some impossible thing
a blackbird, a horse, a shell
Hello. This post is about Death & Birds.
Over the years, I have experienced the distinct joy of witnessing various little Birds emerge from their shells. A pinprick of a hole marking intention, cracks forming, the first breach of the beak, and the gradual appearance of damp feather and pink skin. It is, as with any birth, a long and arduous process. I’ve often tried to imagine how it must be for the hatchling themselves; to reach the point of growth where the thing that formed to protect them has simply become too small, and, in order to live, one must fight their way out of it. It would seem that life favours this pattern, one where an integral step in the growth of a living thing is its meeting the hard edge of its own armour, and either suffering the struggle of the breakthrough, or ceasing to participate in the endless unfurling upon which life insists. Perhaps, then, I do have some vague understanding of the hatchling’s experience. Whenever I have found myself pressed up against some seemingly immovable force preventing my continued becoming—whether grief, resistance, addiction, or fear—and I have fought my way out, through the hard shell of the thing, I too have surfaced soft, raw, and unsteady, but eager to be fed by the world, and to orient towards my place in it.