Wind

Interesting juxtaposition, "wind" and "change".

I'm going to assume that the topic is the noun "wind" as opposed to the verb "wind" which is pronounced differently and of which the past tense is "wound" which looks like "wound" but is also pronounced differently. Ain't English grand? I don't know whether to piss into the wind or to shit and wind my watch.

("I hate when I read read as read instead of read, and then I have to go back and re-read read as read instead of read, so it all makes sense.")

Any way the wind blows....

It is, in fact, a windy day today. The high in the last 24 hours was 16 and by 8:00 a.m tomorrow, the  temperature will be -9 and the windchill is supposed to be minus 16. For my American readers, that's a swing of 45 Freedom Units...57 if you count that windchill. You don't get that kind of a drop without  a fuckofalot of wind. Perhaps thee...would it be "fucksofalot" or "fuckofalots"?

Ain't English grand? I just coined a new unit of measure. Equivalent to 8.6 shitloads. My rules, I make 'em up.

"Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind."--Bruce Lee

That's merely an update on Aesop:

"The little reed, bending to the force of the wind, soon stood upright again when the storm had passed over." 

Aesop lived around 620 BCE. The ancients were not stupid.

Bend, but don't break: that's resilience. It's a critical life skill, and while I believe the hate heaped on Millennials is glaringly misplaced, it is undeniably true that many of that generation were not encouraged to experience failure. This is not their fault. But it's broken more than a few.

Another related quote: "There is no good in arguing with the inevitable. The only argument available with an east wind is to put on your overcoat." --James Russell Lowell

One of the things that really helped me get control over my emotions occurred to me about fifteen years ago. "There are things you can control, and things you can't. The things you can control, you can control them, so why worry about them? The things you can't control, you can't control them, so why worry about them?" Again, this speaks to change, and specifically to its pace. We're time travellers, every last one of us, moving through time at a rate of one second per second. If you worry, what you're doing is jumping forward in time and imagining things have gotten worse. They may well do that. But why assume it?  Easier, I have found, to just take life a day at a time. That especially holds true in large-scale events such as the one we're experiencing right now.

"Words are wind, even words like love and peace."--George R.R. Martin

I am a wordsmith: this quote stings. But it's true: words alone mean nothing. Actions matter. Choosing right action to back up your words: not always easy.

I think this is at the root of why I distrust exclusively online relationships so much. In the end, they're just words, and words are wind. I can write you a love song full of words to make your heart melt, and that's all well and good, but if I don't back up those words with deeds,  I am a hypocrite.

"Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans fires."--Francois de la Rochfoucauld''

Much more expressive than "absence makes the heart grow fonder". In my experience, this is very true.

And of course, "wind" has musical references for me,  everything from Bohemian Rhapsody which I quoted above to this finger-breaker of a piece by Charles-Valentin Alkan, "Comme le vent" ("Like the Wind".) Jack Gibbons can't possibly be human. my God, sheer insanity.

I'm catching up. Tomorrow: remorse and freedom. Thank you, everyone, for reading. It helps me feel a little less alone.