becoming
trustworthy and immaterial
Hello. This post is about Death & Birds.
In 1930, the Italian Navy commissioned the construction of a full-rigged, three-masted ‘tall ship’ in the style of an 18th-century cannon ship. The vessel, the Amerigo Vespucci, was launched the following year. She has 26 sails spanning 30,000 square feet of canvas; her deck is polished teak, and intricate decoration adorns both bow and stern. In 1962, while sailing in the Mediterranean Sea, she passed an American warship called the USS Independence. The Independence signalled to the ship, ordering it to identify itself, to which the Italians responded, simply, “Amerigo Vespucci, Italian Navy.” There was a loaded pause before the warship replied, saying: “You are the most beautiful ship in the world.”
I remember reading about this interaction in my twenties, and it moving me in a way that I struggled to understand. There was something about the humble recognition of beauty unexpectedly beaming out of a machine of war that felt like watching a seedling use its unfurling back to break through concrete so that it might greet the sun. Some gestures transcend scale. A passing nod in the direction of beauty can reverberate across time and space.
Our galactic home, the Milky Way, is one of an estimated 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe, and yet it alone is so big that if you made a scale model of it the size of the United States, you would still need a microscope to see the sun. As for the unobservable universe, that’s anyone’s guess. On the other end of the scale, atoms are so small that there are about as many in one grain of salt as there are grains of sand on all the beaches on Earth. As for how things work in the subatomic world, it seems that the closer we look, the more elusive reality becomes. And this, of course, speaks only to matter and says nothing of the immeasurable. As Heisenberg put it, "What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning."
When our species pretends that we have any significant comprehension of the colossal mystery that we’re all caught up in, it’s rather akin to when toddlers have miniature kitchens and they become Michelin-star serious about their make-believe culinary endeavours.
Don’t get me wrong: there are brilliant minds who have made extraordinary discoveries which have illuminated and saved lives, just as there are brilliant minds who have made extraordinary discoveries which have caused untold suffering and Death. My point is merely that any hubris surrounding human advancement and understanding is, essentially, adorable. Especially when, in the year of our Lord 2024, I am still seeing headlines that read, ‘Scientists push new paradigm of animal consciousness, saying even insects may be sentient.’
When did we start to see the world so mechanistically? When did we stop trusting the inner knowing that when a butterfly lands on the back of our hand, we are but one of two conscious beings, each perceiving existence in their own peculiar way? Every living thing, whether in flight, song, or stillness, extends an invitation to witness and delight in the cosmic resolve to become.
Even in the throes of Death, Birds will display a final, visceral choreography of violent and sacred movement, wings fanned in loving farewell to flight—a sad, strange, and strangely beautiful act of beginning to become immeasurable.
To attend to the beautiful, we must forgo our defences and yield to it. When the warship acknowledged the tall ship, it had to reject its very purpose and surrender. Perhaps the scientists pondering animal consciousness might learn from a modern, mechanistic apparatus bowing to something far older, and far more beautiful.
The ever-wonderful John O’Donahue said it far better than I ever could:
“When we approach with reverence, great things decide to approach us. Our real life comes to the surface and its light awakens the concealed beauty in things. When we walk on the earth with reverence, beauty will decide to trust us. The rushed heart and arrogant mind lack the gentleness and patience to enter that embrace.”
I believe that the embrace he speaks to is worth the price of admission to existence, alone. Human incarnation is no walk in the park; life is fraught with suffering, and our presence here has not been without consequence. We carry the weight of our own frailties, and, collectively, we have burdened the Earth with our excesses and neglect. Perhaps, then, the least we can do is endeavour to become as worthy of beauty’s trust as we are able.
Yours in aimless flight…
As a young sailor with the Canadian Navy, I had a tour of the Amerigo Vespucci when she was in port at Halifax in the summer of 1976 as part of Operation Sail with other tall ships. There is something particularly wondrous about the Vespucci. I love being at sea for many reasons I cannot adequately put into words, and I could only imagine what it would be like to sail on such a ship.
And I can remember to this day the sounds, the smells, looking up through the rigging to those towering masts at the sky above and the gulls and smaller birds as they flew around looking for galley scraps. In that moment of reverence, time truly stood still.
"There was a loaded pause before the warship replied, saying: “You are the most beautiful ship in the world.”
Dear Chloe, as always you render me speechless with your breathtaking analogy. As I ponder your words, I wonder, would it perhaps be true to say also, that we sail the most beautiful planet in our galaxy? That in doing so we owe the gift of reverence not only to the existence of all natures beauty and secrets thereon but to our own also? Perhaps this is a truth we are sometimes too quick to forget?
Thank you always, in reverence... x