the touch of a passing wind.

do you know when it's time for change?

The Field and the Knower of the Field (2023), Hana Ward

Dear Reader,

After a hit or two of my joint, making myself a very good iced decaf latte, and putting on Esperanza Spalding’s, “SONGWRIGHTS APOTHECARY LAB,” album from the top, I’m finally talking to you, and that brings me a lot of joy. I’m so happy to be sitting with you again.

You know, we’re in two different sides of a world right now. I’m writing, and soon, you’ll be reading. Strangely enough, we’ll feel right beside each other, I hope. Heh, the high has kicked in. CLEARLY.

I’ve had a lot to marinate on within the last few months. We’re now in June, the weather has changed, the anxieties look different, and perhaps, so do our goals. And there have been unfinished obligations taking up major residency in my mind, nagging me for an attention I meet with familiar fear.

There is a line in “Monster’s, Inc,” that my little sister and I love to say when the occasion calls for it. It’s from the scene where we properly meet the antagonist, Randall, for the first time as he confronts Sully and Mike in the locker room to let them know he’s vying for the number one spot of scary monster at the company. Right when Mike is about to get smart with him, Randall shushes the boys and goes, “Shh shh shh… you hear that? …It’s the winds of change,” while passing his hand in the air like the wind was moving right across their eyes. As a kid, I understood the context of it at the moment, but not the application of it to life as I’d know it.

Of course, you’ll never understand until you have to. And as an adult with a life that needs constant regard and intentionality, I get it now. All of it.

Vianne (Juliette Binoche) & daughter, Anouk (Victoire Thivisol), “Chocolat”

The notion of wind is one I can stand beside, because as I got older, I noticed it more. Appreciated it often. I began a relationship with nature bred from my constant search for an environment safe to daydream. I loved my parent’s porch, especially the way my mother would decorate it with fresh flowers during the hotter days. At night, I’d leave the door open to hear the crickets and the wind blowing through trees, and I don’t know. Wind can be treacherous, but my God, it can be so kind. I saw it as nourishment, or permission for reprieve. I saw it as something apart of the elements of Earth, and it’s not to say I took it for granted, but I didn’t know that wind could be so much more. I didn’t know how it could speak.

One of my favorite films is “Chocolat,” where Vianne, a nomadic woman of Mayan descendant, and her eccentric daughter, Anouk, travel to a small, religious French town and open up a chocolate shop right before Lent (the Christian season of preparation for the rising of Jesus Christ. For 40 days, you are asked to sacrifice something. Many sacrifice chocolate because of its heavy temptation). Vianne has a strong attachment to her traditions, which is to travel to new places and share the power of Mayan cacao through her shop. Once the impact is made, it’s time to go. No planting feet. Home resides in their suitcase. Adult Anouk narrates the film, recounting that time in the French town and how Vianne freeing the people from clutching to their rigid religious traditions with her spirit and chocolate freed her from her own attachment to a culture that she was raised in but gave her life no say without. This town taught her community and became a place she, finally, planted her feet.

During the film, Vianne would communicate with her late mother’s ashes and bow to the obligation of her ancestral tradition when the touch of a passing wind came by. She’d close her eyes, and with a submitting deep breath, Vianne would listen with the hairs of her skin. The winds of change would speak. Once you saw her take it in, you knew something was underway.

Well, readers. I’ve felt a few winds, myself.

Quite a few. At first, they weren’t very clear; Los Angeles in its version of winter has intimidating winds when it wants. But when I couldn’t interpret them, I could always rely on the growing restlessness that made my most favorite mundane things look too… plain. That meant I was distracted. And ‘distraction usually confirms destiny.’ What do I mean by that?

Whenever you’re about to embark on a new journey, right at the beginning, it usually feels too hard. It’s new, it’s strange, and what you know is always within your grasp. When our minds interpret new things, they immediately hyper-focus on the fact that the mastery will take long to get to. Doesn’t matter if, at least, you’re ON a path. The painful point is, the path is long. A series of constant discomfort, and we hate it. We want no parts. And so, we seek distraction to disrupt the destiny. You get in your way. If you’re self aware enough, you’ll know that at these moments, when you want to tag distraction into the ring to knock its opponent down, is when you have to step in and cockblock the attempt. Protect destiny. Encourage it, affirm it, cheer it on heavy. But for many of us who just don’t have that protection down pat yet, we succumb to the distractions and delay the destiny.

There are times when I believe “You are always right on time.” And then, there are situations that counteract that with, “…but you can miss your moment. If you ignore the truth enough, it’ll be longer and harder to get to it.” It’s possible that the obedience to delay can back you into a corner of thinking you can never do it. There’s a window for your audacity, but it can close. And so, there are moments when you finally allow yourself to catch your breath. To get some sun. To abandon the overwhelm. And, if you’re like me, you go running to feel some wind. Even if it’s cold outside, the sharp daggers of the chilling air brings you to life, in a way. And on a hot summer evening, the wind you beg for touches you in affirmation. The wind disrupts the chaos in your mind and reminds you that you and it are here, and here is enough. Here, there is so much to build from. Not from your past, not from your future. The wind brings you to life in that you are breathing it in and how good does that feel? In the silence it enforces, you can hear clearly now. And if you let it, it will speak. But will you listen?

When I turned 30, I was fed up with everything that my life was and I was eager and ready for the journey. I didn’t even know if I could do it, but I did know trying had to be better than (flails arms around) all of this… stagnancy. Lost potential. Life was so great after I made that major decision. I could feel my hair coming out of its tight braids. I could feel the eagerness in my gut. And I was down for whatever. I turn 33 this September, and I feel that new transition coming in. It is much more mature but just as shaky. Less wrapped in chaos, but just as intimidating. “Risk,” the wind has told me. “Risk it all.”

I am comfortable in my career, with the cheap coins I make. With the rent I can pay and the food I can eat and the lover I can call and the friends I can hang with. I ignore the pages, I turn away from the potential, I forget the goals. All because my spirit knows that’s what is coming next, the shaking of the faux foundation my brain wants to believe it has so it doesn’t have to keep moving. So, I look for distraction. But thank God for self awareness. Thank God for Martin Scorcese triggering me when he said, “I’m old. I read stuff. I see things. I want to tell stories, and there’s no more time. Kurosawa, when he got his Oscar, when George [Lucas] and Steven [Spielberg] gave it to him, he said, ‘I’m only now beginning to see the possibility of what cinema could be, and it’s too late’. He was 83. At the time, I said, ‘What does he mean?’ Now I know what he means.” (read full interview here)

When I finally felt the wind blow, THAT wind, it almost felt as if God was blowing a blow from his mouth so hard, it becomes a raspberry. Change has dynamites at my door, ready to blow it down if I don’t open it. Baby, we are HERE. Because my body, my spirit, and my mind are not at ease, and it’s because I am closer to the edge of needing to be pushed to fly again. My writing, my hunger to tell stories, my ability to produce/create/alchemize my own work has been begging for my attention, and all I’ve done was tell it that I’m still learning, because I need more to give my dreams what they deserve. And all they want is for me to play with them.

They just want my time, not my perfection.

There’s a wind blowing your way. Only you know what that looks like, when it attracts the hairs on your body. But you mustn’t ignore it. We can’t. That adventure, you crave it. You may not want to crave it, but you do. Because you crave the expansion. You are hopeful in seeing how you turn out 50 years from now, or maybe 10 years. 5 years, or 2 years. You have hope for your future.

That future starts now. And it’s not asking you to be it. It’s asking you to start. Because your start is its finish. Start, and keep going. You will look for distractions, but it’s because the hard work is not fun, or not quick with results, or not as readily accessible, or or or—

Or, fuck it.

If you’ve never felt the wind, give yourself some time to. Go to a place and stand in it. Listen for nothing, and it will tell you everything. Get calm and emotional. Go inside of yourself, if you must. Wait for the rise of goosebumps tracked across your skin. Brush the hairs across your cheek. Inhale air and exhale sacrifice. “Sacrifice? Sacrificing what?”

Not knowing. Because, you do. You might just fuck around with destiny and find out.

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The art featured is from artist Hana Ward’s, “How To Build Up Worn Out Soils.” As written, the collection, “…speaks to a theme Ward has been mining in her work for years: self-determination and transformation despite limited resources.

Like many of Ward’s titles, this one is polysemous—worn out soils refers to both our minds and our environments. Ward considers the ways subsistence farming has historically provided a path toward Black socio-political self-determination, and that self-determination, a catalyst for self-possession. Ward extends this practical labor of place-making and turns it inward to the ethereal, our minds and internal worlds: nurturing the seeds of divinity within each of us, cultivating our energy fields, and enriching our lives in the process.” (x)