The Birds.

Dear Looking Out the Window,

Oh my!  They are everywhere right now- the Raven is talking to himself in the window of the barn to the North, the finches are moving in a tight flock of chirping, the shrubs send up cyclones of sparrows when I walk out the door.  There are bluebirds in the bath, and towhees, flickers, doves, thrashers, and wrens scuffling on the ground. 

When you begin to watch birds, as a verb, a hobby, to birdwatch; at first it is all leaves and splitseconds.  The feathers are indistinguishable from the foliage, and if you are lucky enough to spot something moving, it’s like a flashbulb and there isn’t time to recognize anything more than that it might have been a bird?  As you put in your hours, though, forms begin to emerge from the leaves- after awhile, you have a sense of bird and non-bird, and gradually, there is enough time to see some things that approach details: brownish, a forked tail, a roundness, a long pointed beak.  Eventually, you can glimpse but a shadow and know that it was an oak titmouse.  You also become attuned to the sounds of the different birds; even the sounds of the wingbeats.  In fact, after a long while at it, you can become quite amazed at the variety of details that you are able to identify.  Things that in the early days you never dreamed you could notice- things like the rising and falling arc that certain birds make in flight.  Or, the sound of some birds’ feet, as they scuffle around in the leaf litter.  It’s all very distinctive, it turns out.

The time of counting for Project Feederwatch is very soon, and I hope this year you will sign on and make a regular appointment with your backyard birds.  The practice of looking is very rewarding.

Nothing Doing

Dear You,

I’ve been thinking of you, and of course, I know I should write, or at least send a message.  But, I am busy now, doing nothing.  I was planning to meditate, but doing nothing is so much more genuine.  If you ever meet someone you can do nothing with, clear out your spare room and invite them to live with you.  Of course, no, I am doing nothing, yes, but I am thinking and seeing much.  I need all this time to do this thinking and looking. 

I am doing nothing, but not thinking nothing- I am lousy at thinking nothing, so I never bother with it.  I am thinking of the Changing Face of  Feminism, and of the birds, and the wind, and of tattered books.  Also, I am considering less lofty things, like how I just threw out all the pencil shavings I was saving in a champagne bottle.  Was that right to do?  Perhaps it was nuts to collect the shavings to begin with and now I have set things to right by tossing them?  These are the issues I confront in the pursuit of what might matter.  And besides, you were right; I did have too many glass jars.

I am watching the house finches pick up fallen seed, and as I gaze at their movement, things on the edge of vision become blurred.  Substance flattens and becomes indistinct; it all seems to be one: the space, the ground, the sky-  I knew a wonderful professor once (a feminist as it happens) and she told me once of seeing the ‘etheric web' from her vantage point on a hill, or a slope.  She described her awareness of the interconnectedness of everything in a visual way.  I am pretty sure my lack of focus could be revealing the etheric web.

I have been thinking of you, wanting to send my greeting and thanks;  I know you are up north now, or out west... I will get a message to you soon, but for now, I simply must do nothing!

a little bird told me

Dear Trying,

Today I take a lesson from the birds, specifically the flight of a bird- the White Breasted Nuthatch.  The nuthatch would easily be as featured on calendars and greeting cards as the chickadees had they such a lyrical and onomatopoeic name.   

It flies thus: first, a slight dive, a little dip, then it flaps forcefully, swiftly, into an upward climb,  reaches a point (who knows where this point is?) and then descends, falls, actually, in a graceful slope.  Then, up it flaps again.  Lots of birds fly like this - I am still observing just how many birds, give me another 20 years and I will give you a more complete list.

The message, I thought, from my porch on my skates, was to ascend and fall; not as you might have thought, to fly, so much as to dive, jump, leap up, and then fall in a bell curve.  Yes.  Flying is not so hard, but falling might be....

This led me to consider how small is small.  Just what is small?  How big are the details that the devil is in and we are not to sweat?  For me to do anything at all, I have often had to push hard against the awareness of details.   Details impinge ceaselessly.  I just don't seem to be able to get off the ground with them.