a set of vast wings

tiny birds and dying bodies

Photo by Matthew Raifman

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Hello. This post is about Death & Birds.

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The temperature, here, has plummeted. Every year on the eve of the dawn that brings the first frost I spend the night fitful and restless, gripped by worry for the little Birds. I lay there, picturing myself with a set of vast wings, folding over and around each songbird, in the way that mama Swans enfold their signets. When the sun rises and the Blue Tits appear—peeping out from the Conifer like little Christmas decorations—my lungs return to their full capacity. I am reminded that they are made for this. That countless Blue Tits have faced countless Winters, and that nature knows exactly what it is doing. It is I who am lost to worry and fear.

When the cold sets in, possession of the morning’s offerings—spread out diligently by my love—becomes a far more serious affair. Aerial battles between the Crows and the Magpies ensue; displays which look startlingly like footage of WWII dogfights, although the Crows bank and dive in ways that would shred any aircraft to pieces. They are made for this. I wonder why it is, then, that this unfolding scene and the elegance of life held within it, while delighting me, also forms an aching sphere of sadness which hangs suspended in my diaphragm. Admittedly, I find the gravitational pull of melancholy to be particularly strong. I used to be concerned by my proclivity towards it, the way to its door such a well-worn path, but over the years we have become old friends. Misery loves company, and I am an excellent companion. As our friendship deepened she showed me the golden threads which tie all of my pain to all of my love—a weave which threatens to lift me from my anguish; but not before the two us have finished our tea. On my way out, I tread carefully around the aperture of the void which sits like a rug on her kitchen floor, and she says that she’ll see me in January.

Grey skies watch over London, eyeing it with suspicion. It is awash with people busy and impatient, the background music of the apocalypse sapping already dwindling supplies of kindness. In a sea of faces, a trend appears; the “fight” against ageing—against Death, against nature—manifests in a visage tight, taut and waxy. A Death-grip upon youth resulting in faces which look embalmed is an irony so sharp it could draw blood. By culture’s current standards my sense of what constitutes beauty would seem to be upside-down. The dying body holds a beauty nuanced and rare. As with any changing season, subtle shifts gradually become more pronounced. Matter relinquishes its insistence, but the Self would seem to operate on a different timeline entirely. I have marvelled at the tenacity of a still raging spirit housed within a body so diminished, just as I marvel at the tenacity of the tiny Birds who withstand these freezing nights. I have sat with people so changed by the alchemy of their dying that they are unrecognisable as the person I first met, and yet they are somehow more themselves than ever before. I have never seen the dying, or dead, body of any being and thought it grotesque. Only honest. We are made for this.

I once dreamt that I was sat in the Beijing opera house, listening to Beethoven’s piano concerto No 5. A sleepy, golden light rested upon the orchestra, the piece itself an incoming tide, lapping at the shore of the audience before gradually submerging us whole. As is the way with dreams, I was, nonsensically, also standing in the warehouse of a hardware store, flanked by towering shelves. The music came to its end, and the sound of sharp, repeating claps pierced the air of the opera house. Simultaneously, the sound of sharp, repeating cracks pierced the air of the hardware store—the former, claps of appreciation, the latter the sound of a nail gun, being fired indiscriminately by a faceless man, at any and all of the people inside the store. I was, in my dream state, split; between an auditorium filled with golden light and reverence, and a grey warehouse filled with screams and terror. It took days for the ghost of that dream to ease its haunting, and for me to stop trying to decipher it. Eventually, I realised there was nothing to decode. This is simply life. It is magnificent. It is horrific. It is both. And we cannot deny one half of an indivisible whole.

We are made for life, as we are made for Death. We are made for the smooth potential of youth and the furrowed insight of age. We are made for Summer, for Winter, for the opera house, and the hardware store. We are made to delight, and to be heartbroken. To grow, and to decay. This is our true nature; and nature knows exactly what it is doing.

Yours in aimless flight…

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We are made for this—but remembering that we are asks something of us. If you’re interested in what it might mean to befriend mortality, The Deep End offers a way in: