The Whirl of the Way

Inauspicious weather blankets the sky, charging the air with an uncertain expectation of a downpour in spite of the clouds' refusal to lighten their load for the past few days. Many farmers once looked at the lack of water as a boon since planting could be done without the fear of seeds washing away. However, the dry spell has served its purpose and now conjuring for water is the new craze for the seedlings are parched. As of now, the sages have not delivered the desired result. Yet, the atmospheric cauldron has spawned great currents. Much like the windy season back home, dust is rampant and erratically gushing about, sometimes sluggish as a seagull, sometimes swift as a swallow, making any basic task an arduous adventure.

Among all the manure, dirt, and all other components of dust, the wind is churning more than mere undefended topsoil. Along with the whistling wind, trees rattle their leaves together creating a familiar, if ominous, cackle, with the occasional twig rupturing and returning to the earth. The leaves though have more motion as the wind lifts them off their branches and sends them sprawling east towards Ohio, Pennsylvania, or even the Atlantic Ocean. Beyond that, however, belongs to privacy of the leaves. Long, uncut grasses and the infamous ditch asparagus waft along with the wind, creating a living wave of sorts, possessing white crests and deep green troughs, mimicking the waters of oceans thousands of miles east and west with each burst being the inward breath and subsequent exhale of the wave. Like fish, birds surf along these hidden currents, hobbling about on the grass and sometimes surfing the winds to wherever the leaves go.

Most subtle of motions are the ones omnipresent during the light breezes and haphazard gusts. Although a foreign entity in the Iowa plains, the wind turbines, like an invasive species, have found a niche within the corn fields, capable of disappearing among the thirsty seedlings in spite of their height and splendor. Tall, chalk-white beacons of modernity, the wind turbines stand against a contrast of decaying farmhouses and barns with their shattered windows and broken boards from ages past to meticulously polished and camouflaged tractors, sprayers, and combines tending to their fields. Much like flagpoles, the turbines stand in unity but are easily overlooked in spite of their looming shadows on the fields and their eerie red pulses at dusk. Similar to the sanguine sages of the past, these turbines channel the innate power of nature to be utilized to create light, air conditioned rooms, and dry clothes. My how standards have changed! Unlike those wicked witches who whimsically whisk water warbling over worn words, the turbines allow themselves to be controlled by nature. Some days they spin sporadically in speedy spurts; other days they turn tentatively. However, their contortions are comforting as they are more consistent than the crops that can be hit with blights, pests, and searing sunlight despite human ingenuity. Due to this constant circular whirling, the turbines reflect a deeper, if more forgotten truth of reality: everything spins. The solar system revolves around the Milky Way galaxy, the Earth and all the other planets circles the Sun, the Moon ambles around the Earth, the Earth spins like a top, the tides follow the moon, the air whirls about atmospheric currents, humans and other lifeforms are complacently locked in daily cycles, and even on the atomic level, electrons are haphazardly encircling protons. Simply put, all aspects of existence are factored into the lazy motion of the wind turbines as the blades slowly move clockwise around a pivot.

Nothing may ever escape these revolutions; even enlightenment is merely an understanding and acceptance of this notion of constant whirling. Our helplessness towards the omnipresent spin-cycle is difficult to contend with as various agents of culture ranging from movies down to hidden connotations of words enforce a distinctly human aspiration to be free from the whirl that so defines reality. As humans generally do, we try to liberate ourselves from cycles only to put ourselves into new ones without realizing the similarity of the situations. What a truly strange victory! Hence, when the wind turbines are still, I feel uneasy. Not only has the rhythm of reality hidden itself once more, but now a cycle has temporarily ceased. Perhaps a new revolution will occur, perhaps not. Either way, the uncertainty of a still wind turbine is like an unopened box: the only definitive way to discover its contents is to open it.