The blustery day

Days like today are days that make me feel the most alive--the sky is thick and dark and the wind is unhindered. The windows are open and I am curled up on my futon wrapped in my fleece jacket with a book and a glass of red wine, pausing from my reading every few moments to listen to the wind play the trees like pan pipes. There is no rain, only the expectation of rain--but when will it come? And when it does come, will it be announced by great peals of thunder, or will it steal in gradually, patient and taut with all the energy of a sweet symphony?

Spring and summer in Georgia are hot and mellow, a fever that dulls first the mind and then, eventually, the heart and soul. All is heavy, and the air just becomes thicker and denser, until you feel you are swimming in a yellow delirium as thick as molasses.

Then one day, you awake to the whisper of the air to the trees, the grasses, the clouds and birds and all the world. And you go out, and it whispers to you too, and cuts sharply into your mind as acid through oil. Suddenly the world is alive with energy and purpose, and it intends to whirl you along. You stand, spread-eagle, and your hair flies away and your eyes well up from the air-blasts, and all around you and within you is electrified--the earth, the sky, the water, and all life driven by the same energy, all connected by the bonds of shared excitement.

When I go out tomorrow, the earth will be strewn with life--petals and blossoms that gave themselves up to the fury of the storm. All will be calm, all will be quiet like glass, like the grave. The air will be a little thinner and the earth a little lighter, and my mind a little freer, a little more awake and aware. Every breath, every nerve, every pump of my heart are an exhilarating gift that I cannot, in that moment, take for granted--a life so simple, yet too extraordinary to comprehend.