Winds of Change — Part the Sixth — Epilogue
Posted By Randy on August 21, 2021
In this sixth and final breeze from the Winds of Change, we’re going to spool up the Irish pennants left dangling by what we’ve blown past you so far.
You will recall that I opened the first episode of this series with a quote from the Esteemed Master At Arms James Albert (Jim) Keating that I would like to revisit today:
” … The novice sorcerer is shaped (formed) through working with the wind. Sky arts of various kinds. Getting in touch with the wind and allowing it to know you is important. Just be there. Clarification: There is the wind as an element of weather. Then there is the wind as we speak of. A wild animal found only in wild places. Invisible to the eye this animal is, it seems to be ‘wind’, but it is not. It feels different. Yes, you feel it. This is the WIND that you SEEK on your quest for power. This wind carries immense amount of power and once you learn to work with it the effects are immediate. The thunder beings are related to this wind. They too will witness your schooling in the wild places. You will not always have a guide-teacher. Get used to being alone in body and mind. The path you seek leaves the weak worries of the common man and of mankind itself far behind ….” ~ Places, Power, and MAAJAK; Chapter 13 — Warriors, Wind and Time; by James A. Keating
Jim packed a lot of punch into that brief paragraph. Opaque and meaningless to some, obvious Truth to others. A tantalizing waft of familiarity — even epiphany — to a few.
Lo these many days have I taken pains to curate what would be related in this summary of experience, and categorize each into an entertaining, neat, and easily digestible package. In this there was method to my madness, for such events do not lend themselves to such neat pigeon holing as this. In Truth, what can be pigeon holed is what will fit into a Pigeon’s hole, and this isn’t that.
Each one of these stories is hemmed in by one common limitation — my choice to draw memories of lived events from assorted intervals in my life, and use the written English language to impart them to an audience predominantly schooled to believe that every Truth can be teased out of Nature using the tools of scientific rigour. That everything can be quantified and then only by the “qualified”.
In one of our wide ranging, far too infrequent, hours long telephone yarns a little while back, Jim told me about admonishments he has received from First Nations Friends and Elders over the long years it has taken for him to enjoy the “overnight success” he has today, warning him not to think so much like a white man. We talked of Frogs.
The white man may observe the Frog in its habitat and document what he sees, but who seeks to understand the Frog may also take it out of its environment, kill it, dissect it, see what it has in its stomach, what organs it has, how they are formed and connected, and compare to others of similar kind. Only after it has been thoroughly analyzed and quantified within an ordered structure of “understanding” will it be declared “understood”, but as a frog, not a Frog, because that level of True Understanding comes from a grasp of Meaning and Context. This is not to discount the value of Science, but to remind you that unlike the cheese in the famous song, it cannot stand alone. Everything can’t be quantified into Meaning, and moreover there is no need for it to be unless your world is a Hollywood movie where nothing can be taken as it is and every character needs a backstory.
So getting back to the tales you’ve read in these Winds of Change, I posit that no one is better qualified to use them to toy with and teach you Goode Reader than I, for what more qualification does one need than that of being the foremost, accept no substitutes, living authority on oneself?
Notwithstanding how the Other affected me at those times and places in my life these accounts reflect, and how my senses and mind interpreted events both in the moment and in hindsight at a remove in time, none of this is “story” in the sense of having a beginning, middle, and end. It was all open ended from the start, and will be so until my own story ends which, being immortal, isn’t going to happen. So there you have it, and don’t let that bother you, because as Jim said,
“The path you seek leaves the weak worries of the common man and of mankind itself far behind ….”
I have always found that for some subjects more clarity can be wrought from verse than the most eloquent essay, and with that in mind let me leave you with this. Enjoy, and think on whether you resemble this remark.
Wind’s Not Always Wind My Boy
By LFM
As rising tide will lift all ships,
The wind may fill all sails,
In harness to great enterprise,
And easement of travails.
A wind may blow to good or ill,
To fortune or damnation,
And call it Fate or will of God,
It blows no explanation.
But wind’s not always wind my boy,
As every sailor knows,
And there are days the one you get’s
The Other kind that blows.
At first it looks and smells the same,
But some will come to learn
This wind’s addressed to you alone,
Not whom it may concern.
The why of it’s not always clear,
Nor ever comes to be,
But what is known is once you’re found,
The Other looks for thee.
Alone in deepest wilderness,
Apart in city throng,
Who tread a Wilder way to which
No common men belong.
These are the ones the Other picks,
To toy with and to teach,
To all the rest it’s, “Just the wind,”
Forever out of reach.
Lots of reading and a tad demanding to absorb in one sitting. However,…
trying not to wax philosophical, the Book of Wind suggests the variances that may or may not fit a personal choice but rather, the seeming consequence of what leads to that choice. There are too many instances of being incapable of stalwart decision to render a circumstance to one’s specific delight. (I am avoiding references to my Self-Revealization Acceptance) Too often, choices desired to experience are not formed properly due to the inability correct definition for whatever reason.The ‘Otherness’ is a result of random wrong thoughts in a person or specifically, the exact approbation of the desire. No true way to know. “Strange” occurrences are not necessarily strange nor are they predisposed eventualities from unknown sources, again for whatever reason, and are generally called, by many non-erudite, miracles.
Thought precedes eventuality. And as always, shit happens.