieking outside, plants blowing over, furniture being dragged across the outdoor patio by the skinny fingers of mother nature--it was something else.  My husband barely slept.  I, who can sleep through anything (including once in middle school, feat of all feats, sleeping through an honest-to-goodness fire evacuation during an overnight in the school gym)--even I was a little tossy-and-turny due to the ferociousness of the weather.

Now, if you live in a place like Kansas or...New Orleans...or Texas...please forgive we inhabitants of La-La-Land for freaking the heck out about some blown down trees and broken street-lights.  We know not what we do.

But, it was, you know...a moment.

I remember, not long after I first moved to New York in the early 2000's there was that big Northeast blackout.  I was at the Crunch Gym in Union Square, fake-running on some kind of elliptical, when the whole floor just went quiet, except for the whicka-whicka sound of several people who tried to keep on running on dead machines. (Gotta get that burn!)  I went outside, still sweaty, and everyone on the street was gawking up at all the buildings around them...waiting.  9/11 was still very fresh for a lot of people, so I think there was this communal held-breath while folks tried to figure out exactly how worried they should be.

And it was August.  So it was hot.  Really hot.

I was subletting a little studio apartment in Chelsea, and I had no idea whether there were candles or flashlights or any of that, so made my way back home while it was still light out, and holed up.  Later a good friend stopped by with whiskey and some much-needed conversation.  I was in the midst of being heartbroken over a newly ended relationship, and I was new to the city and I had been feeling just so...alone.  It's the funny thing about New York...there are so many people around, all the time, but somehow, when you're lonely, the presence of all those strangers just makes you feel lonelier.  But, I remember, the morning after the blackout, I walked out my door, and instead of just pouring myself into the sea of nameless pedestrians as per usual...I felt like I was, for the first time, walking into my neighborhood.  The power was still out, the sun was still out, and people were gathered on stoops...and in little clusters outside of still-dark restaurants.  People wanted to talk to each other.  To find out "how was it for you?", "isn't this crazy?", "how long will it last?".

I remember that moment as the turning point.  The turning point of my broken heart mending, and the moment I felt like I had finally arrived in New York, as a resident, and not just a scared interloper.

And although Wednesday's weather-drama wasn't nearly so dramatic...the same feeling was in the air.  People were talking to each other.  People were marveling at trees and towers and checking in with their neighbors..."how was it for you?", "isn't this crazy?", and, if they happened to be one of the unlucky who lost their power..."how long will it last?"

I spent the better part of Thursday, the day after the storm, driving from client to class to class to client, and I marveled, the whole day at the traffic.  It was TERRIBLE, yes, there were dozens of blacked-out street lights, but still...it worked.  People, unaided by men in orange vests, in our individual and usually utterly separate cars...we all started working together.  Even at busy intersections, one in particular in my neighborhood where two giant streets split and merge, making for 10 individual lanes of traffic all trying to go and merge and turn and pass...even at those intersections, where people are normally giant a-holes trying to get their way first...we all turned practically nunnish in our deference.  You go, and then you go, and then I'll go.

And I was so moved by all of it...the way that (oh my god, nerd-out alert)...the way that Mother Nature or the Universe or whatever you want to call it, gifts us with these moments, where the curtains that normally hang down between us and everyone around us...get lifted.  Just for a second.  And we suddenly remember that we are in a community of people.  That we are connected to each other.  And that when shit gets crazy, when roofs are blowing off and trees are falling down...that we're not in it alone.  Now, obviously I've never lost anyone close to me in a disaster...and for those who have, I'm sure it's much more complicated than this.  But I hope that those people also, when the dust has settled, have felt held by their community.  I'm holding you, right now, in my thoughts...if that's any comfort.

It's easy to forget--mainly because our relationships with individual people can get so complicated--but we do, for the most part...we do all care about one another.  Or at least we do, when push comes to shove.   And I think it's worthwhile to remember.  Especially when we're grumbling our way through lines or through traffic or through whatever, that those jerks in the car in front of us, that they're the same jerks who are going to slow down and make sure we're alright if our car goes skidding off the road or if a tree falls on our house.

You get it.

I love you. (And I think you love me too.)  Namaste.