Tag: Wind

Between Firmaments

Rita Sommers-Flanagan2 Comments

And God made the firmament and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament…And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

Post hoc weather report: For two days in a row the wind didn’t blow. When this happens and there’s sun, I tend to forget about adversity. There’s nothing to lean into or ward off or hide from. I lose focus and get dangerously, gloriously expansive. I know this about myself so on the first windless day, I remained mindful, took a walk and hung up laundry.

But the second day was too much. I dragged everything out at once and balanced it between brilliant sky and deep waters, the firmaments of heaven and hell. I sang along with Bob Marley, beat on the blue barrels, and danced from possibility to possibility, arm in arm with an adolescent God. It’s often God’s fault when I get ecstatic and reckless like that.

We opened cans of paint, glued odd-shaped scraps of wood together, and redid the driftwood bouquet, adding antique marbles and sparkly broken glass I’d swept up after the wind slammed the garage door a couple years ago. The door had been double-paned, but on impact, the inner pane shattered into light aqua beads. I knew they’d be perfect for something. And the door still works. In fact, the remaining pane mirrored God slinking by, a black dog with a stick. Eternally hopeful.

I threw the stick a few times but then asked God to help me take some selfies near the old typewriter that sits among my outdoor sculptures on a massive stump that looks dead but isn’t. Every spring, I remove the hopeful shoots. I don’t want a tree there.

We did the selfies and examined our hands. So many angles, so many ways to see what could be. We briefly reviewed the reasons for self-restraint and then shelved them near my collection of dull saw blades and dented mailboxes. We were giddy from the fumes of liquid nails and high gloss varnish.

The elasticity of our joy stretched into the evening and when it was time to call it a day, we did. We called it the second day and rested.

But the earth wobbled in the night, and the vicious wind is back. I have awakened to stinging dust. Swirling ash. Things old and broken have lost the sheen of potential. I’m tempted to start a fire to rid myself of these burdens, but I can’t. With this much wind, it could burn the whole world down.

Known

Rita Sommers-Flanagan4 Comments

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“It won’t always be like this,” God said, perched high in the cottonwoods near the river. And sure enough, even as I watched, God lifted into the sky and disappeared. The wind spread a translucent blanket of snow across the field, and bitter cold blew into my bones while I fantasized flying after him. I sent what I could spare aloft and turned toward home, diminished.

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“It’s better to grow smaller,” God said, meeting me at the door with dark beer and bread fresh from the oven. I drank and ate and crawled into God’s warm chest, which is always cracked wide open.

“Why do you expose your heart like this?” I asked in a critical voice, even while I let the pulsing blood restore me. I could smell my own hypocrisy, taste my own selfishness. But I stayed anyway.

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“You’re tenacious,” God said. “I’ll give you that. But you’re not as tough as you think.”

“Yes I am,” I said. I heard the sound of cloth torn, stitches ripped, fire snapping and hungry. I heard waves crashing, thunder roaring, the shriek of fallen prey, the whimper of starvation. Stones rolled, ice cracked, rifles fired, and the earth groaned with the weight of voracious appetites and malignant neglect.

“Paint me a picture,” God said. “With lots of lavender and green.”

“All I have is this awful gray,” I said, apologetically. “And maybe a little brown.”

“Don’t lie to me,” God said.

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A broken sun climbed into limited sky. The foolish snow refused to do anything but reflect light–as if it could stay cold and drifted forever. “You have to melt sometime,” I said to the snow with an evil sneer.

“And so do you,” God said, rubbing my stiffened neck. Reluctantly, I nodded and went to the basement where I keep my secret supplies of recycled canvas and secondhand paint.

“Perfect,” God said, as I emerged, laden with a rainbow of options. I shrugged, trying to hide the awful relief, the fearsome comfort, of being known.

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