Believing In The Wind by Mark Raney
August 19, 2007 04:27 PM EDT
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“Believing In The Wind” (Free Excerpt) Thus, then, is told the story of a portion of my long personal journey. The fact as well as the fantasy of it, both mixed and well balanced. And even though there have been wider journeys and mightier journeys and deeper journeys, this, here, was mine, alone, and I thought that you would want to read about it. Because it will be back to the south that I soon will go to travel as a traveler. Never again to wander as a wanderer. Because in finding myself, and in finding a home, I lost wandering and I gained traveling, which is better. And however long I travel there will always be home for me to return to. So it is for me to once again and forever travel the south, up and down, back and forth, just as my father had in his way and in his time, and his father and his father and his, and all our kin stretching lord so far back and broad. To keep on and on with the endless searching and seeking that is so us. To come to know, each in his own way and in his own time, all the roads here and the waters, the towns and the bare places, the rocks and the timber. What? Yes, I hear you! To stare into all the sun seamed faces, at eyes gone gray with timeless age and ageless pondering ---- where, why. Why? Eyes gone bloodshot by blown dust on the wind, hard wind roaring. Dulled eyes probing, eyes sorting. Now? How? Where? Why? To slowly savor all the variations of our gentle speech. To come to know melancholically, sentimentally, swellingly, yes, that yes, yes, we are one together and through our beating veins pounds three hundred years of frantic tromp, tromp, tromping this spanse that is our land, unconquerable, now and forever, amen. My south is still there. Though she will be changed a bit and spoiled a bit and prosperous a bit, now, this while I have been busy here. But she will still belong to me too. Because for awhile I was a shaper of her, and one day will be again. The metal and sinew of her. The breath and the force of her. Fully awake now, alive now, with a bold heart now. But cruel and haunted still. Yes that, still. Because there is a cruel and a haunted dark part in those of us from the south. Tucked far down, usually, but there ---- waiting. Something time brought with the wind. We look up suddenly, becoming distant, cocking our heads and listening intently. The trace of a smile begins. We have heard it. And the dark part stirs. Something the forever earth brought with the wind. Whispering voices way back beside brine marshes, whispering voices racing a thin ridge, whispering voices sun slumbering amid endless planted rows. Voices where there are no voices. We stumble and we search, and we stay. An elusive people, an obvious people. A wondrous people who hear voices where there are no voices. I will go to be with my people once again. And I will go to be with my south once again. To see her and to touch her, and to be near my south, again. I will look deeply into her pretty face, and I will say, “I am your brave son. And I have been upon a long and a lonely journey to a far and a harsh personal land. There were many hard difficulties there, but I won a draw there. One day I will win a victory there.” Saying, “And I have returned now to remain near you until the time comes when I again must journey to the far and the lonely harsh personal land. This I did, and will do again, for me, and for you, and for all the kin. Gladly and without fear, until at last I am drained and drawn and can no longer do or be.” And her pretty face will smile a tender smile, drawing me nearer still, and behind her, always, will be the sea and the sand and the inlets and the wind.
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