Sitting alone in bed I stare out to the fallow meadow and trees beyond my open window. The fields further behind stack up in layers and are topped with a horizon along which trees are clumped in a caterpillar line. For a time my gaze is soft, lost even, but I am brought round by the muscular, rhythmic charge of a train through the valley below. I cannot see the train, only the blue-sage tessellating fragments of countryside, but the sound bellows and charges, rousing me to a crescendo of altered consciousness. Where have I been? Where am I going? For an uncanny moment in my Victorian semi I feel like I am in a Paul Nash painting, or an Eric Ravillious. I could be in a cutaway scene of an old film. Between the wars. I am modernity. Untroubled by the ear-long urge of the train, I consider its many anonymous arrivals and departures, and for a moment as fleeting as steam dissolving into a backdraft, I feel the heavy doors open.
Beneath the window, I watch a pair of crows. The first hops through the bars in the gate while the other watches on. This simple action feels almost unbearably tender to observe. The caution. A watcher at the rear. This gentle heist. The brawniest of the two reappears moments later with a bundle of dry twigs in his beak. Briefly, he attempts to add more but seems to decide he is at the dropping point, at which he hops onto the high wall, turns and takes flight. The female does the same, taking only a quick glance around her, and follows in his slip stream. Nesting season.
I am fixed to the spot by the importance of this short time in their lives; me just a bystander to the possibility that lies ahead for them. A spectre at the window, nothing more than a shadowy risk that has passed. All of us left in the echo of the train. Take it all, I mouth silently through the glass, none of it is mine, but after I have showered and dressed, I pull a thick wadding of hair from my brush, and take it outside. I set it beneath the bird feeder and it is carried off in a light wind. It will make a soft bed. To be threaded through the world in this way is what I want.
For weeks, I have been waking creaky and thick. There is some transition being made in my body that I can’t name or entirely grasp, but I know that I have been neglecting, what, my movement practice? No, it is not this impassive and abstract. Let us always go beyond the peripheral truth and into the centre of it. I have been neglecting myself. I am neglecting myself. The clock says it is just gone nine, so I pick up the phone and call an esteemed movement teacher in the hope that I might be put on a waiting list for an intensive that I already know is sold out. We have a brief chat where I make a point of not attempting a seduction, and she takes my details with kindness. I tell her that I hope the gods will be favourable and put down the phone.
Standing empty handed in my office, palms turned upwards still asking for favour, I put on some music and attempt to bring myself back to form in some small way. Today, against the warning of both temperature and function, I put on a dress and as I gently dance my legs and arms awake, I let the fabric twist around me in billows. I give myself the prompts I would give in class. Find new surfaces of yourself. Push out into your space. Travel. Beyond my office window I have a clear view of the camellia and magnolia trees. They are full of the season, and release petals to the wind. I find their movement in my own, my gaze oscillating between them and my world behind glass. I stand still. I am the house plants on my windowsill who suddenly seem so stuck by comparison. I explore this using the rhythms and pauses in the music to ask who is happy and who is not? I miss this.
After, I close my eyes, flick through the pages of a book which creates a papery lick of air on my chin, and pull a poem as one might a tarot card or a banknote from the machine. Every morning so far, I’m alive. And now / the crows break off from the rest of the darkness and burst up into the sky – as though / all night they had thought of what they would like their lives to be, and imagined / their strong, thick wings. It is improbable that I should alight here, but the world is mysterious and we are asked never to forget it. Landscape, by Mary Oliver. If the doors of my heart ever close, I am as good as dead.
“There is some transition being made in my body that I can’t name or entirely grasp” - Ruth, I needed to be given this fresh perspective on my own experience more than I knew. Today’s my first time opening Substack in a long long time (I’m currently reading your Weathering, and was reminded of how much I love your writing and perspectives so came here looking for more). Thank you 🧡
Golly - breathless. That was beautiful - almost melodic.