Microfiction #3: The wind never blows in one direction
The wind never blows in one direction. That’s a lie the weather apps tell.
Sure, they can label it with a number and compass bearing. They can display maps of circulation patterns like tiny shooting stars.
But I’ve stood outside when the air is restless. Haven’t you? It tugs and jabs this way and that, from frantic to leisurely an instant later. I’ve felt it caress, punch, and fall abruptly still.
Haven’t you?
*
I used to go mushrooming in the mountains near my home. Chanterelles, morels, boletes. They’re uncultivatable by human hands, wild in the deepest sense. Ten thousand years of human agriculture and science, and we still don’t know how to make them grow.
I hope we never learn.
*
Chaos doesn’t play nicely with numbers, but a slick design will make it seem clean.
The wind isn’t clean. Go taste it now, if you can. Close your eyes and open yourself. I’ll wait.
I’m trying to tell you something, and I’m coming at it sideways, as if I’m the wind, and so are you.
I’m Jenny. I research and write about people and technology.