STOP BLOWING ON ME

Oh, wind. Let me tell you something about the wind. The wind is like a tetherball that you satisfyingly punch only to have the thing swing back around and puree the cartilage and bones of your poor, sad little nose. Yes! The wind is the most frustrating thing in the world to me. This is how I operate: I see an obstacle, and I [attempt to] crush it with brute force. This is how my life is. I play the sword-slashy-muscled-axeman in every RPG video game. I open bottles with my teeth. It’s just what I do!

            So the wind. The way I work is so straightforward. I tell myself, “KICK THIS WIND IN THE FACE LIZ. DO IT RIGHT NOW.” and I then begin to fight nature. This is so stupid because the wind does not have biology or sweat glands, and the wind will never get tired. The wind doesn’t have knees or tendons or little parts that can stretch or tear. But in my brain, the only solution is the one that involves me pushing the hardest. If I hammer harder on the pedals, I can win the race. If I pull a little more forcefully on my sweater zipper, I can uncatch the snag. But, alas, more often than not these solutions leave me in last place with a sweater that must hang from my shoulders, forever agape.

            The little birds that live in this wind, the little black ones with the bright crimson aprons, know what’s up: they struggle for a bit into the wind, their tiny wings flapping wildly against the gusts, and then the air currents suck them upward and they turn around and fly in the opposite direction. Are they giving up, or are they just being efficient? Are they accepting reality or defeat? Or both?

            In other news, I am in a tent yet again. There is a baseball game going on outside and it reminds me of my childhood, playing softball. Except these are high school boys. So people are actually watching, and there is an announcer and the field does not look like a sad desert with dusty Chiclets hiding in the corners.

            The white team is destroying its opponents, the red and black team, and this also reminds me of my team! We were the black and red team in this scenario. An outfielder just dropped an easy pop-fly—hey! That’s me! MAN this is weird déjà vu.

            I don’t know where we’re going tomorrow—but, then again, I never know where we’re going. Heck! Half the time, I don’t even carry a map! It’s funny, because I feel like I can tell which way I’m supposed to be traveling. “It’s weirdly intuitive!” said the girl who spent forty-five minutes lost in the side streets of upstate New York.

I am sleepy. Can you tell? I am stopping now. Meow.