Passage 39 The Wind
We notice the wind when it seems cruel,when the trees turn away from it, and it cuts into our hearts.“Certain winds will make men’s temper bad,” said George Eliot.In Israel, there is one kind of wind that brings irritability,headaches, sickness and respiratory difficulties.In Germany, a warm, dry wind is said to blow heartaches down from the Alps.
In Southern California,the Santa Ana is associated with an increase in depression and domestic violence. Scientists have tried without success to identify physiological reasons for these reactions.Everyone agrees, however, that dry winds like the Santa Ana,the cold northerly wind in France and the wind in Germany and Switzerland seem to have negative effects on our mental and physical well-being. On windy days, playground fights, suicides and heart failures are more frequent. In Geneva, traffic accidents increase when a wind called the bise blows. At the request of patients, some Swiss and German hospitals postpone surgery when the wind blows off the northern slopes of the Alps. It is human to ask what is behind the wind. It is easy to personify the wind as the breath of God. The act of taking wind into our lungs is what gives us life. The Jews, Arabs, Romans and Greeks all took their word for spirit from the word for wind. Eskimo women once chased the wind from their house with clubs, while the men shot it with rifles to kill the evil spirit they believed rode its gusts. But our day-to-day lives are no longer blown on the winds. We do not identify wind with spirit any more. That is good for commerce, but it exacts a cost to the human eye and heart. The wind blows us simple pleasures. There are winds lapping at shores, bathing us in scents of coconut and spice, beckoning us further.