No.210
A lot of my thoughts seem to be contained within bird-shaped parentheses, and this week was no different. Sunday afternoon, walking through the quietening town to a ten year old’s birthday party, we crossed paths with another pair of people we’re acquainted with at the corner of stone houses. It took a few moments for one of the group to notice that there was a bird nestled in the corner of a green wooden windowsill at hip height, a bird that definitely shouldn’t ideally be nestled in the corner of a windowsill at hip height. It was a swift, which as you might already know do not have reason after fledging to even stop flying until a few years later when they themselves nest—even then they are pausing flight to nest and feed their young, not to ever land on the ground.
While we were struck more ferociously by astonishment than the other pair of people, they expressed concern and stood with us to gape at the beautiful, peculiar-looking bird for at least ten minutes. The desire is to not intrude on a bird’s space but also to ascertain whether it needs help from you, as a lumbering, large, historically-violent species. The advice, if an adult swift is found on the ground, is seemingly to only ever provide assistance if you think the swift genuinely doesn’t have enough space to take off—if in long grass, for example, it may have difficulty—or is injured, but in almost all healthy-swift instances they will fly away themselves, and this one did not seem to be in any distress.
I think it’s unlikely that I’ll ever be two feet away from a swift again, so it felt in the moment like reverence and important things and so-easily-breakable. In fact it felt as though I could have stood guard over that single swift for minutes, or hours, or years, however long it might be until it was ready to leave.
Our concerned group of four decided to leave the swift be, after considerations of neighbourhood cats and proximity to the road, and returning past the same spot some hours later it had gone. I know that I’ll think about it forever, wonder whether or not the swift and its ludicrous scythe wings will safely spend the next three or four years of its life in the high skies, leaving here soon to follow the rains on its migration to insect-filled places south of the Sahara.
THIS WEEK I FELL IN LOVE WITH:
Painted pieces by New York based artist and illustrator, Dror Cohen.
Things currently on my desk: Two stones from different but forgotten locations, a ceramic spoon with a painted gold expletive on, three dried leaves (ginkgo, Japanese maple, Stephania erecta), a piece of bog cotton, four books (three novels and a poetry collection), a fountain pen, a memo about rug dimensions in both feet and inches, approximately nine pencils and thirteen pens, the tiniest paperclips, two erasers, correction tape, a type of clear Japanese glue, an inherited metal lamp, a graph showing work-related confidence, a love note, four inks, a newspaper clipping, a temperamental plant, seven paintbrushes, three notebooks, an unanswered letter, a glass water-holding vessel and its matching cup, a cleaned paint palette, various illustrated or lettered things on paper awaiting some use.
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