Thursday, April 2, 2009

Winds O' Change

You know that expression, "The winds of change"? I think I figured out what it refers to. Unlike some learned (pronounced ler-ned) scholars and some jamokes who claim the phrase is metaphorical I know for a fact it is literal.

I was closing up the front gates today at A & E listening to Lamb of God - The 11th Hour when it hit me. Literally. The wind.

It was a warm enough day and a cool breeze blew right in my face in just the right way where you smell and you taste a thousand things. It was just this moment that stood still. And the feel in the air was old. Way old. Old to the point where you stop calling things 'old' and start calling them 'ancient'.

And to put it literally, the wind has been around for..... a few billion years. It changes form and goes through thousands of complex chemical transitions and transfers compounds and breaks down and is absorbed by creatures and animals but some wind has got to be old. Think about it. The air you're breathing could be between 1 hour and 1 billion years old. And I don't know how you can tell the difference or if there even is a way to tell but this wind was incredibly old.

It was an ancient wind. It stirred something inside of me. It stirred my soul. It awoke something in me that I can't describe. It was like a voice came to life inside of me and answered a question I had never heard before. It was like something in that wind, something older than any man, called out to something in me. And part of me, part that felt older than anything I ever felt, a part I'd never heard before, was reaching out and answering the wind.

Like a cry to battle. Like a call to leave this place. Like a voice without words. Like a language flying and swimming in a sea of ideas. Like a need to leave this human body.

It only lasted a second. But I felt like I was supposed to do something. I felt like something deep-routed in my DNA was meant for something else. It wasn't a bad feeling. It wasn't a good feeling. It was an itch I could never scratch. It was a flash of something I never was. It was a taste of somewhere I'd never even imagined. And it was familiar.

I think that was the weirdest part. It was familiar. I've felt this before. Somewhere deep, deep down I recognize it. Somewhere beyond my own memories of Nick Capozzi, beneath anything I can remember as the 24 years of living being, behind anything I can accurately put into words -- somewhere in me or under me or through me it all felt familiar.

And I was supposed to do something. I was supposed to go somewhere. And I keep seeing pictures of mountains. I keep hearing the noise of the sea in my ears. I keep tasting fire on my tongue. It's something natural I'm sure. It's something I'll feel again. It's wild and it's free. It's huge. I mean huge. Vast beyond space. I want to take off sprinting. I want to vault into the unkown. It's like this spike in adrenaline and my breathing gets a little shallower. And everything slows down just a little. And I remember things I never experienced. And I want to break free. Break free.

It's in the wind. And it feels like forever. But it only lasts a couple seconds. And it's gone. You keep pulling down the other gates and locking the masterlocks and the cars are still driving by and volume slowly leaks back out into the world around you.

And that's it. It's a taste of something. Something 'anceint' I guess. I can't prove it ever but I feel like it's something animals feel all the time. Maybe something trees and plants feel. It's like the very very basic lowest form of feeling 'alive'.

You want to run, to dance, to fight, to explore, to breathe, to jump. To live. It's electric and it's a feeling I've had before. And I'll have it again at random.

I assume other people feel it, too. Or I'm off my rocker and listening to too much Lamb of God (that's a joke, you can't listen to too much Lamb of God). Either way, I'm pretty sure that's what the winds of change really are. And why you ask is "O' Change" in the title? I felt like making the title more Irish. Duh.

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