finch dawn tales
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Today I heard a familiar sound at a distance, which was soon drowned by the cacophony of geese and gulls. After walking along the trail for a few minutes, I came across a group of waterfowls swimming gracefully in the reservoir besides the trail. I wondered, could they possibly be Loons? May be the familiar sound I heard at the beginning of the trail was indeed the sound of a loon. Though commonly referred to as “Common Loon,” their presence was far from ordinary to me.
Though I had never seen a Loon in person, I had admired them countless times in photographs. Their distinctive appearance and calls had left such a lasting impression on me that I was certain of recognizing them whenever I happen to see them. Their dagger-like bill was prominent even from a distance. As I peered through my binoculars, I saw a sleek black head and striking black & white pattern on the body. That was a male accompanied by three females wearing a muted plumage that exuded an elegance of their own. I could not believe my eyes. They had appeared when I had least expected it. Together, the four of them swam back and forth under the sky that was slowly losing its light.
The dusk was beginning to settle in when I heard the yodeling from a group of loons in the distance. There were apparently more of them, unseen but clearly heard. It was the sound of the wild I had long desired to hear. Moments later it was followed by a wail, so hauntingly beautiful that it transfixed me in my spot. The sounds died off after only a few seconds, yet it left such a deep & resonant feeling of peace & reverence that I continued to remained rooted to the spot for a while.
The four loons that I could see continued to swim gracefully and quietly along the shore. I watched them until they drifted too far from the sight. That was my first time witnessing a Common Loon in the wild - it was a special moment.
In the spirit of Riddles in the Dark, here’s my attempt to come up with a riddle, in the event that I must confront my own Gollum…
The less you want it
the more it comes
The more you want it
the less it comes
It has no voice
yet it can be heard
It has no form
yet it can be felt
What am I?
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
The answer to this riddle, if you have not guessed it yet, is click here.
P.S. It can sometimes feel like you have fallen into the depths of a Goblin cave, finding yourself in a place with no clear path ahead, where the only way out is to face the Gollum himself.
Gollum lurks within us, in our fears, in our doubts, waiting to challenge us at every step of the way. So what do we do with this Gollum?
Sorry, no profound words to follow this question.
I just think coming up with this riddle was a fun thing to do. If anything, this little act of creation helped me triumph over some relentless ‘thoughts.’
This month I have spent many waking hours immersed in the world of Dune. While 2 hrs and 46 min long Dune: Part Two was every bit magnificent and heart thumping, it wasn’t enough. I have been re-reading Dune to spend more time in this desert wasteland. While doing so, I have re-discovered some nuggets of wisdom, that are guiding me through my personal sandstorms at the moment.
This Bene Gesserit axiom about stress…
The mind can go either direction under stress - toward positive or toward negative: on or off. Think of it as spectrum whose extremes are unconsciousness at the negative end and hypesconsciousness at the positive end. The way the mind will lean under stress is strongly influenced by training.
This first law of Mentat…
A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it.
From Lady Jessica’s thoughts on waiting…
You can wait just so long. Then the dreariness of the waiting overcomes you.
We know the need for cautious waiting, there’s the core of our frustration. We know also the harm that waiting extended too long can do us. We lose our sense of purpose if the waiting’s prolonged.
And this last one is not from the book but said by Leto I Atreides in the 1984 adaptation of Dune.
Without change something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.
I have found a vast treasure of wisdom on the pages of Dune and it only gets better on a re-read. When I first read the book this quote hit me like a surge of Spice Melange and its transformative powers.
“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
And it still does not fail to have its effect on me. In the time of need these words let me ride my own metaphorical sandworm.
My reading companion this month has been Jonathan Strouds’, The Amulet of Samarkand, the book that had been sitting on my shelf for a long while. This month I finally picked it up and devoured it. It was a whirlwind of page turning magical adventure, best enjoyed from the comforts of ones home, and never should one dare to step into that world incase one might find themselves in the Tower of London or worse, Heddlehem Hall. While Nathaniel’s character elicited a lot of empathy, it was Bartimaeus’s wit and sarcasm that truly stole the spotlight for me. I thought, wouldn’t it be nice to summon Bartimaeus in our own world. Despite his insults and general criticism for humans, I would very much like to have a word with him. A five thousand year old djinn would definitely have something of importance to say. And right now I could do well with some out of the world advice on life. I will be back with some incense, candles, and a chalk to draw the pentacle.
Ten minutes later…
Bartimaeus:
May I ask who is this pathetic untrained magician who has summoned me?
Me:
Er sorry …… I was …. I was just wanting to meet N’gorso the mighty, serpent of the silver plumes, builder of the walls of Uruk, the friend of Solomon…
Bartimaeus interrupted:
No need to flatter me so, although you are right about all those things…Tell me why have you summoned me.
Me:
I.. I read your story in the Amulet of Samarkand and liked your parts in it.. I mean your role… sorry I mean it was a real part not a role. What I meant to say is that I enjoyed reading your part of the story and thought you had great wisdom hidden under your sarcasm. I thought perhaps I could get some advice on life from you.
Bartimaeus:
Ah, you have called upon my illustrious self for advice? I am impressed with my own being, in fact, utterly pleased. It seems you possess some social etiquette if not the same degree of magical skill as young Nathanial, who, as you might have read, once summoned me for stealing an amulet and many other distasteful tasks, and he, I must say was extremely arrogant about it. While I am undeniably proficient in any job, I must say I did not enjoy those jobs, this one however, I find to be fairly respectable one. You must be truly desperate to go through all this amatuer-magic trouble to summon me for mere advice.
Well, Well, let’s see what have I got in my wise old brain.
First off, let me tell you, life’s a wild ride, full of unexpected twists and turns. Some paths are full of magic, others you may find are full of explosions. Most humans, I’ve noticed, lack the finesse and wit to handle the explosive bits. But you see, troubles are like grumpy imps. Give ’em a good laugh, and they might just decide bothering you isn’t worth their time. Following this advice may not turn you into a mighty djinn like me, but it will help you rise above your ordinary existence. But don’t you get all big head with your existence. Remember that you are just a tiny speck in the vast universe, I’d say almost insignificant, you can’t even perceive anything beyond your own plane. But you humans have got this thing called conscience, thing that is easily lost. Perhaps, finding and using that inner voice (and I will be surprised if you humans can pull it off), might help you conjure up a bit of magic along the way.
Bartimaeus stops there with a smirk on his face while I absorbed it all with wide eyed astonishment. I thought I’d pass on this wisdom to whoever may chance upon this corner of the internet.
Birds had stopped singing a few weeks ago when summer departed. But today I woke up to the sound of a red-winged blackbird and a group of flying geese. There were more than the usual bird sounds. It was as if all the birds migrating south had decided to stop here for a day. All the local birds had become vocal too, as if celebrating the arrival of their northern friends.
This was convenient because today was October Big Day - the global day of bird counting, alongside Global Bird Weekend and World Migratory Bird Day. And so I set out with my binoculars to contribute to this worldwide citizen science effort by counting the number and type of birds I see.
The red-winged blackbird was still out singing from the topmost branch of an evergreen. A few yards ahead, to my heart’s delight, I saw a bunch of dark-eyed juncos, beautiful little snowbirds with grey white feathers and the bill with the most lovely colour of pink. They have returned, bringing winter on their wings. The last time I saw them was near the end of winter after which they fly away to north for summer breeding. It is a comfort to see these birds return as the cold weather sets in. While most of the other birds are going south, the sight of juncos, alongside local birds who stay back, make winters bearable. I saw a few Juncos foraging on the ground, and more than a dozen flew to a tree when they saw me coming. I tried to be inconspicuous, but clearly not as successful.
The rest of my walk I saw the usual sightings of robins, doves, woodpeckers, blue jays, sparrows, starlings and more. But then I saw a bird I do not see as often, a shy hermit thrush. If you are a birder reading this, you know how most thrushes look the same. It took me a while to identify this one. I kept switching between the pictures of hermit, swainson, and a wood thrush on my phone. But eventually the spots on the breasts convinced me it was a hermit thrush. The thrushes were quiet today, but on rare occasions, when I have heard them sing in the forest, the ethereal ancient quality of their sweet song has always enchanted me. John Burroughs, an American naturalist once described its singing:
Listening to this strain on the lone mountain, with the full moon just rounded from the horizon, the pomp of your cities and the pride of your civilization seemed trivial and cheap.
By the end of a 102 minutes walk I had reported 14 species (a small number but a satisfying experience), amongst which was also the tiny and absolutely adorable golden-crowned kinglet, who I found hopping from one branch to another.
When I returned home, the red-winged blackbird was still singing on the topmost branch of an evergreen. I don’t know if it was the same one I saw at the start of my count but it was a perfect ending to my October big day walk.
Last weekend, I was reading The Poacher, a short story by Ursula Le Guin, in which a peasant boy, after persistently cutting through a hedge of brambles for two years, discovers an enchanted kingdom (sleeping beauty universe) where he finds everyone asleep. By some strange co-incidence, an intense sleep took over me the same afternoon after which I woke up in the evening around sunset. When I woke up, a strange but comforting melancholy took over me, like an aching sweet sound of violin, like the feeling when you finish a good book, like how it felt on the last day of the school (which honestly I don’t remember in its entirety but can imagine how it must have felt), like watching the flock of birds fly into the horizon, like a distant ringing of a temple bell, like listening to Jane Austenesque soundtracks, like nostalgia… and at this point no more analogies are coming to my mind. Perhaps it was just a case of sleep inertia, which is caused by not having a full cycle of sleep. Whatever it was, that bewildered state of mind at least got me to write something here after almost two years of little or no writing. Later that day, in the night while reading The Wide Window, that same intense sleep took over me again while I was looking down at Lake Lachrymose through the eyes of Baudelaire children.
A windy winter afternoon had made most creatures go into hiding except a few waterfowls found foraging in the water. On the ground, the snow had freed the fallen leaves from its grips and set them spinning and tossing in the wind to their next destination. A few that had managed to hold onto their branches were alas tumbling down like ballerinas spinning in air. A few fell amongst its composting peers and a few on the water.
The sky was empty except an occasional Mallard finding his way back to their group and landing swiftly in the pond. A flock of Gadwalls had gathered too and they all seemed to have found a delicious stock of food in the shallow waters of the pond.
Away from the all the foraging activity there were two Hooded Mergansers gliding on water with a grace of a couple walking hand in hand to the dance floor. The female looked like she had just gotten her hair done for the holidays. And the male had a striking black and white feathers on his head and wings. Together they swam in that frigid pond amidst the dried cattails and fallen snow for I don’t know how long. They had created their own sanctuary, as brief it may be before they fly over to another pond or home. As mesmerizing as it was to watch them in this arresting winter landscape, the cold winter winds made me want to go back to my own sanctuary - home.
the experiment continues…
Me:
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”
Anne Shirley:
“Ah, I don’t know if I want to be divinely beautiful or dazzlingly clever or angelically good. I can never decide. And as for the things I want, they’re so numerous that it would take a great deal of time to name them all. I don’t know if I can have them all, but looking forward to things is half the pleasure of them. And when you are imagining you might as well imagine something worthwhile. It has been my dream to live near the brook and it came true. It is delightful when your imaginations come true. Isn’t it? Did you have any of your imaginations come true? But even if they don’t, you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly that you will. There are so many wonderful things to love. It makes me so glad to be alive in such an interesting world. Isn’t it splendid to think of all the things there are to find out about? It wouldn’t be so interesting if we knew everything. Because then there wouldn’t be any scope of imagination. Like I call the geranium in our house Bonny because it would hurt a geranium’s feelings just to be called a geranium. I named the tree outside my window Snow Queen because it was so white. But some things can’t be improved upon by imagination because they are so wonderful in themselves. Like the picnic, I am going to go to tomorrow. Oh, all my friends will be there and there will be ice cream too. I’ve never had one. Oh, I am so perfectly happy at the thought of it. But whenever I am disappointed in anything I just say, “My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes”. I read it in a book and it sounds so romantic. I once thought I could be a gull, that is if I wasn’t a human girl. I would go to a great big field all alone or into the deep, deep woods and I’d look up into the sky up, up, up into that lovely blue sky that looks as if there was no end to its blueness.”
Continuing the experiment I started here…
Me:
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”
Winnie-the-Pooh:
“What must I do with my wild and precious life? I wonder what Piglet plans to do? I know the bees plan to make honey. But you never can tell with bees.”
He spends a while thinking about it and then says:
“I think I have done a lot already. I saved Piglet from the flood, helped Eeyore find his tail and even found the North Pole you see. Christopher Robin stuck the pole in the ground with a message that said ‘discovered by Pooh’. I think we still have to find the South Pole, East Pole and West Pole. Maybe I will do that. And I think I shall have lots of honey too.”
Here’s a little experiment to see what Alice would have to say to Mary Oliver’s question in her beautiful poem - “The Summer Day”.
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”
Alice:
“What a curious question! I hardly know what I plan to do today, at least I know what I was supposed to do this morning, but my plans have changed several times since then. But I know what I ought not to do. I do not plan to cry so much as to drown myself in my own tears. A great girl like me should not go on crying like that. I do not plan to eat things without proper labels as I never know how it will change me. I got so tired of changing several times in a day. And I never plan to go near the queen’s croquet ground because the game is so unfair. And when I am the Duchess I will not have pepper in my kitchen. There, if I know what I do not plan to do I would think everything else is what I will plan to do.”
Silence
Stillness
Serendipity
One always follows the other
•
Time slows down when our minds are not filled with a hundred things to do
•
Hope must live on a tree…for where else does it get, its strength, to weather the storms that comes its way?
•
A morning without bird songs is like a day without breakfast
•
There was a bird last night, calling…I wish I wasn’t too afraid of the dark for I could have found it…may be it will give me another chance tonight
•
Somewhere in the woods, chickadees are having a conference… the same birds I see near my home sound so different away from civilization…something about the voice, pitch, tone, there is something different…it is like they have a northern accent
•
I thought I’d hear a loon but the honking of the geese will do just fine
•
One does not know a tree until one spends time sitting by it day after day
Trees - their shadows are reaching out for each other this morning
•
Blue morning sky
Light for you today
little lucky plants
•
Can there be anything more divine than a bird song breaking the silence of a morning?
•
Rain was knocking on my windows when I woke up today. An acceptable wake up alarm, only second to a bird song.
•
Every morning the white throated sparrow sings its sweet tune of a new day in the marsh.
•
I don’t know how this sparrow can sit on the edge of wibbly twig and be so still. I would like those balancing powers. Thank you.
•
A few Ebony Jewelwings were frolicking by the stream, metallic blue green bodies carried by black wings.
•
A big yellow butterfly on tiny pink flower
gone in a blink of an eye
•
Daylight moved to the west leaving shadow in the east. I watched the crown of the tree steadily fade from yellow to green and the sky turn purple and pink. And right after the dusk was done with its evening display, the birds flew back home and the mole crickets began to sing.
•
At night the lake looked formidable
White foam over dark waves
Like creatures moving under a sheet
•
Isn’t it nice when you can smell the flowers
Jasmine of the night and the Lilacs
Daphnes, Summersweets and Aslyssums
Geraniums and sweet Lavender
The lily of the valley is looking up at the clear skies
Hyacinths in my yard have gone to sleep
The sweet fragrance of the night lingers
And the summer triangle shines in the summer skies
•
On a clear summer night away from the street lights, the house lights, and the phone light, there lies a night sky full of dazzling suns shining from billions of light years away, the distance quadrupling every second, but to us they look fixed, unchanged, and unmoving for eternity.
There was an old ash tree in my neighbour’s yard whose years of growth allowed for our windows to be a private sanctuary. It got infected by the small, but mighty beetle called the emerald ash borer and for the lack of a better solution they had to cut it.
With the tree gone, the house beyond the tree became part of my window landscape. Tucked amongst the pines and willows the house has many windows, two of which glow every night. They cycle through the shades of red, green and blue, like the clouds moving and melding in the sky.
Any curious mind would wonder about the possible explanation of this rare sight.
The nights I feel weary, the house remind me of the eternal ball at the mansion of lost hope, windows lined with flickering candles and ladies dancing under enchantment.
The nights when the sky is clear and the stars are seen, the movement of the lights appears to be a series of secret messages being sent to aliens in space.
And on the darkest of nights, the colours glow like a lightsaber fighting off despair.
Sometimes the house itself appears alive and one could expect it at any moment to either go to sleep or walk into the night.
At other times, the windows look like the eyes of a watchful animal of the night.
Perhaps, the lights are only a trick to scare the burglars, or the dwellers find a particular enjoyment in the phantasmagorical effects of these lights.
Whatever the case is, when I see those windows pulsing with colour at night, everything seems as it should be. It feels familiar and there is certainty amidst the uncertainty of things.
