Farsi of the day

"Hava," meaning air or weather. It’s easy to spell: heh, vav, aleph.

I like the thought-grouping expressed by that word. It reminds me a bit of Morgan le Fay of Arthur’s England, who was the Queen of Air and Darkness, and of Satan, who is the Prince of the Power of the Air. You can visualize either of these standing like Saruman on his tower, hair waving and cloak flapping, with the dark clouds wrapping him round and a burst of lighting splitting the sky every once in a while, to be sure the audience is properly intimidated.

Jesus, of course, calls up storms and flattens them to silence; other than Him, I really can’t think of any good guys who control the weather. Possibly this is perfectly rational humility on the part of storytellers; mere men ought not try to run that realm. Earth and sea, perhaps, but the air—who can see the wind? Do you know where it has been and where it is going? To grasp that knowledge can be treacherous.

Yet to fly…as on Lisa’s blog…not to usurp the wind, but to work with it according to its nature, to gain proper dominion maybe, that’s an old dream too, and not unrelated. "Bi-bi-biplane, once upon a sky, plane…" There’s an old saying that eagles may soar, but weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines. Quite so, but you’ll note there aren’t any songs about the heroic American Weasel.

New Mexico is a good place to appreciate hava. This week we’ve been having a lot of it.

Imagine a cauldron filled with dry ice and hot water. The fog fills the cauldron to a level and then spills over the sides. Now imagine a cauldron with jagged crenellations all round the top. The fog will still come to a level, but will come through the low places first. On Friday night, Sandia Mountain was that cauldron, and the clouds oozed through the valleys toward Albuquerque. I had never seen anything like that here.

We were enclosed by a cloud the other day. About three hundred feet up, the mountain simply stopped. Looking west, I saw a house, a bit of road, a bit of hillside, and then white. That was all.

The sun flamed through broken clouds this morning like a candle through a pierced lampshade, lighting up a hill, a tree, a building. The flag flapped madly on the top of the crane strategically parked on the high ground between two building sites. The clouds coming over the Jemez billowed and loomed, forming a round gray tower behind the new round glass building at the lab, the cloud itself an edifice no less imposing, and a lot less shiny. The wind blew; the clouds darkened; snow and splatting rain poured; the darkest has passed, and now the willow is swaying wildly outside my window.

"So instead of the dark Lord, you would set up a Queen, as beautiful and treacherous as the sea!" No, no such power for me. I shall leave hava to the Lord who walks on the cloud; I shall diminish, and remain myself, and become myself. And I would learn to fly.