jet-lagging

It's one in the morning, and I've given up on the struggle for sleep.
Outside, water thick-knees are making strange sharp little calls and running around on their long little legs, eating insects.

And I'm Here. Here being home in East Africa, after a year's absence.
Being immersed in the world--savoring having bare feet and wearing a sarong again, mesmerized by the thrumming of fans and the din of East African birds.

The power went out when I turned up two days ago, so I spent a hot afternoon lying out on the verandah on a Cambodian grass mat with ants crawling over me, staring foggily at a hibiscus tree with sunbirds and barbets zipping about, feeling... happy.

However, I'm well grateful that Iringa, where I will be in five days time, is higher and cooler, perfect for writing. The coast is a place where one's brain just wants to pack it in altogether, I find, and take to swimming every day and staring in awe at fish...

Thinking deep and meaningful thoughts like Whoa, fish.

That's all I've got this dark night. Over and out, world...

A Reflection Off Job

The dead bee is dry and nearly weightless
one bundle of pollen still
fastened to its knee.
Its legs tucked in,
wings stiffly spread,
it did not mean to die
nor welcome its death.

It smells of decay,
but faintly,
and the ants eat a bit
of its wing, and then leave it be.

The ants live in front
of the altar in this Catholic
prayer hall. They have made
a small hole in the caulking
between the tiles and they
emerge and descend from
this hole in ones and twos.
Church ants, nourished,
no doubt, on holy days,
by communion wafers.
Will they say a prayer
for the bee while its taste
still lingers in their tiny
mouths, their clicking jaws?
Will they say a prayer for me?
The book of Job is
a troublesome book.

The Buddhists have their seima,
their sacred boundary markers,
sunken into the earth around each temple;
The Khmer draw boundaries between the
cultivated world of village and rice paddy
and the dangerous alluring forest, but in
Job, the Hebrew God treats the entire earth
as Her space, His creation—
its bases are sunk,
its cornerstone laid,
and the stars sing and
the heavenly beings shout for joy.

The sea is wrapped and barred and encased,
mighty and proud, but kept from the land.
Under the water, the waters that teemed before
anything rose from the earth—first the sea,
first the sky—and now we mortals kill first
the seas and the skies—we who walk on the
dry-land will go last, already the weakest among
us are going—the Khiansi spray toad is gone now,
thousands of others crowd the gates of deep darkness,
nearly gone, and we, we who have not seen the springs
of the sea, the recesses of the deep, we who do not know
the paths to the dwelling place of light and darkness, we
who cannot find where the east wind is scattered, we who
cannot guide forth the Bear in her proper season—
we have power, nonetheless, terrible power—
the power to destroy, the power to kill.

Retrospective 7: on the trip to Banteay Chma

The authorities are getting ideas--
the woman who plants chilies
and the man who plant mung beans
have been told that they must stop
using the degraded field around
the U-shaped muddy moat that
encircles the jumble of stones and
precarious tower of the ancient
Khmer temple Ta Prohm.
Four giant serene faces gaze out upon
the landscape in the four cardinal directions--
the fourth face is splitting upwards from its chin,
gravity tugging at its supporting lintel.
The authorities are returning on the 5th of September,
to discuss these matters, these sliding stones.
The woman knows the type of wood that has been
used to shore up the four lintels and the bowing arches;
she gives me a handful of green chilies, bundled into a
pouch made from twisting her sarong. I put them into
the front of my shirt for the walk home under the blazing
sun in a humid sky threatening rain. Someone unknown
has been uprooting the shrubs that have taken root around
the dilapidated towers, burning the undergrowth. The smell
of hot ash rises as I slowly circle the tower to gaze upon all
four faces. On my way out I pass a structure
like a chicken shed
and see pieces of carvings, stacked haphazardly--
a lotus flower pillar,
three partial statues of meditating Buddhas--
the bases with the crossed
feet and the cradled hands
resting upon them remain, the heads and torsos
are gone. They were probably victims of the 1998 debacle
that allowed the Thai military to loot Banteay Chma,
the vast broken sister
of this small temple. These fragments
surely have great value,
but no one is guarding this precious rubble,
and I stand in the ashes
and reach out and lift one of the blocks--
a curving shoulder.
I look for its companions, but find nothing.
It is startling heavy, this
piece of ancient stone, and I feel like a looter,
toting around the Buddha's shoulder,
stroking the toes on one standing foot. Hewing off
these stones heads, these shoulders
would have required great strength
and heavy tools. These pieces of the twelfth century,
dismembered, stolen,
lie now in my insignificant hands.
The block scrapes against its fellows
when I lay it back down. It was the fighting that destroyed the temples,
a woman argues. The Khmer Rouge were at one temple, the resistance
was stationed over there. Originally she accused the Vietnamese,
but then the group of interested onlookers agreed that this fighting was fifteen years ago,
long after the Vietnamese had gone.
Time has become elided here, in these places
where years were marked by battle after battle.
We hid in trenches, she said. Airplanes
shelled them. They even cooked rice in the trenches.
Her grandfather was too afraid
to open his eyes.

Retrospective 6: the middle of August

The toads are going wild tonight,
Heart and Nga have been unfairly labeled gangsters,
the air is blessedly cool and I am back in the village,
joyfully so.
Grandmother Muon is better
and lavishing love upon
the sole remaining ginger kitten,
to my grateful surprise.
A candle burns on my trunk,
Sombath and Pin laugh with their mother,
we will go to that great old temple Banteay Chma together,
and my heart is glad.
Today, my 100th bird in Cambodia--
those lovely lovely rufous treepies,
hopping about in their sleek suits
of colors--grey and peach and white and black--
crying out and flying with the tips of their wing feathers
extended like fingers, soaring over the top of the ploughed field.
And the chestnut bee-eaters stalked me, following me on and on,
and unseen birds raged in a tree.

Retrospective 5: Grumblings on Volume

I am tired of the yelling
whenever anyone wants anyone else.
There is no thought of disturbing others--
my host father shouts at my host sister,
fast asleep in her small room,
to come and catch the pigeons.
It was half past ten.
They awakened me too,
demanding I come and hand over my torch
so we could catch and eat the pigeons.
It is not lost on me that I have been complaining
rather a lot about these broody pigeons,
but shouldn't sleep be somewhat sacred?
Whoever was up at half past five this morning
began noisily stacking wood,
my host brother Jane turns on tractors and leaves them to idle
at all hours--once it's light, it's daytime,
and when there's a task needs doing, it's my host sister they call for,
even in the dead of night.
I'm tired of it.
And I'm tired of loud music blaring from vast speaker systems,
first the flying horse evenings,
the carousel with terrible disco tracks,
then three nights of hideous wedding music, and today,
the day of penance at the temple,
monks chanting and megaphones squealing from four a.m. onwards,
at intervals.
I'm in essence tired of the VOLUME.
Why must everything be so loud?
Why must we all be forced to hear each other's events?
And how can earplugs,
which were Designed for ears,
be so absurdly uncomfortable?

Retrospective 4: in Kampot at the riverhouse with friends

Ah, Lord,
here I am.
Slowly clumsily surfacing--
my head aching
and my limbs heavy
from that drugged afternoon sleep,
here in the still hot sun of four o'clock,
in the soft shurr of a broom sweeping,
listening to the wind in the dry palms,
watching shadows shift,
feeling the world's glory.

My obsession with newness,
my boredom, my desire to hunt,
to know, to number, to accumulate,
these things threaten
the pleasure of my birding--
I don't do well with sameness,
with ordinariness--Katie's book recommendation,
the spectacular ordinary life--
the very title makes me nervous.
But surely it isn't all bad,
wanting to know,
to see as deeply as possible
the world around me--
what is the red winged hawk
that hunts over the Frenchman's spring?
What is the red capped brown ball of feathers
that vanishes into the reeds of our farm's pond
whenever I steal up close?

My thanks for a morning--
for flooded fields of water still as glass,
for tiny fish swimming over the hoof prints of cows,
for small bays cut into the thick stiletto palms
crowding the river's edge, covered with crab tracks,
for the yellow flowers with red hearts
that float along the meniscus of the brackish riverworld,
for grave mounds covered with thin strips of white cloth,
for rollers high and bright and fearless in the trees,
for wind in the papery sighing of the sugar palms,
for small bridges and boats that pass beneath them,
for all the many knit muscles of our arms,
that we can push an oar through the water, and row along--
for the possible treepie, and the innumerable brown bulbuls,
swooping from one bush to the next,
for a mighty fig tree towering above the forest,
for generous friends with quiet hearts--
and for last night's walk in the moonlight
along a river under the moon,
watching mountains against a starry sky--
for all these things,
my thanks, my praise,
my devotion.

Retrospective 3: Silence in Mondulkiri

And all I want are the green hills and the feathered things,
the quiet of this morning's tramp--
not a human soul but myself for three blessed hours.
Just the alarmed birds,
and judging by the packs of small boys with slingshots
glimpsed on my way home,
good reason for that fear.

Solitude from people
and the presence of the creatures,
mute, instinctual, wild--
more resonant--
sounding,
ringing like bells,
tolling the energy and passion and creativity of God,
bringing us back
to a better understanding
of our place in the order of things--
loved, yes, cherished,
but merely motes in the vast rushing universe
borne aloft by God's undying love.

They praise better than we do--
they praise simply by being.
They return my awareness to being a creature,
a creature of God, that lives and must die.

Henri Nouwen wrote:
Silence is the way to make solitude a reality.

Yet in the heat and the noise
and the unrelenting presence of others
in the Cambodian village--
how can I pray?
I who become alive
when alone and away
from the hum of human activity.
Teach me to pray, Jesu,
in the midst of the world.

Retrospective 2: blazing heat

God,
I cannot stand the noise--
the horrible music with the bass throbbing
the clashing of another music from across the street
the rumbling of diesel generators
the cries and yells of the dubbed Chinese films
the frantic barking of dogs
the hoarse crowing of roosters
the screeching claws and incessant cooing of the doves above my bed,
the popping of the fire of the burning corncobs,
blazingly hot and terrifyingly close to the house,
a single bucket of water propped beside them,
the wooden boards of the wall hot to the touch,
the sparks roiling and rising.

Are you enjoying living in the wilderness?
the commune authority said to me today--
it's fully forested, this place.

Relatively speaking.
But the burned logs roll out in wagons every day,
smoldering in the charcoal pits,
ending up as charred black lumps for sale
in old rice bags on the side of the road.
The poor feed off the forest.

Retrospectives

It was a long year, my year spent largely in the village, and I spent less time writing in a journal than I have ever done. I took fieldnotes--jottings on my world and its events and people for my thesis, but I filled only one thin journal with thoughts on my own soul, my own self. I was lost to myself in some ways, which is perhaps necessary for being turned inside out, for trying to understand other lives. Yet I knew myself blessed by God--every door I needed to live in northwest Cambodia swung wide open and all I had to do was gather my courage and walk through them. And walk and walk, for it was a year, an entire year, of my one short sweet life. I am looking through this past year's slim journal tonight, and I have decided to post some excerpts in the coming days in this long neglected forum, in honor of that year now gone forever.

it's bad when you forget to cite someone, but I did,
and here were their ringing words, given to us
to reflect upon at a February retreat:

Whoever is on a journey towards God
goes from one beginning to another beginning.
Will you be among those who dare
to tell themselves: Begin again!
Leave discouragement behind!
Let your soul live!

village

I just called my village family. In the village where I left them at the end of January.
I'm still spinning from it.
I begged them to summon my grandmother
from her little house,
who says water comes from her eyes when she thinks about me,
and asked when I'm coming back again.
I said in two years
and forbade her to get Heavily Ill.
My host mother and I discussed
the many layers of clothes I'm wearing,
the phone card I had to buy to ring them,
the dry hot season they're having,
and the fact that my sisters
had dreamed of me the night before,
which was clearly now
an omen that I would be in touch.
My brother Jane and I discussed
his fever
and the young papaya trees now growing
on his farm.
My niece Srei Leakh
informed me about her birthday
and the gifts she was given,
and asked about a hundred times
if I missed her.
The village chief, my adopted father,
said he's tired of working for no money
as the village chief,
but the authorities won't let him resign,
and asked when my wedding was scheduled...

Which brings us to my Lie.
I felt bad about this Lie all year.
It was an attempt to go into the village
as a respectable and comprehensible unmarried woman.
I said I had left a fiancee back in Scotland,
who I'd marry after I finished my schooling.
And then by the time I started feeling really guilty
about this whole lie,
it had already been passed all the way up
to the DISTRICT GOVERNOR,
and it was too late.
I figured that if the entire district
found out I'd been telling stories,
they would assume that nothing
about me was as it seemed.
So now I had to kill this Lie,
this albatross of falsehood.
This involved More Lying.
Shameful.
I said that our hearts
were no longer in agreement
because I had been away too long,
and the wedding was off.
So. Lies upon lies.

One of the gentlemen farmers,
this rich man who has a farm
and a job in the capital
and comes up occasionally
to faff about and get very drunk
with the village chief,
had informed my host family
that I had severed my heart
from them all
as evidenced by my not calling.
I felt quite annoyed by this.
But now they can tell him
he's wrong.
They dreamed of me,
and I called
from a cold land,
to a hot place
waiting for the rain,
and about to welcome in
their new year.

confession

I have a confession to make.
I'm no longer a bad birder.
One thing led to another...
and I got in over my head and started hanging about
charming and esoteric people who could say,
O, western marsh harrier, that's a first for southeast Cambodia
when a large brown hawk-thing dashed by...
and I let my deep and pressing need for knowledge to get involved...
and I've become a half decent birder.

Hallum has informed me that I must resign my post as the head of the Bad Birder of Cambodia (and Friends). I said that surely as the founder of the whole glamorous endeavor, I couldn't be made redundant. He said that I was now actually a Birdwatcher, and would actually get up early in the morning for the cause. I admitted that this was true. He said I can remain a sort of spiritual director of the thing, but he is taking up the reins. I said that he needed to start using his binoculars if he wanted to watch birds. He said that this sort of talk is the reason I've been summarily promoted out of my own society...

I still don't take photographs of birds. My apologies to those dear (and sometimes annoying, yes, Eli, Ornithological Brother-Friend, I mean you) friends who keep asking why I don't. I really think that one either watches birds or photographs birds, and I would rather watch them. Someday, if I ever have a good camera again, I will reconsider this state of affairs.

I am, however, going to learn to draw birds. I've become disgraced by my own field notes, which occasionally have a badly scrawled cartoon-like head of a bird that doesn't help me in the slightest when I identify it later. And I need things to do to keep me sane this year, and I can't just up and go the far reaches of Scotland in pursuit of birds anytime I leave the office. So. Birds. On paper. Drawn with pencils. And maybe some Markers.

I bought a book about it. The main problem with the very gorgeous book that I bought is that the guy thinks we should all be drawing birds in the field. As in on the wing, on the wire, in the pond. This takes me back to the far reaches issue. And it makes me think that I should maybe then just get on with the photography... This whole birding thing just keeps getting more complicated. I have good binoculars now, and now I feel my life would be infinitely better if I had a Harness to wear them on. I have finally started using a birding notebook, and now I'm supposed to be dragging art supplies out to the lagoons? Honestly. I'll be living in a caravan soon, surrounded by archaic tomes on birds of the world.

All of this to say that the BBC (and friends) might need rechristening. Suggestions welcome.

stripping the church

We had our last supper this evening,
and then we stripped the church,
together, in silence.

We yanked down these lovely sailing ships
the children made out of cut-apart plastic bottles--
their pennants sailed gaily above our heads all this Lent
while we thought of the food we eat
and the waste we make.

We took away the altar cloth, which was brown,
with small white squares covered with the thumbprints of
our congregation.
It was all bundled up and dragged off.

We took away all the stones
and the clay candle-holders
and the fishing net strung full of empty bottles and cans.
We carried out the cross.
It was all stuffed in the back room.
It felt like a kind of violence,
like we were killing things.
And I realized that each time
we deal in death
or act in cruelty
or turn from mercy
we abandon him.

Our vicar read that
the disciples abandoned him
in Gesthemane,
in the garden,
with the mob that had come
to take him away,
and I wanted to say, no,
no, let's stay this time,
let's stay with each other,
let's keep watch with him,
let's stay awake,
let's hold his hand
through the long dark night to follow.
But they didn't,
and nor do we.

Little Xanthy got confused when asked to blow out
the tea candles that represented the disciples,
and also blew out the big candle that represented Jesus.
Her brother Sebastian whispered loudly,
He's dead.
And Xanthy looked alarmed,
as if she had killed him,
and I thought, no, my sweet,
it wasn't you,
we did it.
We all did.
We blew out the light
and we walked away.

A new Celtic blessing

Winter has come to us in my current place
on our curved world,
and all is cloaked with snow,
changing all the surfaces of things.
I fear it, but I am also in awe
of its rampant beauty.

Weather is a blessing
in the midst of transient times.
It is impossible not to take weather seriously,
to avoid being pushed into awareness of the present moment,
whether that moment be drenched in sweat,
soaked in rain,
or chilled and frosty.

Weather brings me back from my daydreams,
my wanderings between what I have left behind and what is to come,
and leaves me in this very instant, shocked by the coldness of the air
in my lungs, the tingling of my hands, clad in my grandmother's scarlet
gloves...

Weather reminds me that I am here, now. For now.
For another six weeks, and then I will
be in a dizzingly different climate.
But the weather holds
me in the present moment,
nearing the end of this task,
yet with my hands still so very full.

And with this thought of weather on my mind,
I was struck again by Celtic prayer, by
its rootedness to our geography...
Here is a prayer by J. Philip Newell,
a spiritual writer whose work I highly recommend.

The blessings of heaven,
the blessings of earth,
the blessings of sea and of sky.
On those we love this day and
on every human family
the gifts of heaven,
the gifts of earth,
the gifts of sea and of sky.

May they come to you.

bright spots and tumbling headlong

My teaching is coming along.
My father advised me to simply find the 'bright spots in the room' and teach to that small crowd, and let all the rest come along as best they can or wish to.
But I'm new at this and an idealist still, and I have to confess I want them all.
I want them all to be bright spots--illuminated, interested, engaged.
A room ablaze with light, as it were.
And that's a tall order.

The material for my afternoon class tomorrow is abstract and difficult, and I am seeking a way to bring them into it--closer to the frame... Like in Voyage of the Dawn Treader, that portion near the beginning of the book where the children are staring at a picture of the oceans of Narnia, and it is such a Real picture that they stare harder and harder, and the picture begins to move, and then the children are swept into the picture itself.

That is the goal--how to make theoretical discussions of globalization so real that they start to swirl and flow, and we all tumble in headlong.

Such a consuming thing, to teach.

in search of self

The moon was luminescent last night,
a gleaming broken china plate,
and a wind was stirring
as my father showed me the grounds--
all the plants that must be uprooted or sheared
before winter comes.

This morning, before first light,
they were gone. And I awoke
to stillness. The television has
been disconnected, and I sat
at the table with coffee in my
hands, observing the trees post
their solemn watch around the
pond, and listened.

Things rise in silence.

This house is large for a hermit's cell,
it allows for restless pacing, or escape
from one's self, room by room, and is
full of artefacts of our lives. And I am
no hermit, nor monk--I am not
withdrawing from the world in order
to pray from the world, as Merton
once described the Trappists. Instead,
it is refuge, it is where I can come home
safe to myself. Home from the dizzying
effort of sharing this small store of wisdom
and experience that I have, trying to be
lucid, to be clear, to be reflective, to open
doors rather than hurling them shut.

I feel as transparent and as public in
little Houghton as I have felt anywhere--
it's like being on stage in some medieval
morality play--with the same cast of
archetypal characters. The students, we
are told, time and again, watch us. We
are watched. Will the audience think
me Judas if I never attend chapel?
Will the audience consider me a Pharisee,
a Roman, or Nicodemus, seeking truth
quietly in the night?

And I who am used to having
many selves,
(shuffled like cards for the hand that must be played)
many worlds,
wonder--
can I be true to one?

Sea Voyage

It's been over a month now
in this place of berries and bears,
of shy wood ducks and tall rows of corn,
this North America I left more than ten
years ago, never intending to return for
more than visits.

The students are here now,
over one hundred of them
in my hands, and the
responsibility weighs
upon me. There are so many
ways to mean well yet go wrong.

I suppose that's true in all things in life.
But I feel, as always, unprepared for
this next journey in the long sea
voyage of my life.

As always, I lack a compass, or good maps,
I sail with the stars, and many are the mistakes
made in my attempts at celestial navigation. I go
east, to the beginning of the world and the end of
all things, and I do not doubt that I shall be welcomed
home, at the end of my portion of days.

But some days I tire of the sea,
of always leaving the dry land behind,
of the terror of thunder and gale and storm,
of the threat of smugglers' lanterns,
and all the long uncertainties of the journey.

Some days I think this is a fool's errand,
this life lived in faulty service of a Lord
I scarcely understand.

But there are companions for the journey,
most days, and strange wonders, like
dolphins and phosphorescence in these
mysterious waters.

And though the water onboard is brackish,
and the water without all salt,
I have heard tell, that at the edge of the world,
where I sail with all the hope and courage I can
muster up, the water is sweet.

Pentecost at Saint James

Breath came into them
and they lived.

This phrase from Ezekiel 37 was written in many languages, set unobtrusively on the shelves in front of unadorned glorious sunlight yellow walls.

Over our heads, tissue ribbons of fire descend from the wires that stretch across our encircled chairs—red, gold, coral, bronze, lemon yellow.

In the front of the room, where we kneel to take communion, glowing crimson swathes of cloth descend from the ceiling to two white pedestals, pillars of fire.

Our skepticism about the good we seek to do
must not erode our compassion,
Geoffrey says, retired mime.

He enacts Ezekiel 37, first a frenzied urbanite, a puppet of meaningless frantic repetitive motion, then dead, then slowly returning to life, blown back into self awareness.

In the song, poet Kathy Galloway renders the Spirit female—
She comes with sister’s carefulness
strong to support and bind.
Her voice will speak for justice’ sake
and peace is in her mind.

She comes with power like the night
and glory like the day.
Her reign is in the heart of things—
O come to us and stay.

We daringly attempt an unrehearsed responsive reading of the scriptural Pentecost account,
with drums and shakers,
and a great babbling in many tongues.

I half expect the roof to fly off
and a white dove descend.

If I were a hawfinch, where would I be?

Sunday was a momentous day for me. I finally screwed up my courage, unlocked my bicycle from the bike stand in George Square, near my office, and rode it up and down the hills of the city to my home near the sea. I have a bus phobia, as in, I fear being flattened by a doubledecker bus while careening along on my bicycle. Thus I'm so not into the riding on the main roads.

I read this lines and find this simply ridiculous. I was a motorbike riding fiend in Cambodia, and I can't ride a bicycle in Edinburgh. WHY? WHY? In my defense, my phobia is rooted in an actual near death-by-bus experience from when I was 10 and had insisted on my ability to ride a bicycle to school in Oxford... And they just swoop by you, missing you by inches, and... Agh. Can't do it.

Okay, so I got halfway home, buffeted by wind and breathless, and then the domes of the glasshouses of the Botanic Gardens rose up out of the city. I dismounted the bicycle, which had a Very flat tire by now, locked it up, rooted around in my bag for my binoculars--which British birders call Bins. Have you got your bins? Lovely.... And went in search of a hawfinch.

There's one in the photo below, from a few posts back. But I have yet to see one in the winged flesh. They are hard to see. They hang out quietly way up in the canopy of trees, munching on fruits like cherry which they crack with their fierce beaks. And I had heard, somewhere, that the Botanics in April were the best place in Edinburgh to see a hawfinch. Ergo the bins in the handbag.

Well. Well, the Botanics are strangely full of trees. All kinds. All heights. And shrubs, in fact. Flowers and bushes and even thickets. I got in amongst the wandering crowds--loads of children in prams, loads... And while everyone else eyed the lovely shrubbery, I wandered around like a lost child trying to see some birds.

There was, however, not a bird to be seen except for the occasional gull and crow. There was the sound of birds. I was surrounded by birdsong, more calls and whistles and shrieks and rattles than you can imagine. But not even a glimpse of the singers. After about thirty minutes I realized what an extraordinary thing it is to be simply focused on sound. The paper like curls of a tree's bark filled the world when I wandered one way, the rustle of bamboo when I wandered another. And the birds, louder and louder. I wandered in a daze, looking up into the canopy, aloft on a sea of sound, lost in the tops of the trees shaking against the dome of the atmosphere.

Finally, I wandered out into something more like a traditional English park. And then, in that odd way birds have of upsetting one's expectations entirely, there were birds everywhere. Blue tits, great tits, chaffinches, magpies, sparrows, dunnocks. All ordinary common birds to a birder, singing their hearts out, pulling me into another world entirely. And then, when I had given up on seeing new birds entirely and was just happily engaged in sorting out which bird makes which kind of noise--a small brown bird fluttered by, and landed on the trunk of a nearby tree. I looked idly in its direction and realized that I had never before seen such a bird.

This is, by the way, one of the reasons I bird. How often does one spot a new mammal? But in the avian world, entirely new creatures are there for the seeing, day after day, region after region....

It was a lovely bird. It sat, perfectly still, as people strolled within arm's length of it. It was shaped like a teardrop, with a forked brown tail. Its belly and chin were white, its beak was hooked, its feet were pink and had a long long hindclaw. Its back was brown, but it redefined brown. Through my binoculars its feathers were an intricate mosaic of brown and black triangles and chevrons. Its eyes were bright black peppercorns. And finally, it moved. It tilted its head from side to side, then hopped, laterally, to another portion of trunk, and began to creep upwards, gently probing the edges of the bark for insects.

It was, in fact, a treecreeper. A beautiful brown bird that creeps up trees. It was perfect.

I did not see what I set out to see. But something found me. Praise be.

Mine own romantic town

They're not my words. They belong to Sir Walter Scott, and they are about the castle in Edinburgh. Yesterday was Historic Scotland's public day, which means that the castle was free to the public. So I went, for the first time, up into the place I have gazed upon so fondly and so long.


It was fabulous. But I prefer Sir Scott's words to my own, and so here is his stanza:

Such dusky grandeur clothed the height
Where the huge castle holds its state
And all the steep slope down
Whose ridgy back heaves to the sky
Piled deep and massy, close and high
Mine own romantic town.

an odd dreaming of birds and snakes

I’ve started dreaming about birds. They are always
different in my dreams than they are in life— larger, stranger.
One night it was a scarlet avocet,
black as night, with crimson Chinese characters
inked upon its back. One night it was hawfinches,
larger than hawks, their beaks thick as rods of steel
and their heads dimpled like the top of an apple.
Sometimes they are indistinguishable but large as elephants,
in pine forests that tower against the sky.

Maybe these landscapes are so large because
my life feels small just now, constrained,
my life lived within offices and in chairs in front
of monitors, with only my mind active, and yet
even that chained to the form of academic writing.
Natalie Goldberg once urged writers to think of
structure as a necessary skeleton, or like the skin
of a snake, that could be stuffed full with whatever
you liked, but had to be recognizable as a snake.
I haven’t done very well accepting that I need to
build a snake right now and have been wrestling
around with the form, frustrated. Perhaps it is a
useful metaphor to embrace. Perhaps I need to see
this week as making its spine, one weird vertebrae
at a time, laying them into their lovely interlocking
pattern. Maybe the birds are my desire to escape,
but it is a blessing to be on this journey towards
a PhD at all. Perhaps I had best be on my guard,
to guard this feeble little serpent of a project from
the fey eye of the eagle circling in the currents far
above.