I love the wind. As a child I reveled in being in the wind, especially when there was a whirlwind. Many were the times that on my elementary school playground I would chase a whirlwind (dust devil), trying to get into the middle of it. I rarely succeeded. Nowadays the only time I really, really dislike the wind is when it blows my hat off, but I suppose that’s on me. After all, I know that’s a possibility and I choose to test the fates by wearing it outdoors.
I’ve often wondered how cowboys in the old westerns could beat the crap out of each other and still keep their hats on, as well as how their hats stayed on when they were riding horses full out. I’ve read in more than one place that in the first Indiana Jones film Harrison Ford couldn’t keep his hat on during riding scenes either. What did he do? He stapled his hat to his head. I kid you not. But I digress.
Last week there was a particularly windy day, one in which I almost had to go indoors to light my pipe. I held my pipe in my left hand and anchored my hat with the right until the wind took a big breath and I could let go for a few seconds to light my pipe.
I’ve always taken great delight in watching small items, propelled by the wind, fly through the air with the greatest of ease. That is, until one of those pesky plastic grocery bags slapped me in the face and hung on like a mobster trying to suffocate me to get information I did not have. I promise you that the proverbial quip “He couldn’t fight his way out of a wet paper bag” became real for me that day and I understood for the first time what it must be like to be on the wrong end of the Cosa Nostra, er-r-r, fellowship.
While wrangling with the bag, which only led to a greater entanglement, I heard a voice say, “Slow down man! Just relax. Every little thing’s gonna be alright.” I frenetically, furiously, frantically, and fruitlessly resisted until I took what I feared to be my final breath. Then I let go and the bag stopped its assault.
The bag said to me,—yes, thus spoketh the bag,—“Thank heavens, man! I thought you were gonna kill us both!” My eyes darted left and right, up and down, trying to find the source of the voice, until I had no choice but to accept that I had been waylaid by a talking plastic bag.
“What the hell are you trying to do to me?” I asked.
The bag replied, “I have no control over where or when I go. I yam what I yam and I yam wherever I yam. So…the answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind.”
“Oh, c’mon,” I said. “That’s the cheesiest answer I’ve ever heard.”
“No cheese here. Only breeze,” said the bag. “I can’t go against the wind. I must ride with the wind and trust the wind beneath my wings.”
I groaned, then I groaned again, then I groaned even more. “At least you didn’t say you’re gone with the wind,” I said.
“Oh, but I will be— soon and very soon,” said the bag, “but it’s a wayward wind. I think they call the wind Mariah.”
“Carey?” I asked.
“No, dumb butt!” he said. “Why don’t you go paint your wagon while I break wind over that one!”
I held my nose and was grateful that I did, for when the bag broke wind it was a ghastly gust of god-awful gross that propelled the bag through the Square and spun it round and round and round the tip top of the courthouse, eventually hurling it through the air off to the west.
Since then I’ve wondered, “Where did the wind wind up?” Then I recalled the words of Yogi, Prophet of the Diamond: “If you don’t know where you’re going you might wind up someplace else.” And that’s exactly where I think my talking bag must now be — someplace else.
“Be here now?” I thought to myself as I took a long draw on my pipe. “Naw. Be there later.”
…and that’s the View from The Balcony.
Randy Weeks is a Licensed Professional Counselor, Board Certified Telemental Health Provider, Certified Shamanic Life Coach, ordained minister, singer-songwriter, actor, and writer. Sometimes he’s little more than a bag of wind.
