Winds

Howling winds wake me before 5, but it's racing thoughts that keep me from dismissing the weather and going back to sleep. It's late night hunger and a growing todo list and a fascination with the sound. It's the lizard brain feeling irrationally confused and upset by the winds that pulls me out of bed because of how useless an attempt to sleep feels. My head is a puppy in the hour before a thunderstorm, and when I decide to get out of bed far ahead of my alarm, my phone is full of weather alerts.

I've never seen wind like the wind in the desert, and every time the gusts build up I wait for the moment where the air itself has a character and a force, a solid object that presses against old window panes and crushes leafless trees.

The adrenaline rush is too much for me to go back to sleep, but fades by the time I finish breakfast. I walk to work anyway, knowing that a long day sits ahead of me.

There's a four foot long transperancy print over my desk of the treeline ringing Ethan Pond. In lieu of a window in my office, I have a campus weather camera running fullscreen on one of my desktops. The back of my office is a door that leads into the steam tunnels, and I have to turn up my music to drown out the constant thrum of machines. I don't actually want to drown out the machines; instead, they provide a baseline that remains constant no matter what my mental state.

The physical state of my office is not significantly impacted by the skies; my house is all empty space and long windows and I am never not aware of the strength of the sun at any moment.

I've covered the steam tunnel door with prints, scraps and tests, works in progress, abandoned student work, scraps of newspapers. I nail things to the wall so the room is cluttered and closed in; there are few things I can tolerate less than an empty white plane.

27 January 2014 13:33