August 20, 2007
The Sun Also Rouses
Sometimes, during our long and cold Minnesota winters, I play a trick on myself. I go out to my sunporch--a small, enclosed, window-filled space that heats quickly if the sun is shining, no matter how low the outside temperature. There I sit on my porch swing, close my eyes, and pretend that the warmth I feel is the warmth from a distant island. I am far, far away from here (I tell myself)...The waves are mere steps from me, and palm trees are swaying languidly overhead, cool breezes carress my skin (I continue in reverie). After some moments of this, I open my eyes. Only then am I fully aware that I am not on some palm-dotted, sun drenched isle, but in the frozen tundra of the northern USA.
This moment of realization always fills me with an oppressive sense of sadness and regret. I tamp down this sense only because I have so much to do--bills to pay, journal articles to draft, children to drop off or pick up. And I figure that at least for the few moments that I was self-fooled, I may have soaked up enough vitamin D to ward off any unpleasant ailments for another few weeks.
A couple weeks ago I was actually sitting on an island in the middle of the sea with the waves and palms and all that. I was vacationing with my family in Hawaii, on the island of Ohau. At one point on the beach, I closed my eyes and pretended I was back home in my sunporch instead, only pretending to sit on a beach. I needed to ensure that I captured any additional sense-details that I could carry with me to use this coming winter.
The first sense I attempt to nail down is the breeze. I conclude that "cool breeze" is different qualitatively and not just quantitatively from either a "hot wind" or "cold gale." In other words, it is not just a wind midway between these two. For example, a cold wind is so unique that I often refer to it with its own folk name, one that--if you do not already use it--is difficult to explain without you just experiencing it first hand: "the hawk." There are also phrases, metaphors and such for the cold. "Cold as a witch's left...um...breast." (Insert other folk name--slur?--for breast.) I am not sure of the origin of this comparison. But somehow it fits, no matter how nonsensical or misogynistic such a statement may be.
There are similar comparison's for heat: "Hot as hell," for example, simply and concisely sums things up. I can think of no such sayings, however, for the cool breezes I experienced sitting on the beach in the city of Ko Olina. But together with the warm sun, such breezes constituted an almost living system-- the sun-breeze continuum, call it--interacting to both calm and excite, keeping me in a perpetual state of intentional, but moderate motion.
Then there were smells...
Over the summer I have gotten in the habit of buying fresh flowers for our home every 2 weeks or so. I was surprised to find how happy seeing these splashes of beauty made me, and I have vowed to continue this habit. But I have also been surprised at how smell-less most of these flowers have been. Perhaps they put something on the flowers to make them last longer (they do stay beautiful a surprisingly long time) that interferes with their scent? Perhaps I am just too spoiled by super strong fake scents that squirt out of a can or waft from a wall plug that I can no longer appreciate the subtlety of "real" flower scents? I do not know. But many times I have been taken by the beauty in my vase, then walk over to bask my face in their scent only to smell only the slightest hint of aroma--or nothing at all.
This lack of smell, however, is not an issue on the island. There the scents are confident...arrogant, even. They will not be ignored. Together with the equally bold colors--and combined with the sun and the breeze--these smells create another active entity enlivening the atmosphere and influencing my actions within it. (The sun-scent-color-breeze continuum...)
And what about those waves? I have read of waves being "gentle" or "carressing," of waves "lapping" at folks' feet, even of ocean water feeling as if it is "baptizing" someone. Well, I think any one of these characterizations alone is not quite correct. The water and waves have a much more complex personality than this. At the point where the waves wash up against the sand they are, indeed, fairly gentle--playful, even. Waves taunt my daughters by--yes--lapping and licking at their toes. Their trickster nature makes them flow over the girls' sand castles, removing from them their form and detail. Yet the waves' builder character enables them to create their own art using sand as medium: cooling hot sand, compacting and smoothing loose sand, even inserting small shell fragments as if adding objects to a sculpture.
A little farther out the water is warm, the waves still gentle--carressing feet, ankles, lower shin. But move still farther out. Now the water is deep and cool--suddenly, as if an absolute dividing line has been passed. The waves are stronger here. They are more insistent, effortlessly moving my whole body with their strength. Schools of thin little fish call this depth their home. They will swim past me, brushing against my thighs with no fear of capture. Farther out still and the waves, cooler still, are king. I do not go out this far, as my swimming skills are not that great. Here, I know, an unexpected tide can carry a person far out to sea. Here is where people who like to court and tame wild waves paddle out on big boards in an attempt to walk on water.
The multifaceted waves add yet another package of senses--combining temperature, personality, tactility and adding them to my complex continuum of sun, scent, color, and breeze. The continuum is almost complete.
The final sense is one that I think will be the most difficult to capture while sitting on my sunporch. Standing at the edge of land and ocean, feeling the sun and breeze and smelling the smells and looking over the water and all of that, makes me feel very small in a very big universe.
Here, the world goes on forever without end, farther than my eyes can see. Water meets sky at the horizon. I see few people, but have the abstract knowledge that at that moment billions are born and living and dying. I see no stars (except our sun) in the daylight, but have the abstract knowledge that they, too, are coming into being, sending their light across space and time, and snuffing out. My concerns--of bills to pay, jobs to progress in, children to care for, tourist attractions to visit, and all manner of other thoughts--seem very small. There seems to be ample time to breathe deeply, to just sit in the warm sun and feel the cool wind tickle the small hairs on my face. There seems to be ample motivation to then stand and move on to the next thing, neither dimimished nor depressed by the transition from my prior state of calm, but instead roused and energized by it.
I can't wait for my sunporch in December.
Posted by perry032 at August 20, 2007 11:25 AM