Wind (and sourdough starter)

A bildungsroman, a roman à clef, a coming-of-age tale, as it were, of a boy and his ongoing relationship with wind.

The wind is alive.  Written in Egyptian hieroglyphs the word for wind is "djah." The word for breath is "tjaw". The two words are nearly identical. Actually, this sign is used interchangeably for both wind and breath with no loss of meaning. You'll notice a sail is used to write both words, in the first as a determinative, a sign that tells you what the sound in front of it refers to, (djah can mean more than one thing, just as English has homonyms) and the second as a phonogram, a sign used for its vocalized sound value. The point is, "breath" and "wind" are both conceptualized and written with a boat's sail, referring to the very life's blood of the country that follows the contours of the river Nile. A good wind always gets me excited. I do love wind. As a boy I'd open up my jacket and hold onto the corners to form wings then lean directly into the wind on my toes as far as I could go without falling forward. I wanted to fly, and that came pretty darn close. I flew kites all the time. Busted them up recklessly. Repaired them. Learned what worked and what didn't work, and why. Made my own kites from the pieces. Bought balsa sticks and tissue paper to design new kites. Painted them outrageous colors, gave them glorious extravagant stabilizing tails. My dad gave me a bolt of string and in my world that was equal to gold. I was intent on using the whole bolt. (I learned that doesn't work, the weight of the string pulls down the kite, but it sure was fun trying.) Attached a camera to one and took pictures of the grounds. I imagined flying strapped to a kite. I wanted to have kite wings. A box kite I made wouldn't lift without a good strong wind, so when one came up, there I was out flying my box kite. This was at an American housing area attached to a huge air base on the outskirts of Tokyo. I saw my father come charging straight at me mad as a bull. I nearly pissed myself, he was a bracing sight in his scary military uniform. He grabbed my arm and nearly yanked it off, berating me all the way back to the house. "What's wrong with you? You've got to be watched every second! Don't you have any sense in your head? This is a TYPHOON you idiot! Get your little ass inside and STAY THERE! How was I supposed to know the wind was a typhoon? Do I look like a meteorologist? This man simply did not appreciate the joy and wonder of kites. The storm intensified. That night was truly frightening. The whole house rattled. Our house was huge and brick but nonetheless we were kept awake hearing it being torn apart. We heard trees crash. The next morning my dad took me outside to assess the damage. The cars were crushed. Check that. Some cars were crushed. Had the tree been uprooted in the opposite direction, which is entirely plausible because typhoons being circular do indeed change directions by 180˚ as the storm passes, our car would have been smashed. As it was, it turned out to be the most fabulous bouncy playground. To a boy, it's all adventure and lark. He pointed out the heavy curved red clay roof shingles that were flung like frisbees and dug into the ground so deeply I couldn't even pull them out. My dad goes, "That could have been your HEAD you little dumb ass." Fine. Point taken already. Sheesh. But I still wanted desperately to fly. Not in an airplane, that's nothing. That's like a car with wings. That's instrumentation. Technology shielding the elements. Everybody does that. I want to fly like a bird, to actually feel the wind. So I took hang gliding lessons.  The very first lesson we removed the gliders from their mylar bags and assembled the cables and aluminum tubes, inserted the battens to stiffen the wings. I couldn't believe I was actually touching a kite that would eventually fly me. Next we held our assembled gliders as if they were kites and we were instructed to tilt them into the wind. This very first day we were actually flying hang gliders as kites. At the moment the wind flows over the wings the kite suddenly becomes weightless and begins to fly as it takes a life of its own and tugs furiously and feels exactly like a horse pulling impatiently on reigns with varying intensities of the wind lifting it. In this one feels the wind is definitely alive, and one tunes to its personality.  Then I bought a hang glider and continued with advanced lessons. I loved every second of the sport from the very first moment. It was just my sort of thing, a perfect fit. But I do have this to say about all of that; the steep loose shale-strewn slopes dotted with cactus and yucca might not be the ideal places to learn hang gliding for a guy whose learning curve amounts basically to a series of low altitude crashes. Perhaps gently sloping cushioned grassy knolls of Tennessee would be a better place to learn. I'm imagining. Now wind automatically makes me think of bread yeast. I hate to have a good wind go to waste. I naturally think of a flour slurry sitting out there with the wind shoving microorganisms directly into it, driving them beyond the surface where they find themselves immersed within the ideal environment and do what microorganisms are made to do -- thrive. I've determined through experimentation some winds are yeastier than others. The winds of Maui are fantastically yeasty on any day. The winds of Colorado, less so. Some winds are, some are not. One hot Colorado summer day my slurry was bubbling by itself within just a few hours while still outside collecting. It was so hot and dry outside the surface of the slurry tended to harden within just a few minutes so I kept spraying water then finally pouring water over the surface, I figured the organisms could swim or wiggle or float down on their own to the slurry. I got tired of all that within a few hours and brought it in. When I stirred it, took a teaspoon sample and inoculated a fresh water and flour slurry, a mere 1/4 cup, it exploded into immediate growth. It was a very powerful starter. The same was true for a cold winter day when the opposite problem of keeping the slurry from freezing had to be tended. In that case, over a longer collection period, the resulting starter was the sturdiest, fastest starter I ever collected. I'm imagining the harshness of the cold culled the weaker organisms so that only the most indestructible survived. When they finally contacted ideal circumstance they got to thriving like nobody's business. That particular starter, the one collected in a freezing wind, was so sturdy, the dough made from it was positively immune to cold storage. As bread dough it continued to rise in the refrigerator throughout its retardation period intended for fermentation. When brought out again to room temperature POW! It took off again. I love that starter. It impresses me mightily. Still have it. It's presently arrested in stasis in the refrigerator, and I sure hope it revives whenever I get around to it again. Steady gusts from some un-yeasty place at some un-yeasty time do not necessarily all carry the same type or number of organisms. This is my conclusion following much experimentation. This starter pictured here was collected over a period of some six hours during a high gusty wind. There were tiny bubbles apparent when it was brought in. The full amount of slurry was stiffened with additional flour. At that point new organisms are introduced from the flour it was being fed. There are two sets of organisms here: those organisms already on the flour that made the slurry and that later stiffened the slurry, and those that are blowing around in the atmosphere. I'm imagining these two sets duking it out. I'm counting on the wind to assure the atmospheric organisms outnumber the flour-carried organisms. I'm imagining a conflict between these two sets of organisms for their environment. I'm further imagining some organisms within the sets will amalgamate and others will not. IT'S WAR! This slurry wasn't just brought in and left to its own resources. I gave it heat. I carefully monitored that heat -- a photographer's light with a kitchen towel tent. A proofing tent! I let it go beyond the customary 12 to 24 hours, this collection had a full 48 hours of lamp heat. It was bubbling away nicely at that point. Then I sampled it, a full half a cup added to another half cup of fresh slurry. It languished. Lazy @ss Ψϖς#%&ξΓΞing slurry. Another full 24 hours at room temperature and barely any rise. Activity, yes, but hardly any rise at all. This is clearly a weak collection. One that almost cries for heat, but I'm not giving it. In the meantime another wind has arrived. I think of collecting again but I already have this one working. What am I, crazy? After a day I feed the collection again. It's not going that great at that point. This time instead of a slurry, which is a little easier, uses less flour therefore introduces less non-wind organisms, I decide on a stiffer substance, closer to dough but still sticky. The organisms do best in a loose wet mixture. This is counter to what works best. I kept the jar near me like a pet so I could keep an eye on it and observe its progress. Look at it. Poor pathetic thing. I got no respect for it. It did double, but it took a full 24 hours. The rubber band is the starting line. A healthy, sturdy, interesting culture could have done that in less than 8 hours. There is still hope for it, I will use this culture, but I doubt that I'll keep it. Who needs a culture that has to be babied like this, or takes so freaking long? Due to its inherent slowness, I'm not even certain it's an atmospheric culture anyway, one that can be directly connected to Denver. It could just as easily be flour-related culture, since it took so long to get going, not that I'm prejudiced towards places of origin or nuth'n, but if I label a culture "Denver" it had best be pure Denver, or at least mostly Denver and not some unknown wheat field in some unspecified state. This culture can not be more than a stepchild culture to all those other cultures I have stored that themselves are neglected because I'm constantly doing this kind of thing just because there is a good strong wind shaking up things.