8. The Unknown
Who’s that knockin’ at the door?
The Unknown always loomed invisible but awesome in my life, fascinating me by its refusal to be rationalized or pigeonholed. It seemed that every time I started taking the routines of life for granted some strange, wondrous, or shocking event would catapult itself onto my path, mocking my efforts to be certain of anything.
One day in late October when I was about seven years old, a northerly wind swirled around me suddenly as I left school. Thankful that I had been walking near the fence, I grabbed the wrought iron railing as another strong updraft lifted me about half a meter or more (about two feet) off the ground.
To my intense surprise, I floated there—in mid-air—for a long couple of seconds; then smoothly, delicately, my feet touched down again on the schoolyard pavement. I remained there for several moments, clinging to the fence and more hoping than fearing that it might happen again; but it did not. When I looked around, I saw other little kids clinging to the fence too, and to trees, as the bigger ones pushed their ways home; but no one seemed to be floating at that instant, and it didn't cross my mind to ask if anyone had. I assumed that if I had experienced the wind in this way, so had others. Right now, I was more interested in witnessing the odd phenomenon, to know if it looked as funny as it had felt. But the instants had passed; the wind had immediately returned to its rowdy dance, and to pushing me thither and yon.
While floating in the air was strange in its lack of self-control, it was also pleasantly thrilling and unrecognizably familiar. The strength of the gust surprised me, with its easy power and its strangely fluid strength as it put me back on my feet. I had not been flung into the fence nor turned upside down. It had happened gently, almost tenderly, as if the wind just wanted to have a little harmless fun with a schoolyard full of kids.
Could the air possibly be alive somehow, I wondered, and had I been connected to it briefly in some strange and wholly exhilarating way? It surely appeared that I had. But nobody seemed to talk about nature is such terms, so the event passed on into memory, and became a mere metaphor of what could no doubt be explained in scientific terms.
I wasted little time pondering these proverbial imponderable thoughts for I was not innocent or ignorant of science. I knew what imagination was, and what was commonly known as fact. Though scientists, it seemed, had figured out some rather ordinary explanations for everything, it was quite clear to me that not all of those presumptions could be considered reliable. When many people did not always recognize the soul of other human beings, how could any (mere) human be trusted to know the soul of things not human? I was well aware that a whole group of people could weigh up a situation one way, believe that we had arrived at the full truth of the matter, and yet be wrong simply because we lacked crucial information. I was highly conscious that nearly everyone made assumptions some of the time, even when we knew we could not possibly have all the facts. Experience, of course, reinforced that awareness.
Throughout my childhood, I couldn’t shed the emphatic feeling that there was a whole lot more crucial information that was being ignored or forgotten, knowledge that wasn’t being taught, learned, practiced or employed.
Bio IX
posted by Winter Child @ 2:14 p.m.
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