I have always been a fan of the wind.
There is something about its invisible yet sometimes forceful presence that deeply touches me.
It's like being a principal performer in the all singing, all dancing three ring production of the greatest show earth.
It's like seeing what is there and not there all at the same time.
There is simply something so alive about it.
It's what I imagine perfection actually looks like.
When I watch movies, if there is an open window in the scene near a character I find that my eye is naturally drawn to the swaying leaves that are doing a gentle hula in the background.
It soothes me. It speaks to me.
Especially when I'm in its arms.
The wind actually makes me feel happy, sad and romantic all at the same time.
I don't know what the actual chemistry is of the wind. I mean, sure, it's all oxygen to the all knowing world.
But I sense that there is much, much more burrowed deep within its inner most astonishing constellation.
The end product, whatever its make up is, is a delivery service that leaves Fed Ex in the dust.
It sends me generous, wafting scents whose notes I can immediately detect are from the kitchens of restaurants whose whose exotically scented bliss float towards me, lifting me way off the ground, like Elmer Fudd in a Loony Tunes cartoon, as it carries me towards its bounty while my feet pulse and quiver with balletic tippy toe euphoria.
I love that the wind is everywhere I go.
It's like wherever I am, I'm home, enveloped by the familiar, welcomed by hometown parade that is being held in my honor in the most intimate of ways.
At the beach the summer wind is like a thousand fingers massage that comes flying towards you off the coast of your local and most generous ocean. It whirls around you, enters your ears and wind-whispers to you softly that it remembers you.
In the park it's a kite's best friend, the navigating captain of the toy boat and the arch enemy of the lost balloon.
In a baseball park it makes its presence known in the many team flags that flap madly around the entire lip circumstance of the stadium.
It even participates in the game, influencing any ball in flight. And it can toy with the game the second that it decides to change its path at its most evil whim.
If you listen closely to the wind like millions of Native Americans before us, you can find, deep within its most sacred context, all the answers to life.
Sometimes it's a tiny suggestion that travels and arrives by coach along the serpentine train of a mild breeze.
When a storm is brewing on the perched eve of a hurricane or twister, that is when you really see, hear and feel the wrath of you know who.
In the winter it can be punishing and snap at you with its angry bull whip.
In spring it just loves to blithely juggle all the birds, the bees and the flowers.
That is the real rites of Spring whose actual wind music is a lot more melodic than what Stravinsky had in mind.
But no matter what season or time of day, it is the current that either guides us to the moor of our innermost heart or it instead grabs us by the scruff of the neck and flies us as far away from it as possible.
More times than not, it is an ever dependable guide for both the lost and the inspired.
It is there, like a welcoming, wide open Talmudic scroll that it is ready to be poured over, debated, deciphered or simply adored for its mesmerizing power.
It is there to be luxuriated in.
It is, in fact, the one and only cloud that we ever get to ride on with nary a peak or off-peak ticket to be conductor punched.
The wind I think, no, I know, is my friend and partner.
It is my most ardent critic and mortal enemy like most lovers are.
It challenges me. It holds me up. It pushes me down with jealous zeal.
It pranks me by creating havoc with my carefully sculpted hair and sometimes it steals my favorite hat fly away which sees hellbent for Jupiter.
It also competes with me on days when it is particularly rambunctious in places like Columbus Circle in Manhattan often forcing me to walk like a mime pushing against the elements.
But most importantly, besides our ups and downs, I trust it more than anything else in the world because it is the single most dependable constant in my life.
When it is not there I miss it. A lot. Life feels too quiet and empty when it's hiding or worse hibernating.
In those times of weakness I feel compelled to compose mental sonnets to it, like an unswept Robert Browning, besieging it to return to my bed.
I have always thought that the wind, being that she was once called "Maria," is one sexy feminine beast of nature. Yours may be different. Trust it knows how to contour the outline of you.
The wind on its most basic terms, is my own, personal Hogwarts professor whose course is learning how to deal with all the unpredictability in life and I am a most eager student.
And that course cannot be taught without the most powerful element that lives deep within the belly of the wind.
Magic.