a most welcome and beautiful thing
to wheel the sky in unflinching observation
Hello. This post is about Death & Birds.
Like light, dying exists on a spectrum. As comforting and convenient as binaries and hard edges can be, very few exist in nature. It is a most subtle and sacred moment in time when a being’s trajectory falls out of line and curves towards the orbit of their worldly departure. A slow, silent circling, at first, like that of the Red Kites who wheel the sky in unflinching observation. Metaphor permits us a few inches closer to that which language falls short of, and the dying will often speak of journeys, of trips on the horizon for which they must prepare. Beneath confusion and altered states lies a knowing, an awareness that a process has begun, and as the river’s current strengthens a choice must be made: to battle, negotiate, or surrender. Typically, we defer to whichever muscle we’ve most strengthened in life.