Le vent, il se lève.
Yesterday evening it got darker a little earlier than usual. The sky to the west was filled with a mass of grey clouds, it glowed softly as the sun went down. The sky to the south still looked a little blue far off into the horizon. I walked out onto the balcony and could feel the wind picking up a little. My friend asked me which direction it was coming, and as I felt the breeze lift my hair up past my ears I knew it was coming towards us. The wind rises, the storm is coming our way.
Sure enough, it started to rain out on the balcony, a rain which was soft but plenty. The sky out to the south was moving further away, as the house started to be covered with water. When my friend said the wind rises, so naturally, it reminded me of the poem that I’d talked about in a previous post by Paul Valéry. But there is also a book, written by Tatsuo Hori, which inspired the famous film later directed by Hayao Miyazaki of the same name: The Wind Rises.
I took a few moments today to read about this book, and I learned that it is the love story depicted in the film. More than that, it is Hori’s own love story about the last few months with his fiancée before she died. Like is said in France about any love story: tout nouveau, tout beau… all new, all beautiful. The love story starts in summer as the woman is painting in a field and the man is lying on the grass beside her. All of a sudden, the wind picks up and her easel and canvas falls. This moment brings the words of the poet to mind: the wind rises… we must try to live. Maybe it was something the author thought at the time, or maybe it came to him on reflection.
Two years later, the woman begins to fall sick and the love story evolves. No longer new, but still beautiful. A little worn by time and the challenges of life. The book, although I haven’t read it, seems to be quiet and simple. It delivers passion through silence, and not through drama. Stillness is the stage on which he explores the intensity of emotions that we might feel when we are in love, so intense that we need to keep quiet about it. It stops itself at the door, unable to be expressed at once. We must wait for such emotions to rise fully, like the wind, and bring the rain to us so we can finally let it go. It takes time, a silent moment to yourself, which seems at first to send the opposite message in any relationship. They go a little quiet, appearing less interested than before. But underneath that façade, did you ever think that a great intensity of emotions could cause such an appearance on the surface?
So often we want love to look like spring and summer. Colourful and hot, active and exciting. But the coolness of autumn and the heaviness of winter also carries with it it’s own story. Cool, silent, muted… if we don’t think twice, we may feel abandoned and lonely. If we take it personally, we may think that something is wrong with us, like a little dip in the mood or energy levels over winter. But if we stay quiet, welcome it and ride the wind as it rises, then we can feel the freshness of the rain on our skin. It can give us a chance to experience excitement again, and it may feel new even if the faces of those in love have not changed.
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