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Green John
As I trucked the forty five pound bag of paraglider flight gear up to the ridge on my back, I marvelled at what a beautiful and pleasant place I was trucking through. I was familiar enough already to expect joy from every step. The load was no lighter but the joy in each step added energy way beyond the fuel sufficiency I needed to get to the ridge.
The wind needed no gauge of accompanying instruments. It played the eucalyptus trees with natural delight. If ever the wind had mastered an instrument, that instrument had to be that strand of eucalyptus trees. Sure, I had heard the wind play these trees before. Sure, the song was similar to what I had heard before. But, still, it was a different tune.
The listener does not make the song. Yes, the listener DOES make the song. In, the following way, maybe. Had I not heard the wind play, the wind would have played the song the same way. And had the wind played the song yesterday, the wind would not have played the song the same way. Because the wind is the essential jazz nut. Nothing is ever played the same way twice. And somewhere in that is the essence of jazz.
Too, was what I heard different from what the wind played? You betcha! In several ways. Essentially, the listener is playing an instrument in the song the listener is hearing. And had I heard the wind playing this song yesterday and I had played along yesterday, then I would have heard the difference in the way the wind was playing today. Thus I would have played differently today. Keep in mind here, I am talking about playing with the wind. A consummate jazz artist. This was no case of a four note half wit in a Britney Spears concert. I was playing with the wind.
As I left the eucs and faced the wind alone on the ridge, the wind started the next track of its album. Now, I became less of a fine second fiddle as my mind turned toward a task it had been trained to turn toward by virtue of long years of training and experience mixed like a fine single malt scotch and the perfect volume of ice.
Wind lifts I pull
I doffed the flight bag and began the take off display of the canopy. I was as always amazed and humbled to see a forty five pound bag of stuff become an incredible flying machine. A hundred and fifty square feet of canopy lay before me. Its myriad lines connected every foot or so to the upward looking belly of the canopy. The lines came together like river tributaries and the two rivers themselves ended at my harness, one connected to each of its “wing bones.”
As I buckled into the harness, the wind, which was now playing pure wind proved itself once again a dancer’s dancer as it had proved itself a musician’s musician. It tested its feet doing little snags of the canopy. Yes, shall we dance?
Facing away from the canopy and into the take off, I took one of the rivers of lines in each hand. I brought the lines over my head and whirled to face the canopy, with my back to the take off. The wind was doing a little merengue at my right hand end of the canopy. Suddenly, the wind lifted the end of the canopy six feet or so into the air and pitched it at me. I tugged the brake line and quickly returned it to its supine place on the ground.
I now was ready to tug at the lines and bring the canopy off the ground expecting the wind to gracefully dance it into position over my head. The far edge the wind had been playing with would become the leading edge when the canopy was inverted over my head. As I tugged the far edge off the ground with the leading edge lines, the wind helped and pushed the canopy upward. I pulled it toward me. Perfect tension in the lines between the canopy and me. The canopy was overhead. A test to see if the wind and I were in harmony.
As I prepared to bring the canopy up in earnest, I saw him. About 75 feet along the ridge.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
“Are you one with the wind?”
“Yes”, I replied.
Fitting that the wind was a major character in my first encounter with him. I, of course at that moment, did not know how fitting. The planet Mercury is a lot like the wind. Quick, communicative, transporting, resourceful, busy, transformercating. He, Mercury, and the wind comprise a metaphor triangle.
–TransOm
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