Of Imagination and Memories II.ii

Sophie Kerr Portfolio

II: Self-Portrait as Wind

Cattails and Cornfields

(an excerpt from a series of blog posts, posted 14 February 2011)

Déjà vu, dear readers! This version, however, has been edited since its initial posting. This is also one of the pieces I read for the Senior Reading, a recording of which will eventually be posted on Washington College's iTunesU. Probably.

We have crossed the bridge over the marshy creek that marks the transition from South Cross St. to Quaker Neck Road. Here by the rough side of the ground dips down to the marsh. The reeds and cattails grow tall here. Insley steps carefully to the edge of the watery ground and reaches for a cattail. The tiny seeds fall away at her touch, blowing in the wind like golden cotton. She laughs as the wind carries them into her face. We pull off clumps of seeds and carefully release them to the wind, delighting in way they float through the air and disappear into the blue sky. Clumped densely together on the end of the stalk, the seeds feel rough, but released into our hands, they expand into soft fluff. It clings to our hair and clothes as we spin about, releasing the seeds. It would be no good to try taking a picture of the way they look like magic in the air because feeling is half the experience.

Insley brings one stalk with us as we start walking again, releasing it in bits as we pass the houses of the wealthy. The sky begins to cloud over and the breeze picks up, bring the smell of the river across the road. Perhaps it is not so much a smell as a feeling; the air a little more damp, the wind feeling like it is trying to push a sail and ruffle the water. The houses on the left side of the road all have yards that slope down to the water's edge, and some have their own docks. Eventually we reach John Hanson Road on the right. The soil on the road's edge has turned sandy and it continues until we are leaving the residential section and the first cornfield appears on the right. Soon it is cornfields on both sides and we are walking uphill, into the wind. The Montrose Farm Pond appears on the right amongst the corn stubble, a smear of bright blue in the dull landscape. But it is getting harder to look up and out over the fields because the wind is now gusting, trying to tear us down.

The open land is something of a channel for the wind. The clouds are roiling across the sky and we are buffeted back and sideways. It feels as though we might be able to fly if we could just get enough of a running start and then jump into the wind. Every jump we take, arms outstretched, seems to get us closer to becoming airborne. We are no longer talking, but we run together for a bit, trying to fly, until we are both totally out of breath.

The fields we are passing are divided by thin boundaries of trees and sometimes there is a fence, but each field looks the same in the gray light of the afternoon. The occasional bursts of sun cast the broken remnants of corn stalks into sharp relief and it looks like a battlefield, the dead waiting to be collected. The turmoil of the weather speaks of the battle past, but the dead lie quiet and unmoving. Sometimes we find a clutch of feathers, evidence of the animal dead. But even they are not flying now, just waiting patiently for the right current to take them somewhere.

We must bow low and let the wind tear at our hair to pass through. The corn stubble has roots enough to keep them still. Every time we put our feet down, we must send out roots to balance. But we long to rise up, put these abandoned feathers in our skin, and float away with the cattail seeds and the birds and the spirits.