all in the wings
Hello. This post is about Death & Birds.
We were stuck in standstill traffic on the M25 last week. A truck had overturned about a mile up ahead, and so we were forced into the discomfort of mandated stillness. As the air steadily thickened with fumes and irritation, a butterfly appeared, her rhythmic pulse travelling across each lane of traffic as though they were bars of music and she a song. How does a being so light lift the heavy weight of aggrievement with such ease? “It’s all in the wings”, I hear her whisper.
It’s starting to feel like Autumn, here. If it were up to me, Autumn would take up six months of the year (which would be insane, so thankfully it isn’t). The Fall is an exhale. It is the reprieve that I quietly spend the rest of my year longing for. I come to land, and am reintroduced to myself—and what a joy it is to meet someone who is pleased to be here. For too long, the world looked so uninviting; the cloudy lens of a wounded heart will do that.
This time of year seems to invite an honouring of all that came before it. I believe it's no coincidence that many a festival honouring the dead is held in this season. We all walk around with the most enormous set of ancestral wings at our back. A cape of lineage, woven from the lives of thousands, that stretches out behind us and, eventually, overlaps with every other person on the planet; connecting each of us inextricably.
I’ll sometimes try to picture all those people stood behind me, to acknowledge the love, suffering and complexity which is woven into a history unknown to, and yet part of, me. The same applies, of course, to almost all beings. I think of Sparkle, the Goldfinch, and the many thousands of wings that make up her ancestral cape; an image almost too beautiful for me to hold.
Our ancestry is the roots beneath us, the cape behind us, the constellation above us and the space in front of us into which one day we will walk as ancestors ourselves. I currently inhabit the physical just as each of the members of my family did during thousands of years past, and I will one day leave this plane of existence, just as many thousands have before me.
It is not uncommon for people in their last days to ‘see’ family long gone appear. These deathbed visions are, science will tell you, caused by shifts in brain chemistry and a natural decline in cognitive function—and who am I to argue. All I know is that if I were given the opportunity to lovingly welcome anyone dear to me to the great hereafter, I would take it.
David and I spent some time in a float tank, last week. It was my 39th birthday, so we enjoyed a day of relaxation which began by us floating in extremely salty water. We opted for full sensory deprivation and floated in total darkness and silence—a surprisingly blissful experience, once thoughts eventually concede and the gentle embrace of oblivion arises.
Floating in the dark like this invites an interesting kind of surrender, I find that I approach the edge of forgetting that I have a body, or face, or name. What a beautiful way to prepare to meet Death. We will, one day, be asked to put down almost all of what we carry and step into a way of being lighter than most of us can conceptualise. Opportunities to practice the relinquishment of the temporary things with which we most identify should be embraced for the gifts that they are. Everything is ephemeral in the grand scheme of time.
That said, time seems to me to be a marvellous concept, most useful in organising our earthly experiences and orientating us towards ideas of past and future, and yet it is so amorphous. Strong gravitational fields warp time, making it behave very strangely around massive objects such as planets, stars and love. Anyone who has deeply grieved will attest to the unreliable nature of time, and there are few greater displays of love than grief.
Perhaps we are each notes of song, sung across bars of time. Echoes in waiting.
Yours in aimless flight…
Friends, for the first time in it’s long history, Folly Wildlife Rescue (where I have the remarkable privilege of caring of baby birds) is facing closure and is, as such, raising emergency funds.
If you feel called and able to contribute in any way, a great many wild animals and I would be most grateful. Thank you.
Dear Chloe - first, thanks for the donation link to the rescue center. I hope your efforts bring in everything they need to continue their marvelous work.
Now . . . there's so much to love in this post. From butterflies to ancestral capes to lightness and the "gentle embrace of oblivion," I'm in your debt for evoking just the images I need to consider this Big Event I'm in the midst of -- a radical downsizing that's both all good and all consuming. Things not only add to the weight I carry, each book I decide to keep represents the present state of my relationship with my ephemerality. Lightness has its appeal, but "not ready yet" sighs from every box that I must flex my muscles to carry.
Your writing, like the wings of the butterfly you describe, becomes ever lighter and more effervescent with each post. This one, in particular struck me not like an essay, but a tone poem where each line resonates not just in meaning, but in the sound of the words as they rub against each other and propel the piece. You are a gift.