Tag: birds

Nothing gold can stay

Katharine AsalsLeave a comment

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

~ Robert Frost

My dad spoke this entire poem aloud as we sat at the exit of the rehab hospital, looking out the window at the emergence of spring, waiting for the ride to get him home.

When I made a crack about “nothing gold can stay” being perhaps not the most uplifting of lines, he came back with “assumptions about Frost being a sunny, feel-good poet” being off base and the like – the sharp engagement with language and writing and expression was clearly intact. So good to know after some 6 weeks of hospital turmoil.

The rehab hospital offered some particularly fine moments – taking dad out for walks through the verdant Willowdale grounds as spring sprung. I downloaded an app of bird song, just to know who exactly was singing so brightly as we wandered from one corner of the gardens to another. There were robins of course, the occasional jay, a waxwing, and several variations on sparrows – the prettiest being the Song Sparrow as opposed to the House Sparrow or the Common Sparrow. But one day there was a fleeting moment of Goldfinch… oh, what a magical name. Must be the gold reference.

In the mornings before heading up to the hospital, I started a practice of sitting on the benches facing the lake and doing 10 minutes or so of meditation.

I have an app for that too, don’t ya know. So I sit there with my headphones on and do my best to clear the mind.

The guided meditations in my app do your basic bringing attention to the breath, but they have a few other tricks to help with the incessant Thinking Thinking Thinking of the brain. My favourite so far is to “become aware of the sounds” that are all around you. Recognize that you cannot stop the hearing of the sounds, that there is a part of you hearing the sounds – your consciousness – and your consciousness is hearing sounds whether you will it to or not. And then be in touch with that part of yourself that is simply hearing sounds and simply carries on breathing all day long. Something that is always there no matter what thought is going on in your mind.

For some reason I see this “consciousness” thing, this place that is somewhere behind and beyond the Thinking Mind, as a kind of vagus nerve shape…

Vagus Nerve illustration

…something that includes and yet is deeper and more extensive than the brain.

I dunno – maybe this image will change over time as I do more meditation, we’ll see.

But there is something about the realizing that sound is happening all around all the time whether or not you are paying attention to it, and using that as a way past the thinking that works better for me than trying a similar thing with the visual world. I guess I’m so visually oriented that analysis jumps in very quickly. As soon as I open my eyes my mind starts in with the ideas: “Would this scene before me make a compelling image?” ” “Is this interesting to look at or not so much?”

Anyways, dad went home that day from the rehab hospital and was home for a few weeks before he ended up in yet another emergency department, and was then admitted to hospital again, and is now in “transitional care”. A bit of a holding zone while he builds his strength again and we work on a more sustainable plan.

Meanwhile, on a weekend getaway to a friend’s cottage, I pulled out the birdsong app, and was brought back into the joy of birds… Hello!!!

So many different birds outside of the city!!!

Yes, plenty of robins and jays, but then there was an Eastern Phoebe! A Northern Flicker! And when I thought I was hearing the Northern Flicker again, no, no, turns out that was a Yellow-Bottomed Warbler!!! Such a world of variety.

And so many elaborate swirling marks when their calls are expressed as waveforms –

Well, I soon realized that the birdsong app, as fun and charming as it is, is also a way of being in that very analytical part of the brain, of not relaxing back into a more experiential way of being in the moment.

And I have to say, I do find water – and the glittering play of light on water – a kind of short cut to clearing the mind and simply being. Being in the present moment.

Nothing gold can stay.

Heat in the city

Katharine Asals5 Comments

Waking up my son this morning and looking out the window into the little activities in the back yard – squirrels crossing on the squirrel highway of telephone wires, various birds here and there gathering food and such – the peaceful putterings are suddenly interrupted by the massive swoop of a hawk diving into the back yard beyond where the strange white dog lives.

A moment later the hawk is up, perched on the fence between the properties, lingering a moment, huge, and then he flies off, giant wings carrying him out of the yard, a small brown shape clutched in his talons.  A mouse?  A bird?  Looks too small for a mouse, so perhaps a robin as they are plentiful in these yards.

Last summer I remember O, the (ex)husband, saying he’d seen a hawk swoop into the back yard and catch a pigeon one day when he was home – so it seems they do go in for birds.  And perhaps it is the same hawk.

The presence of a hawk wouldn’t be surprising of course if we lived out in the burbs, near fields or a marsh, but we are right downtown.  Just 2 weeks ago there was a shooting at the gelateria around the corner – the memorial flowers are still wilting outside the cafe where the man died.

Talking with my boy after the fact we figure this must be a good yard for hungry birds and animals in the city.   There’s so many trees the woodpeckers like the range of insect sources, the squirrels and birds have been feasting on the saskatoon-berry tree for weeks.  Someone a couple of yards down seems to have a crabapple tree cause the squirrels drop half-eaten little apples as they pass by on squirrel highway.   All this fecundity, the well-fed life must be appealing for the larger birds of prey as well.

It is the beginning of a hot day here – hot for us Canadian types at least.  34 degrees now in the early afternoon and rising, but with the humidity feels like 40-something.

In the hammock with the camera, seeking out birds in the trees I realize they are hot too, their beaks open, panting.

The sprinkler seems like a good idea for everyone – for the plants, all a little parched and shrivelled from so many days without rain, for the birds if they dare come near the sprinkler….

And they do, having a veritable sprinkler party, flying and darting through the water, catching the lower streams in their beaks and drinking, splashing around in the puddles forming in the dips and valleys in the earth.