turning
Hello. This post is about Death & Birds.
We have reached the time of year when the rescue centre is inundated by Swifts, Swallows and House Martins—and the baby House Martins look especially Disney, this year1. The absolute saints who care for the baby Swifts have to take them home and feed them, every couple of hours, by ever so gently prising open their tiny beaks in order to place a waxworm, or three, inside. It is an intensely delicate process.
There are times when, lost in the intensity of the season, I fail to appreciate how significant it is to be surrounded by people performing, largely thankless, acts of service and kindness—all the while living with the spectre of the fact that their efforts might not be enough.
My mind often wonders to the seemingly fractal nature of things, how certain patterns are wont to repeat themselves on micro and macro scales throughout the universe; like the patterns of bifurcation we see in roots, rivers, lungs and lightning. I turn on the taps of the bath and look at the minuscule spider who I, unbeknownst to him, just lifted to safety, and wonder whether kindness, too, might be a fractal pattern. What would the larger-scale equivalent of our brief interaction be? How often have I, unbeknownst to me, been lifted out of a situation which would have landed me in hot water? I pause to thank any benevolent being, perhaps far beyond my ability to even conceptualise, who has ever offered me their equivalent of an open hand.
Sat with my four-year-old niece, yesterday, I had the task of explaining how and why Sparkle (the Goldfinch we have been fostering) would soon need to go back to the wild. She seemed most perturbed by my explanation, and then she lifted her perfect head and asked, “Will you go back to the wild, too?”. The potency of her question was stunning. It struck a chord of homesickness which I have housed in my body for as long as I can remember, and I so fiercely wanted to answer her with a resounding, “Yes”.
I’d often wondered where or when it could be that I am truly homesick for; but it is not a place, or a time. It is a feeling, a sense of belonging. How strange that ‘the wild’, a place as rich in brutality as it is beauty, often feels more appealing than the relative safety of modernity. Then again, the wild seems to possess an honesty which modernity distinctly lacks; and there is a particular kind of safety to be found in the truth. We are so isolated by the deceit which permeates our culture. Anything to distract from our mortality, I suppose…
The baby Birds at the rescue centre each go through a process of ‘turning’, where they transition from dependent, co-operative beings into little feral wildlings. It happens quickly in some Birds (with Sparrows you can turn your back and they’ve changed), and more gradually in others. Sparkle is in her turning, now. I am becoming less of a perch and refuge to her, and more a vaguely tolerated handmaid (with whom she doesn’t wish to be seen by the other Birds). As it should be.
Raising Sparkle has perhaps been the most intense experience of my life (apart from the time I took too many magic mushrooms and got kicked in the face by God). She is 14 grams of provocateur and guru, and has shown me parts of myself which I thought I’d tamed and subdued a long while ago. But no—they’re right there, like wild animals gnashing their teeth as they frantically climb the walls of my nervous system and psyche. Perhaps her turning is sparking my own.
Driving home today, I saw a squirrel bolt from a shrub up ahead. I could see what was going to happen, but I nonetheless begged aloud to any and all deities who might’ve been listening to please intervene. No such luck. The squirrel and the wheel of the car in front met, in a way that looked almost as though they had arranged to.
There was something about how simultaneously brutal and mundane this incident was which totally undid me. I spent the drive home blinking away heavy tears, wrestling with what relinquishing my hold on any being whom I love might mean.
It is a deeply complex thing, to be subject to both love and Death; especially when neither can prevent the other.
Yours in aimless flight…
Proof, above
I'm still reeling from your niece-philosopher's question, “Will you go back to the wild, too?” It's brilliant how you double back to that question when you talk about how Sparkle "has shown me parts of myself which I thought I’d tamed and subdued a long while ago. But no—they’re right there, like wild animals gnashing their teeth as they frantically climb the walls of my nervous system and psyche". But you leave the question essentially unanswered, which seems to amplify its power. An amazing post.
I am at a phase in my life, right now, where, when I reach the hand of my mind, even slightly, through the veil of my contentment, I burst into tears. Every living thing is so temporal and fragile in my senses, I weep for the ephemeral state of the existence of all living things. I don’t know how to reconcile that right now, and I am not certain I really want to. I hope that maybe it is softening my heart so that I can meld more easily with the flow of time.