Do you ever get the feeling that you have said too much or not enough?  Do you ever feel lightheaded or out of control?  Do you ever wonder why you cannot shake an unsettling thought off or ask yourself where it even came from?

It came from the winds.

The Santa Ana winds make me crazy.  For some people, they kick up their allergies.  For others, they worsen their asthma or other respiratory ailments.  The dry heat picking up debris, swirling and circulating, evoking dust to rise causes people to itch their eyes, need tons of water and scratch their skin until they bleed.  It is hot and the air feels thin, like there is no oxygen.

For me, the winds make me want to pull my hair out!

There is something about the warm winds that must date back to the Sahara or Gobi arid climates.  They say that for eons there exists a certain insanity that the dehydrating winds bring upon desert dwellers. And I somehow relate to the depressing, sinking, total lunacy they provoke.

I was fine listening to the howling, hot, blowing air knocking everything over, clanging my wind chimes – until I got outside.  Then, I mysteriously felt like I could not breathe, an unknown source of panic enveloped me and I dove down low into an unwarranted despair.

I was first introduced to this weather phenomenon my first year here in sunny Southern California.  No one ever talks about the winds until they are here and certainly not to anyone out of state.  I was unprepared.

They affect everyone differently but they have an effect on everyone.

And, it is never pleasant.

But then I re-group and remember how nothing outside of me can dictate my happiness, my resoluteness to be love and joy.

I take Cindi out for a walk again later and she does not like it but I am ok.  I am amused by the wind.  I decide I can go with the flow of it, the heat bouncing off all surfaces, encircling me like fire.  I do not get discouraged.  I release pre-judgment about how it has always been, allow the moment, my dog, and myself, to just be, right here and there and now.

Funny how re-framing a situation or letting it go, uncomplicates things.

I was just texting someone near and dear yesterday, “drama causes crazy and negative feelings cause a loss of energy. “

Perhaps the wind carries many positive ions, which are known to lower your energy levels and depress your mood. Ironic how it is positive ions that create negative reactions and emitting negative ions (waterfalls and pine forests) that send you to a happy place.  Perhaps the dramatic change in the weather brings wild, frenzied emotions to surface.  Whatever the reasons and outcomes… this too shall pass is always a good thought, especially as I sit here with my pages “blowing in the wind.”