Crumbling Visage

When The Wind Blows

Abstract, descriptive piece

Welike to believe that there are greater implications to actions, events andconsequences. Perhaps, it gives us something to hold on to; maybe we do not like knowing everything and letting go of the tiny wisp of curiosity that has blossomed in our heart as a young child. That is not to say that we know everything as an older person; we just look at things differently and rigidly and the curiosity does not have the glint of imagination. This is why we notice the subtleties of things.

One quiet morning I awoke to a raging wind. The sky was a cloudy, darkening expanse with little light yet no rain. As I bustled about with my chores, the wind made eerie, howling noises cutting in through its own fabricated quiet. The wind was not cold, no; it had a faint warmth to it and as it caressed the lavender on my nightstand, the scent diffused through the room. I breathed in the wind and crept inside the curtains which were swirling in fluid waves. If you looked well enough you could almost believe that they were billowing ocean waves that had been set free.

When the wind blows, I inevitably sight the quivering trees and leaves. The trees stoop down and maybe, sometimes, they just want to be led away- to swirl and to be independent of the rigid and obdurate aura and compulsion surrounding them. The leaves who have swirled in the pettiest of these strange wisps of air; those that have felt tender caresses of a child's laugh or the soft hands plucking the foliage slowly- they know better. They seem to brace themselves for when the wind blows. They do not resist like the trees who are scared of this new feeling. They yield to the wind and maybe, even enjoy it so long as they cling to existence with their tender roots.

One such day, I found a strange sight and it was enough to lure me out of the quiet, sleepy stupor of the morning. Trees and leaves were swirling in harmony with the wind and I was entranced; yet, a single tree stood obdurate- its leaves still and unyielding and its weak trunk unaffected.

Immediate, urgent and frantic explanations rushed into my head. We like to believe that there are greater implications to actions, events and consequences. We like to believe that another force-perhaps something termed as supernatural- controls these events to produce a result. But what if there is no such thing-what if there is no desire to produce a certain result for an action?

The tree has stood its ground and in doing so missed the sway and caresses of the wind but has it not safeguarded its existence? Of its leaves and buds?

And then I am no longer standing by a window as an onlooker. I stand there with a choice- must I and should I yield in when the wind blows?