We need months of insanely beautiful weather, even if we'd have to be bag ladies. Out of breath…
Then we need the sky, or skies—how many are there—to be overcast, to breathe plainly, to want to escape the outer world for home. To tolerably and intolerably lone. To buy long books and read them.
To bloodlessly crochet. Without blasphemy, I can truly say that we need to jar home-grown, hand-picked tomatoes and, when one is done, listen at night, as to an old tale, to the wind weathering what remains of them. We need clouds and heavy storms. We need to sit through them with a cold and, though we ask what for, from time to time, to be unable to see very far. We need to dream, in fever, of sandy dunes.
And how does life feel for those who move mildly between wet and dry—between the earth giving everything back as rain and the earth keeping everything? What happens to longing when there is no winter to make one forget oneself, no spring to make one believe in return?