Gusty and Blustery

"You're only misleadin' the sunshine I'm needin'...ain't that a shame..." from Ill Wind by Harold Arlen 

April is a funny time of year. One day it feels like summer, the next day you're back to winter...it's like you're between the two seasons, in another season called...spring? But spring is warm, and blossomy, and sweet. This cannot be spring - it feel's more like the "season of mists and mellow fruitfulness..." the unexpected cold, the biting showers, the wind...the wind.

The Arab countries have names for all of their trade winds, while the Sirocco blows from North Africa to the Mediterranean, the Santa Ana makes fire season all the more dangerous in Southern California, and the Chinook melts the snows east of the Rockies. The famous Mistral of France blows between the Alps and Cevenes mountains, creating an especially cold and forceful wind that can carry people away. It seems strange that we don't have an equally-famous name for the famously forceful breeze that hits us from across the Pacific. At this time of year, it's omnipresent.  

These days I feel a little like Deborah Kerr in Black Narcissus constantly lamenting the "strange wind that never stops blowing" or something like that...Yes, the sun shines, but the wind rips through you with its strength and chill. The trees are never still, you hair is never combed, and your scarf blows every which way like a banner around your neck. Everything moves between the breath-taking wind and the slow-motion of cinema...like everyone is in the Keystone Cops, being blown down the street into a heap like crumpled paper.

I realized this as I walked through downtown this evening, a silk scarf knotted around in front, and a large cashmere pashmina over my jacket - both of them were billowing rather romantically in the strong zephyr. All at once I thought of Jeanne Moreau in that scene in Jules and Jim when they're riding bikes in the Alps and her scarf tails flutter behind her. I thought of The English Patient, when Kathryn and the Count huddled together in an overturned car in the desert while he tells her stories of the Arabic winds that carry sands to the Southern coast of England. 

I thought of Isadora Duncan...for a moment.

Hermes: the definitive...“French women are extraordinary. I'm thinking of writing a little book about them and their native habitat. All their customs and ceremonials. I mean, their scarves alone…an entire chapter.

Knotted in front, one end down, other end thrown over the shoulder. Or looped around double and the ends tucked in. Or around the shoulder, over their coat like a shawl. Or tied in the back.

I mean, châle, foulard, ècharpe...Just think of all the words they have for scarf. And in a language which is very sparse in vocabulary." - from Le Divorce

Scarves are an accessory meant for the wind. They just go together - the existence of the wind is shown by the way it gets caught in a bit of fabric, while the fabric proves its beauty by being spread out in the wind. It's a symbiotic ballet of liquid force appearing out of an otherwise innocuous moment of regular weather.

One bonus to the bluster: the scarf collection gets to come out to play!