Wind

Who can claim they came to Chicago for the weather? City of windbags, city of wind.

Sometimes I say to the wind Please bring snow, a slab of winter a la mode.

The clouds adorned in bridal white have their delicate hems unraveled by the wind.

The gas surrounding a planet in natural motion horizontally—Neptune and Saturn have the strongest in the solar system.

A bite as crisp as sliced green apples. Chilly ripples of polar blue. 

A breeze tiptoes into the stuffy room, the welcome first guest to arrive at a party. 

Originally “wind” rhymed with “kind” and “rind.” John Donne paired it with “mind,” Thomas Moore with “behind.” Gradually it morphed thanks to the short vowel of “windy.” Though that didn’t stop Ernest Dowson in 1896: “I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind.” 

I love it when an actress in an old movie furiously brushes her hair to indicate her character’s emotional state. Even more, I adore Lillian Gish, wild tresses styled by the wind in The Wind.

When the wind is high it drives the mind to distress. A vortex of anxiety—pathetic fallacy up to here. 

But maybe it’s worse when it’s utterly still. A hope-filled dread versus a dread-filled hope? Why is idleness such a chore to endure? A wraith-like floating amid the days. 

Spring announces itself with wind off the lake as hard and pink as quartz of rose. Dust in the eyes, dust up the nose. Rainbow streamers flowing from the handlebars of a bike.

Ah, to be in the throes of a road trip with one other person who doesn’t mind if you air your toes out the window!

Let’s see if we can’t get wind of the plan. Let’s withstand the winds of popular opinion.

According to Hume, the self is no more than a contiguous series of mental states. If you don’t like the mood you’re in, just wait—another will blow through.

After throwing caution to the wind, throwing other things gets a whole lot easier.

When

I must inform you that time deforms you.

Did you like to draw animals when you were a child?

When something’s funny, do you laugh out loud, or do you stifle? Time, like glass, can be liquid and solid.

I must inform you that when you disobey the rules, you’ll get disqualified.

A television personality has seven seconds to be likeable before someone changes the channel.

According to museum researchers the average visitor spends 15-30 seconds in front of a work of art.

A comet takes thousands of years to complete its orbit. When’s the last time you walked barefoot in the grass? Plastic takes 45 years to decompose in the ocean.

A person can be a minute and a century all at once.

The hour of Christ’s death was three in the afternoon. Maybe that explains the uselessness I feel around that time.

When will destiny choose me as one of her darlings?

“When’s the last time you saw her?”—a question I hope I never get asked by a detective.

I loved math when I was in high school. When will I return this book that I borrowed?

Does anyone currently alive brag about having known me way back when?

When it’s 1:50 pm and 45 degrees, but the display on the bank says 11:15 am and 90, what’s with that?

Last year, my relational sense of self dissolved so severely that I didn’t feel capable of New Year’s resolutions. When the clock struck midnight, nothing changed.

I take immense satisfaction in being prepared, but you can only plan so far ahead. Promise to stop when I say when?

Remember when the novel was a new invention? When Laurence Sterne wrote a whole book full of sentences like this? “The gardener, whom I shall now call the muleteer, was a little, hearty, broad-set, good-natured, chattering, toping kind of a fellow, who troubled his head very little with the hows and whens of life; so had mortgaged a month of his conventical wages in a borrachio, or leathern cask of wine, which he had disposed behind the calesh, with a large russet-coloured riding-coat over it, to guard it from the sun; and as the weather was hot, and he not a niggard of his labours, walking ten times more than he rode—he found more occasions than those of nature, to fall back to the rear of his carriage; till by frequent coming and going, it had so happen’d, that all his wine had leak’d out at the legal vent of the borrachio, before one half of the journey was finish’d.” Nowadays, who has the time?

That was a lie—there has never been a time when I loved math.

Thou

Thou art an old-fashioned, poetic, or religious word for “you” when the speaker is speaking to only one person.

Anachronistic whiffs of gallows and jousting. Counting one’s steps around the pattern of a labyrinth, counting on God’s arms flung wide in the afterlife.

George Fox wrote that Quakers who persisted in using “thou” got abused by “some proud men, who would say, ‘What! You ill-bred clown, do you Thou me?’”

Who cares nowadays about flouting linguistic convention?      Thou needn’t apologize if thou say thou. Although sometimes it’s gratifying to act holier-than- thou.

Dost thou prefer the numerically ambiguous you? Previously reserved for those with high social standing? Your highness, your majesty.

Maybe the destiny of every word is to become the ruler of its own extinct kingdom.

When is a downgrade also an upgrade? “Thou” moved into the realm of addressing servants but also the realm of addressing God. Always bet your time and money on the underdog.

Better to think of a pet in terms of “you” or “thou”? Either way, to own a creature is to render it separate and risk its loss. “I am Misanthropos and hate mankind”— so says Timon in Timon of Athens. “For thy part, I do wish thou wert a dog, / that I might love thee something.”

If you fear loss, should you try to own a thousand of something? That guy earns more than a hundred thou a year.

Thousand-dollar idea: start closing your emails “as you were, or “as thou were,” if you prefer.

When we lived in Louisiana, my parents wouldn’t let me pick up the custom of “y’all.” Ignorant, they called it. But now I see it serves an elegant function.

Y’all are just jealous of that guy.

Martin Buber’s philosophy has something to do with “I and Thou.” I’ve never understood what he was driving at, but whenever somebody brings it up, I pause thoughtfully and nod as though I totally do.

According to Renaissance theories, a ghost was visible only to one person. When a Renaissance person saw one, did they call it “thou” or “you”?

Maybe death is just a tense we speak in.

Kathleen Rooney is a founding editor of Rose Metal Press, a publisher of literary work in hybrid genres, and a founding member of Poems While You Wait, a team of poets and their typewriters who compose commissioned poetry on demand. She is the author, most recently, of the novels Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk and Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey. Her latest collection, Where Are the Snows, winner of the XJ Kennedy Prize, has just been released by Texas Review Press and her next novel, From Dust to Stardust, will be published by Lake Union Press in fall of 2023.

Hypertext Magazine and Studio (HMS) publishes original, brave, and striking narratives of historically marginalized, emerging, and established writers online and in print. HMS empowers Chicago-area adults by teaching writing workshops that spark curiosity, empower creative expression, and promote self-advocacy. By welcoming a diversity of voices and communities, HMS celebrates the transformative power of story and inclusion.

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