
How these days seem to threaten. From every corner, political, social, psychological, we find strife. I grew up in Amarillo, Texas, and one thing you don’t forget after living there is the wind. Most days are stricken with high winds. Oddly, I didn’t notice the wind too much when I lived there. But coming away from it, I learned the meaning of calm.
How wind seems to threaten. It invokes a flinch reflex in me. I believe that’s because wind means storms. Debris caught up and flying. Tornados. When I hear the wind roaring outside, how I’m driven indoors for fear of what’s coming. I do want to shelter, irrationally. Wind doesn’t ordinarily hurt anyone.
It’s not just we humans, though. Some animals suffer from ancraophobia—fear of winds, of drafts. And psychosis aside, gale-force winds do drive birds to the lee sides of trees.
But writing about Swift on the Celtic, it strikes me – you can’t sail but with wind.
It’s conflict that drives our stories, and it’s the ingenuity to keep going in spite of all storms that gives heart to our characters.
It’s been a windy few years, and I’d be a fool to hold that the storming is done. There will always be storms. The trick, I suppose, is to learn how to bridle them.
When the winds rise and carry off something I love, when storms threaten to wash my foundation away, I find hiding to be just delaying the strike. The best thing I can do is flare all the sails and venture into the waves. When the storms wane, when the winds pass, gathering scattered paper and strewn pens, I’ll have more to tell.
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