What do you hear when you listen to the wind?
to the wind
and wonder about the future
I was laying at night with the balcony door open. The wind was whipping something fierce. It is starting to get a little cool at night, but it still felt good for now so it stayed open. I could still hear the night insects, but they were much fewer than usual and were being drowned out by the wind.
As I lay there listening to it, I wondered what it was telling me. Long ago when I was in high school, I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. There is a line in there where the author, Robert Pirsig, claims that the ancient Greeks listened to the wind to predict the future.
I looked up the line. Here it is plus a little extra for context:
“The ancient Greeks,” I say, “who were the inventors of classical reason, knew better than to use it exclusively to foretell the future. They listened to the wind and predicted the future from that. That sounds insane now. But why should the inventors of reason sound insane?”
DeWeese squints. “How could they tell the future from the wind?”
“I don’t know, maybe the same way a painter can tell the future of his painting by staring at the canvas. Our whole system of knowledge stems from their results. We’ve yet to understand the methods that produced these results.”
The book is basically a summation of the author's attempt to unite Eastern and Western philosophy; maybe you can see hints of that in the quoted passage. There are some interesting ideas in the book (and the sequel) if you are in the mood.
The author was a very intelligent guy, with an IQ of 170, so I might assume his fact was right, but I don't know. The Greeks did have a lot of strange ways of predicting the future. There was aeromancy—observing the air and atmospheric conditions to predict future events— and augury, which involved interpreting the flight of birds. Either of those might involve the wind.
Anyway, whether true or not, that line has stuck with me in the years since reading the book. And it came to me as I listened to the wind blowing past the balcony door.
Did the wind give me any good answers? I can't say; I fell asleep shortly after writing down the haiku.
❦
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David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. He blogs here and at laspina.org. Write him on Twitter or Mastodon. |
170, is that high? 😃 I took a legitimate test a long time ago, but I don't remember what I scored. It got down to the 30s last night, 64 in the house when we woke up!
At this point I think I'm too old to take one. I think I read before that experience gets in the way of the results, rendering the test much less accurate for adults. I've always suspected that I'd either be right at the average or slightly below it. But who knows. That could be some variant of the Dunning-Kruger effect: I'm more of a jack of all trades, at least when it comes to academic subjects, so maybe my small knowledge on everything makes me feel like an idiot. haha
Wow, it's getting cold over on that side of the world!
Haha, yeah, I think I am the same way being a jack of all trades. It was a psychologist friend who gave it to me and she very clear that she wasn't really supposed to be administering it without an "order" or something like that. I really wish I had kept track of my score.
😀👏👏 !INDEED
Nice: I recently read Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance again, after having read it as a young woman... It is a beautiful quote 🤗
It's a great book to reread sometimes. I think it hits us quite differently at different stages of our life.
Wonderful haiku. Simple, straightforward yet pregnant with possibilities.
When I listen to high winds I unluckily seem to jump into the realm of all bad things happening. There are times though when one is warm and safe inside with some hot beverage at hand where heavy rain and winds can created a safe isolating blanket for one against the world. You got my mind tripping here :D
I LOVE Zen and the art... I read it when doing my bachelor's and it had an impact on me for sure. Nothing I can point to directly but the author's way of lookin at everything, and the way he looked at 'quality' made an impact for sure. This book, and another one called "The Goal" ( i read it when i started working) were two great books to read at the start of life. Thanks for bringing back my memories of these.
You're welcome. Good memories! Yes, Pirsig's ideas surrounding Quality were and are pretty interesting and impactful.
I haven't read The Goal. Who writes it? Is this the book I see on Amazon by Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox?
Yes Eliyahu Goldratt is the main guy behind The Goal.
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