I’ve Flipped for Flippi!

Vornado fans. I’m a big fan — shameless word play.

Their engineering design is so thought out and cool — no word play intended.

Their fan base — ack! not again! totally unintended — is passionate about their many products. Vornado’s home.

Worth checking out the design. Blew me away — ack! enough already! One of many vids here.

Videos and research convinced me to purchase the novel Vornado 279 fan at Costco last summer. Could not be happier! It’s a keeper!

So impressed was I by its power to circulate air and cool a room (a challenge in Arizona inferno) and small footprint that I’m a now a Vornado loyalist and unlikely to purchase any other brand.

Enter Flippi.

Not to be confused with Flipper, the famous dolphin. What I’d give to be at a beach!!

I stumbled upon this lil’ gem at Costco Sunday.

Flippi desktop fan by Vornado. Coffee cup not included.

Serendipity.

I’d been mulling how to move – remove hot air from my shower area — in a confined back corner with zero air circulation and worthless tiny ceiling “fan.”

ANYTHING to help alleviate this Phoenix, Arizona heat — now and certainly as we move into months of air-conditioner and fan use 24-7.

The baby Vornado fan. Perfect solution!

Turns out to have many more uses than originally intended.

Take my patio.

On second thought don’t you dare!

Love my lil’ patio! One day it’ll make the blog, this simple unadorned humble patch of concrete with weathered wooden rails painted brown.

Only some apartments in this huge complex have patios. “It costs extra,” management informed during the tour.

A no-brainer. “I’ll pay it,” I replied without hesitation.

Of late – especially with this stupid lockdown — I’m spending most of my time on the patio: while I still can. While weather permits.

It’s a “chill” 102 (38.8 C) today, May 5.

Quite soon it’ll tap 110 degrees (43.3 C), then 115-120 (46.1-48.8 C), where it’ll remain for months, forcing us into indoor lockdowns.

If the mountain will not come to Muhammad, then Muhammad must go to the mountain.

The mountain be mobile.

For Flippi is so mobile … lightweight … versatile!

It moves as I move through my space.

It travels from a spot next to me in my beach chair on the patio, delivering a small gentle breeze in otherwise dead-air Phoenix …

to the floor next to my yoga mat …

to the kitchen counter next to my papasan chair …

to the vanity by the shower room to move trapped hot air and maximize air-conditioning.

So cool!

Coolest is the versatility packed in lil’ Flippi!

• An adjustable tilt head — maximizing Vornado’s signature air circulation
• A base that swivels or stays still
• Two controls for low or high air flow
• UBER quiet!

Magnificent! Tough to achieve in a small unit — we’ve all heard those high-pitched whines. Ear-bleeders. Can’t use it.

Quiet operation is a deal-breaker. Because I’ve got human dog ears. A gift and a curse like most gifts. I also suffer with misophonia and audio-sensitive migraines. So for this alien / freak, Flippi passes muster.

All these breezy perks for about $20 ($28 CAD) at Costco!

Since discovered oodles of rave reviews (unsurprisingly) on Amazon and priced at Costco’s. Sweet!

https://www.amazon.com/Vornado-Flippi-Personal-Circulator-Midnight/dp/B000YKC0UY

Given dual challenges in my domicile and out in the desert, I must say as a hard-core loyal Costco customer for some 18 years across state lines is that this surprise find is among the finest!

Vornado ist wunderbar!

I’ve flipped for Flippi!

(p.s. review is wholly my own; the reward is in in deserved public rave about product & company)

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Hey Donovan, where’s wind to catch?!

Hot.

The ONLY word that usually springs to mind when Americans hear “Arizona.”

They are dead wrong.

Arizona’s also got spectacular forested mountains, a lot of snow, skiing, and bitter cold remote lands as well as scorching desert.

Topography’s not the focus of today’s post.

Southern Arizona — including Phoenix — is desert. It’s got serious heat for sure.

And something else that’s not written about nearly enough.

Stillness.

Unmoving air once the heat arrives.

A hot limp air that enfolds the body. Wraps itself around and tightens. Perhaps imperceptibly at first.

You feel squeezed for air yet can’t say why. Your skin becomes taut. Strains for moisture. Reaches for relief.

You hunger for whatever’s oppressing to lift. It does not. The force presses only more on the body, the lungs, the breath.

Your body trembles. Rattles like bones dried by the desert.

Yet you are not moving. You’re frozen. Frozen?! How can that be!? It’s a blistering dry 100+++ (37.7 C!)

You. Are. Inanimated.

Then the Force who’s sucking your life your life your movement is revealed. Reveals itself really.

Stillness.

Not a wind. Not a breeze. Not a whiff.

Utter. Stoppage. Of. Air. Flow.

“Ah, but I may as well try and catch the wind” sang Donovan.

Well, yeah! Were there wind to catch!!

There’s Just Heat. Suffocating Immobilizing Unmoving Heat.

Do not underestimate heat. Heat kills. This is fact. The body on its own terms is not designed to survive brutal deserts.

That’s why you won’t see condos in the Gobi desert! Or, locally, Arizona’s Sonoran desert.

Heat gets all the attention. Deservedly, to a point.

Yet the Stillness is its Evil Sister. The unaddressed secreted wizard behind the curtain. Bolstering a suffocating  hot.

Not a whiff of breeze to “cool” the skin. Haha! As if!

Let me say upfront: Heat is brutal.

Its stillness is, what, the nail in the coffin?

Yet another example of God’s infinite cruelty?!

I mean, c’mon God, your earliest human creations survived in f-ing deserts! You put them there!

So for their survival why not equip them with tiny pop-up fans on their hands?!

I mean, if I’m God, I’m gonna give my “beloved children” a means to a BREEZE while they’re forced to live in and bake in the damn desert that I created!

The unmoving of air in a desert inferno oppresses oppresses oppresses. That needs more airtime — =no pun intended.

There, my work is done. Note: that’s desert, not dessert. Oh what relief in a typo!

Fantastical relief for DESERT residents

From our seats see feet in flight

So I love the Wind.

Lord knows I love it!

Thus it’s with reluctance that I take my Morning Pages and coffee into the cafe rather than onto the grass of Courthouse Square as originally planned.

The midday gusts carry just enough chill — winter’s thready vestiges perhaps? — to reroute me to a prime seat at a large window — perfect for people-watching!

Not that that’s my intention.

I do try to write my Morning Pages — journaling first thing each day, before the day and mind fully unfold.

But distractions happen. Procrastination in particular happens. Truth be told, I’ve done Morning Pages in afternoons and evenings. Not ideal but better than a (too-common) big fat 0.

But today (dammit!), I’m letting nothing get in the way of the Pages. Not the many tourists and townsfolk strolling the streets of charming downtown.

Not the variety of vehicles, the cars, trucks, motorcycles or bicycles.

Not dogs on their leashes — abundant in this dog-loving town — leading their humans/owners (or vice versa if the owner’s good) around the grassy square.

Not even the state and American flags billowing furiously courtesy of the Wind.

Neither restless branches nor jittery leaves of giant trees on the square set against a crystal-blue sky can stop pen upon paper this fine day.

With iPhone set to Pandora’s Van Morrison station and earbuds securely stuffed in — chiefly to drown out the Most Annoying Dronish Voice of a female patron nearby — I begin journaling. The words flow, flow, flow.

So imagine my surprise when eventually I break concentration to raise my head, glance outside and discover the presence of a man directly on the other side of the pane!

Where’d he come from?! When did he arrive?!

No matter.

He sits by himself at the small round outdoor table.

An older fellow that honestly I couldn’t describe in detail save for his gray ponytail – perhaps – and gray cotton shoes – definitely.

It’s what he’s doing that captures my attention.

He’s sculpting.

Precisely, he’s applying very dark gray (almost black) clay onto an armature of a human in motion. The wire armature is perhaps a foot tall.

I’m riveted as he fleshes out the torso, a little bit of clay at a time. He presses here, rounds there, smooths here, creating curves of a rib cage.

He’s as focused on his art as I am on mine. Or was — ’til I glanced up and spotted him and his clay male figure just on the other side of the window!

I observe passersby responding to the unusual sight of an artist crafting, oblivious to the world An experience and feeling I know very very well!

Some slow, look over their shoulders, keep walking.

Some glance, barely, and keep walking.

Scant numbers stop altogether for either a closer look and/or to chat with the artist. Who, judging from the brevity of exchanges, is more interested in continuing with his creating than conversing.

Can’t say I blame him! Not a bit!

Like him, I’m more interested in continuing my writing than closing my journal to continue watching the fascinating scene unfold.

So I put pen back to paper and look up only now and then to observe the sculptor’s progress. He’s molding and shaping his way up from the armature’s feet to legs to torso. Still to be fleshed out: the arms and head.

Due to a commitment, I haven’t time to stay until its completion — if indeed completion loomed soon.

I pack up my backpack, exit the cafe and pass the artist, who’s now standing, evidently for a better angle while working.

While Inquiring Minds — Such is Mine — Need to Know, I forego query or conversation with the artist so for him to have his space and solitude.

As someone who FREQUENTLY writes in the noisiest, most ruckus-y of places! — from pubs and bars to street corners, cafes and courthouse squares — I appreciate being left alone while engaged in creating. Or reading. Or any solo activity.

In that regard, I sense a kindred spirit and let him and his man-in-the-making be.

But I leave you with this: a quick sequence of snapshots, my side of the window. Look closely and you can make out the wire arms, extended, and the head still to be fleshed out.

What these snaps capture are the creator’s hands flowing down a limb, giving it shape, giving it form, giving, ultimately, Wind beneath the feet.

Ahhh, Wind.

Poetry in clay, poetry in motion, today’s perfect moment …

Breathe Me, Wind!

Write what you’ll miss when you die.

April 6 prompt, “A Writer’s Book of Days”

The wind.

“Reeeeally?!” she exclaimed. She being a healer with whom I work when, just the other day, I mentioned — on a excessively windy day — how I looooove the wind!

“Reaaaallly?!” Her surprise saturated her voice and look on her face.

She’s no fan of the wind and apparently is not alone.

One of the joys for me of living amid the high and low deserts and mountains of Arizona is the wind.

Coincidently, we’re due for a particularly windy week, say the weather forecasters. The lion’s roar of spring. Good news for me! And the lion. 🙂

Ain’t easy to articulate exactly what about the wind so energizes me.

Uplifts me. Relaxes me. Cleanses and comforts me. Liberates me from the mortal chains and circles of worries.

Wind is both He and She and yet Neither. It can go either way depending on the day. Wind is androgynous.

Wind is the maestro of the world.

By her invisible hand holding an invisible wand, she conducts the swaying of tree limbs and the bending of branches.

She directs tender stems of tulips to arch and petals to launch from their green bases.

She commands puffy seeds of dandelions to scatter and ride the reckless roller coaster of invisible currents to destination unknown!

Wind shoves hats off our heads, pushes hard on our backs or gets in our faces in sweeping playfulness. No harm’s ever meant. Wind does what wind does without malice or intent to hurt.

{Can the same be said about human?}

Wind clears patios of dried fallen leaves, twigs and manmade trash like plastic bags.

Wind lifts particles of dirt, visible only under a microscope, from the hills and deserts and backyards and garden and mountains and deposits them — in crazy randomness — a mile away. Or 10 miles away. Or 20.

There’s no telling where the dirt that’s outside you right this moment came from! Where it’s been or where it’s going! It’s been around all right! As much as a promiscuous whore or a streetwise waif.

Wind is the World on the Go.

I reckon that there nails it for me!

Wind is Movement.

And I am movement.

Movement and mobility are deeply, profoundly inherent in my nature. Ask anyone who really knows me. Ask them where in the world I’ve been. Heck, ask them my address! What town I live in. Or what state — this time!

Gypsy. Rolling stone. Nomad. Wanderer. Restless wanderer. I’ve heard ’em all.

And I am all of those.

Yet in purest and simplest expression, what I am is a traveler. A natural traveler. The way I move through life is unique. My perspectives in life, doubly unique, in part because I AM so adventurous. Unafraid of moving through the world on my own.

Many have commented: “You’re so courageous, always going places where you’ve never been, doing it all on your own.”

My response is: “Nah. It’s who I am and what I do. Fear, to me, is staying put.”

The Wind.

She can never be roped in. Made to stay in one place. Confined. The words alone are the very antithesis of Wind!

I’ve often said that if ever I lose my mobility, if I ever stop moving, I’m dead. My father, bless his soul, was like that as well {though I’ve got the need to move even more intensely … if he was a 6 on a scale of 1-10, 1 being a deadbeat/couch potato, I’m a 9 or 10!}.

Yes, I’ll miss water when I die. Very deeply so. Water’s my element. My home on planet Earth. My nurturer. My mother of Mother Earth. Water is my friend … my healer … my regenerator … my all.

Wind, however, is my Spirit.

Breath. First. Without breath, we do not exist.

Freedom. Uplifter. The Creator who enters the jail and hacks off my chains.

It’s true. One day I won’t be around to hear the music of the wind blowing through the trees … or feel the sand of the beach striking my eyes … or hold tight to a my signature baseball cap on my head.

And while I shall miss the Maestro of the World that is the Wind, there’s something that can’t be forgotten.

When I go, I’ll leave this earthly Wind … and hitch myself onto the Winds of the Cosmos.

As Wind is eternal, so am I. A traveler … in time and space in my Subaru, listening to the wind gushing through the open windows … and outside time and space, rising and falling upon the unseen and unknowable waves of winds of the universe.

Sweet be that song of that Grand Maestro.