Airing-Out

March 12 2016

The theory of malignant air

as the cause of disease

seems truer, in spring.

All it takes

is the first warm day

and a brisk north wind.

Because there is something to north

that seems unsullied,

its frozen landscape

astringent air.

When every window’s unlatched, sash unstuck

where the frame warped

expanded

jammed.

When each casement, awning, slide

is cranked-open wide.

The stale space scoured.

The purification of light.

And as each window is cracked

winter’s monastic silence breaks,

eaves dripping

dogs barking,

bickering squirrels

eager to mate.

But there is no sweetness to this air,

whipping over naked trees

raw soil,

small islands

of granular snow.

Just the loamy smell

of thaw and rot

and sodden earth.

If hope and faith can heal

then breathe deep.

But beware the false spring;

the charlatans and quacks

with their scheming flimflammery,

the fickle humours

and cruel mischief
of mercurial gods.

The malady of winter,

the counterfeit cure.

The first warm day, and I felt compelled to open the windows and let fresh air blow through the house. It was as if all the air in the house was old and fetid, while the north wind was pure and clean.

In the days before scientific medicine, “bad air” was one theory of disease:  the word “malaria”, a corruption of the French mal aire, captures this quite literally. Then there is the Aristotelian view of the various humours, which not only explain disease, but correspond to personality:  a concept that persists in words like “sanguine”, “choleric”, “bilious”, and “melancholic”.

But we still believe in the curative powers of fresh air. If cities were cesspools of disease, then sanatoriums in the pure country air could cure tuberculosis. And if winter is the season of illness, then we air out the house in spring.

The quacks and flimflamm(ers) and charlatans call back to these discredited theories of medicine. While the mercurial nature of weather is captured in the fickle gods. So while hope and faith may be eternal, so are false springs and false hope: the poem as cautionary tale. …But really, it was all just an excuse to write the delightful line …charlatans and quacks/ … (and) scheming flimflammery!