For days now it’s been the air. Just the air. Breezy, cool, clean, just humid enough. Astounding. The air that heals. Transformative air. You could give air like this to people and they wouldn’t believe it. You made that up, they’d say. Step outside though, the first thing someone says is, “Oh, the air!”
You can explain all kinds of things away, but not that air. Not the open spaces, either, and certainly not the clouds. We sit outside and watch the clouds. Perfect white against the blue, all because of the air. It’s a somatic thrill, this Nature. Maybe a deep genetic memory embedded in the cells lights up. Yes we remember this. Before you came. In the time of the animals.
I was walking all alone. Talk to me, I said in my head. There was an “opening.” Couldn’t be her, though, right?
(How do you know?)
A familiar tone and attitude. Damn.
(I have something to tell you.)
My brain was making this up. Or not. Hold the surface of the pond as smooth as glass, I thought. Say nothing inside. Wait. A tiny splash. Unintelligible, too quiet.
Then louder:
(Be yourself…)
John Hamilton Farr lives at 7,000 feet in Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico, U.S.A. As New York Times best-selling author James C. Moore tells it, John is “a man attuned to the world who sees it differently than you and I and writes about it with a language and a vision of life that is impossible to ignore.” This JHFARR.COM site is the master writing archive. To email John, please see CONTACT INFO on .png)
they wouldn’t just not believe the air, they’d make it illegal, because in our culture anything that fundamentally good and right has to be A Bad Thing and suppressed at all costs.
speaking from the depths of silicon valley suburbia (where i grew up and still live) i sometimes really envy you out there in the Official Middle Of Nowhere, man! 🙂
It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it.