Notes:
- Photo: DK with Great Blue Heron @ Daybreak. 5:55 a.m. 70° F. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. Other photos from this morning’s walk here.
- Post Title from Siegfried Sassoon’s poem titled: Falling Asleep
Tag: Bird
Walking. With Memoir (or Musings) of a Madman.
4:05 a.m. I step up to find that my digital scale is still on the fritz. First a lost wifi-connection, which I fiddled with for 30 minutes yesterday. And now, it just flashes and stares at me. I step off and on again, but it will not read out my weight. Now if that’s not telling you Something...I stand on it, staring down at it, a few body movements away from heaving it out the 2nd floor window. I step off, stare at it again, and leave it alone (for now). I’m not done with you yet.
Here we go (again.) 799 (!) consecutive (almost) days on my daybreak walk to Cove Island Park. Like in a row.
Humid. Breezy. 72° F. Low tide. 25% cloud cover. Few humans. Magnifico.
I walk.
And, there she is. A Black-Crowned Night Heron. For some reason, I’ve being seeing these birds everywhere. Like they are plants by Someone or Something extraterrestrial trying to send me a message. Look at her dummy. Pause. Wait. Stand. Look. Watch. Contemplate. What’s the rush?
She’s certainly not my spirit bird, the cormorant. But the anti-me. So patient. So stoic. So calm. Standing there in water up to her ankles waiting for breakfast.
So, I do. I stare at her. But, there’s something else gnawing at me. It’s that super thin, long white plume growing from the back of her head.
And the question is why?
Who decided it needed to be white? And not blue, orange or black.
Why super-thin and not a feather?
Who decided there needed to be a plume at all?
And, of the billion things to look at this morning, why are you locked in on this plume?
Flaubert continues in Memoirs of a Madman and November (1901), and he didn’t have Google or the internet:
Madness is the doubt of reason.
Perhaps it ‘is’ reason.
Who can prove it one way or the other?
Notes:
- Photos from Daybreak walk at Cove Island Park this morning, @ 4:52 am. to 5:45 am. July 13, 2022, 72° F. More photos from this morning here.
- Post title inspired by: “But for the man who watches the leaves trembling in the wind’s breath, the rivers meandering through the meadows, life twisting and turning and swirling through things, men living, doing good and evil, the sea rolling its waves and the sky with its expanse of lights, and who asks himself why these leaves are there, why the water flows, why life itself is such a terrible torrent plunging towards the boundless ocean of death in which it will lose itself, why men walk about, labor like ants, why the tempest, why the sky so pure and the earth so foul – these questions lead to a darkness from which there is no way out.” — Gustave Flaubert, Memoirs of a Madman and November (Hesperus Classics, 2003)
Sunday Morning
Walking. In a Flash of White.
Walking. @ Daybreak. Cove Island Park. 746 consecutive (almost) days. Like in a row.
Fog. Dense Fog. (Square alignment with mental state on 4.5 hours of sleep. Yes, we’re back b*tching about insomnia. And we were doing so good.)
No mystical Deer stepping out of the shadows. No Atlantic Gants preening. No Swans-A-Swimming. No Humans. And one Human rapidly losing enthusiasm here. I adjust the backpack, strap on left shoulder biting. Damn, why so heavy today.
I walk.
The shoreline is layered in fog so dense, air brushes my face with infinitesimal droplets of rain.
My footfall sinks an inch or two into the beach sand.
I walk.
There’s a white flash. It’s moving too quickly. Auto focus can’t lock in on her, can’t get a clear shot of her in the fog soup.
An Egret. Legs tucked together tightly, platform diver, wings flapping ever so slowly, all of it keeping her airborne. Miracle. All of it.
And White. Oh, so white. Snow white against the all-world gray morning. A palette no computer can replicate.
Why this white? This so white.
Why not black, or green or fuchsia? Why just egrets this white. Why not all Birds-of-a-Feather be this white?
And who decided?
And I stand watching. Standing in the same fog. With the same heavy backpack. Yet, all of it is lighter. Clearer.
Delia Ephron, in her “Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life“: “Out of this convoluted, mixed-up thinking, I manage to spin a little hope…I do feel that I was thrust into darkness and given back light. And it opened me up to feeling part of a larger world, I’m not sure why…Like everyone else, I have a time here and it will be over…This gift could be snuffed out at any moment.”
The image persists… an old black and white photo decaying on its edges…the egret wing flaps…her legs elegantly tucked tight behind her, she flies. Lightly, child. Lightly.
This gift could be snuffed out at any moment.
Note:
- Photo: Egret, this morning. 5:08 a.m. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. More Photos from this morning here.
- Albert Einstein’s quote: “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle.
- Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.”
Gökotta
Gökotta (n., Swed.)
“a dawn picnic to hear the first birdsong”; the act of rising in the early morning to watch the birds or to go outside to appreciate nature.
Notes:
- Photo: DK – (Wet) Baby Blue Jay. 6:50 a.m., May 7, 2022. 50° F & Rain
- Quote: Thank you The Hammock Papers