SATURDAY morning was windy in Cagayan de Oro. I was then reading Julia Cameron’s “The Listening Path: The Creative Art of Attention.” While still in bed, I could hear the sound of the wind right outside my bedroom window. And at that exact moment, I was reading these words in the book:
“Now I hear a whirring sound. The wind is picking up. The forecast is for winds gusting up to fifty miles per hour. I am grateful not to be flying. Fifty miles per hour is the maximum planes can take off in. April and May are noted for their winds here in Santa Fe. I pad from my bedroom to my living room. A piñon tree whips across the plate glass window. Perhaps because of my Midwestern childhood featuring tornadoes, the sound of the wind makes me nervous. Lily [her fur baby] is nervous as well. She looks apprehensively out the window, staring at the whiplashing piñon tree.
“‘It’s okay, Lily,’ I tell her. ‘We don’t have tornadoes here.’
“My soothing tone of voice calms her down. She crosses to my side, nuzzling my leg.
“From the living room, I hear a shuddering sound. The wind is rattling the chimney.
“‘Maybe we do have tornadoes here,’ I catch myself thinking. Lily retreats to her favorite hiding spot: a corner behind my coatrack. Curled in a ball, she is determined to wait out the wind. Still in my pajamas, I, too, curl into a ball on my living room loveseat. The sound of the wind is primal. I am spooked. As always, when nervous, I take to the page. I am determined to write three pages of longhand morning writing. ‘It’s windy,’ my pages begin. ‘Very windy.’”
I live in CDO, not Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA. I was in my bedroom, not in my living room. I don’t know what a piñon tree is. I don’t have a fur baby, but I do have a stuffed piggy toy that I consider my fur baby — I know it’s not the same, but please indulge me. There’s no need for a chimney in CDO. I had already written my Morning Pages earlier, upon waking up.
Except for those details, I could relate na relate with what Cameron was going through — listening to the wind while still in my nightshirt and curled into a ball on my bed, reading her book.
Is that called serendipity? Or synchronicity?
Speaking of synchronicity, the word itself reminds me of NSYNC, my favorite boy band once upon a time — mostly because of Lance Bass, who later came out as gay. I guess I had — and still have — the weakest gaydar in this corner of the world.
It was Cameron’s “The Artist’s Way” that helped me regain my writing mojo after a six-month writer’s block during the pandemic’s aftermath. That’s the book that taught me about daily Morning Pages and the weekly Artist’s Date.
I got tired of writing about the pandemic then, so I stopped — the first time that had happened since I began columnizing in 2003.
Fast-forward to the present, and here I am relying on Cameron’s description of a windy day.
