February started blowing in today, brought along on 35 mph northwesterly gusts. The clouds scudded across the sky like celestial refugees and little tornados spun fallen leaves and dirty receipt scraps in the brick corners of my office building, down by the loading dock.
I hate a strong wind; it unsettles me. For one, there is no stillness. The air rushes against your skin, the roar of it comes in short intervals over the treetops, every second a noise or anticipation of noise, and the trees themselves bend and turn and creak and rattle so that your eyes are seeing movement at every instant without reprieve. Never stillness, never peace. Long, protracted winds have been known to affect people's mental state in such places that suffer from the big, steady winds that arrive like regular visitors, in-laws perhaps, which drive your homelife and routine into an endless unretrievable disarray. Days like this, you are unavoidably aware that the earth is spinning at a phenomenal speed right beneath your feet and that it always has and always will and there's not a thing you can do about it.
That's what unsettles me. Winds bring in the future. There's no confusing that point. Whatever weather happens to be in your little part of the world, a blustery day is sure to blow it away and replace it with whatever is on the tail-end of the blow. "The winds of change," they say, as if there were any other kind. I have a sense of foreboding today in this wind which sends my cigarette butts scattering across the blacktop like people fleeing the scene of an accident. A deep sense of it, like a foreknowledge of one of life's most obvious secret truths: "Don't ever get too comfortable, 'cause I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house down."
It's winter. I'm hibernating. I don't have the emotional or financial means to deal with a drastic change right now. Just leave me alone till spring. But the wind, it ain't much for listening, is it?
