Better Off_ Flipping the Switch on Technology - Eric Brende [71]
Another time when I was working alone in the garden, the morning began gray, cool, and breezy. I was dry and cool in the breeze. Then the sun came out from behind the clouds and the breeze quit. Suddenly I was sizzling. The back of my shirt became drenched with sweat. Then the sun disappeared again, and when the breeze started, I got goose bumps all over. So it went in ten-minute intervals all the morning. I was in heaven.
My favorite weather juxtaposition, though, happened one afternoon when I was riding in a buggy with Edward along a ridge. It had been hot and still, but sudden gusts of wind began to assail us. Though the sun above was extremely bright, dark gray masses were stealing along the northern horizon, tickling the ground. A ferocious storm was nearing. It was as if another whole kingdom existed just over the hill, a kingdom of darkness that carried its own principles of organization with it, a different kind of matter and space. Then its weird coolness began to swirl in little eddies around my ears. The storm seemed to be moving in the same direction we were, and for a while my skin prickled as I savored the journey between two kingdoms, in the delicious position of one who can touch one world on his left, another on his right, and be a part of either.
But of all the weather displays, none could compare with the sunsets. There was an evening after the rain had fallen. In the hush of dusk, dozens of birds began to chirp sweetly like a chorus of merry sprites. The cool, moist breath of imminent nightfall moved across my face through an open window. Muted white clouds were softly embedded in the blue ground of sky. And there, visible behind the trees, casting its yellow light behind the barn and onto a sapphire expanse of young corn, was the fading sun. The sun itself, though, was not so remarkable this time as its effects.
Another time it was the other way around: the scene framed the sun. The clouds were large white fluffy castles moving slowly through the dusk, pierced through with many-shafted light. The sun was like a prisoner, looking out from behind crenulated openings, cracking flares, trying to make itself seen, its large eye roving from window to window.
Weather can be two-edged in another way: It may stir up feelings of melancholy or memories from the past, take you to a place you do not necessarily want to go. Or it may return you to where you started—which in some cases is another way of saying the same thing.
Fifteen
Weighing the Work
Just as surely as cool air wafted in, warm, muggy air took its place.
It was James’s turn again with the threshing machine. Other crew members climbed aboard the wagon with me: Elbert, swarthy and broad-shouldered; Wilbur, bespectacled, lanky, and loose-limbed. Wilbur was someone I had yet to get to know, but whether it was the effect of his glasses or his lankiness, he was the first Minimite I’d seen who seemed unsteady when the cart began to move.
As we hoisted sheaves, Elbert asked me point blank: “So how hard do you think the work is?”
It was an opportune question, and I thought about it in light of recent changes. It surprised even me when these words came out of my mouth: “It all depends on your mood. The most beautiful job can seem horrible, and the most horrible job, grand—depending on how you’re feeling that day.” Here I suppose I meant to include all the factors that contribute to a mood, such as weather and one’s ability to respond to it.
Wilbur’s eyes grew big behind his spectacles. “I would agree with you on that,” he said. “I would strongly agree with you on that.” He spoke in a soft, breathy baritone and gazed at me with large, sad eyes. The others continued to prod me about how I was taking the heat. I rewarded them with harrowing accounts of might and main on the Yale rowing team: how I’d undergone twenty minute periods of weight lifting without pause or rest, relay races up ten flights of stairs, rowing in arctic temperatures…heroic feats of modern fitness past.
Wilbur eventually cleared his throat,