There are times when I imagine standing on a beach, just watching the surf break, as the wind blows across my face, across my body; through my hair, through my dress. Like caressing hands, both fleeting yet impressionable, both weak and yet strong. I just close my eyes, take a deep breath, and let sensation take over me.

I rarely go to the beach, yet I love going. I hate the beach itself – the sand that gets everywhere and itches, the salty water that’s makes you feel like you’re drowning after a few mistaken mouthfulls, not to mention what it does to your skin and hair - especially your lips. But I love everything else about the beach. I like the way the surf crashes on the sand, of how it’s so rhythmic and yet so different each and every time. How sometimes, you mark an imaginary line and think that the ocean cannot reach it, but somehow it always does. But mostly, I love the feel of the wind on my face; how the gusts never seem to stop, never seem to rest, all throughout the day and night. Sometimes it gets calmer, especially during the night, but it’s never not there. Every time I am in a place where the wind blows across my face, pulling my hair, making me blink more often that the norm to avoid drying my eyes, I feel… renewed. Free, somehow. Wistful, as if I’m yearning for the freedom I somehow know I have but can never really... own. Does that make sense? When the wind blows, I always somehow end up taking a deep breath – more than once – to savor it. As if, by breathing it in, I can somehow retain and take up some essence of the wind that I yearn so much for.

What would it feel like to be one with the wind? To cross oceans, lands, cities, and the world all in a few hours? To touch so many people and yet leaving them unmarked? To have that freedom, to go wherever you will and knowing that there is no barrier, no place, where you cannot blow, even once. For no matter how high a mountain gets, I’m sure it’ll storm there at one time or another and, thus, wind blows. The only place a wind cannot get is the bottom of the ocean. Waaaay down. Possibly at the bottom of the Mariana’s Trench. But if the winds are strong enough and the ocean is being temperamental, 50 meters down, you’d be swaying this way and that because the current is pulling you all over the place – believe me, I know. So even though there’s no wind under the sea, the currents pretty much act like a gale to creatures that live there.

Sometimes I wish I could be one with the wind. Or even a feather or a leaf that’s buffetted this way and that, following whatever the wind wills. How cool would that be? To just exist, eyes closed, confident that you’ll end up where you’re meant to end up in. To have the freedom I imagine sky divers and bungee jumpers experience each time they open their arms, jump, and embrace a form of matter that’s less substantial than ourselves, yet somehow stronger than we can ever hope to be. You could almost believe you’re flying. What I’d give to be Superman or a bird – maybe an eagle 'cause if I’m going to aspire to be a bird, then I’d want to be the king of the birds, yes? – and open my arms (wings?) wide and just fly high up in the clouds where I can do whatever I want, go wherever I want, all the while looking down on Earth.

The solitude, the freedom. You don’t even have to think, you just have to be. You don’t have to choose, you just have to believe. You don’t have to open your eyes, you just have to enjoy. Where nothing more is asked of you than for you to be you.