That there are two bird nests in your yard shows a level of safety and refuge that I know is real. Whenever I'm out walking and ask my worried mind to tell me something it hasn't told me before, I hear a bird singing. When you write you speak for so many of us.
Oh, my god. Elizabeth. I do believe in signs. I believe in sorrow and its indelible mark on us. I believe in the hoof print of trauma and how that kick feels when it comes again and again. I'm beyond sorry that you saw that man fall to the ground and how you felt it in your body. I wish you recovery. I wish you the image of those beautiful birds and their nests imprinted on your eyeballs. Look at them. Study them. Love to you and Sophie and to the bird photographer and his exquisite talents that help us forlorn humans to see our winged fellow creatures.
Validating your experience. This is literally the thing I would hope would not happen to you or around you when you went to get the vaccine. Holding you close Elizabeth. With you.
These times are hard, there is no running away from it. You can put this into such moving beautiful words. reading this here helps, please be sure of that.
The birds, oh yes. For a long time I would imagine that people, esp. my deceased mother, visited me in the shape of birds - and I am the least esoteric person you may have ever met - but overall, birds, I believe are self sufficient, they may look at us with pity but basically, as Mark Cocker, the British author and naturalist once wrote: "They stand outside any moral process. They are utterly indifferent. This absolute oblivion on their part, this lack of sharing, is powerful."
I read that hummingbirds mean we must expect joy, love, and good luck. I also read that they symbolize perseverance and endurance, so that's confusing because one doesn't have to "endure" joy, love, good luck. All of it means rising above I suppose, not being mired. The birds in your city garden seem to know there is someone there who loves them, and captures their images in a holy way. Thank you as always, my beloved friend, for your solidarity with all thing just, for your understanding. And that woman in the orange shirt in the photo of the man seizing, could she be any more disassociated from the human experience? For some reason, she shocks me. Also, your writing here is extraordinary.
A sign is a sign. You don't know of/or for what is the problem. I see them every where too. And I can't even blame it on an Italian grandma.
What reading your post made me wonder who would even find the man seizing after his vaccine, waiting alone in his car, parked in the huge parking lot, where I got my vaccine. No watchers in sight. Nobody in the next car looking into the car next to them. They said there were watchers. A drive through site.
Signs it's the last days, the end of the world. Except the word keeps on. So far anyway.
Days of rage, all around. I was going to mention PTSD too. There's no way I can pretend to fully understand your experience with vaccines, because it's such a deep and personal trauma, but your writing helps me see them from your perspective. This post seems like such a brilliant encapsulation of life in LA -- the hummingbirds, the armed robbery, the beautiful, the hellish. Welcome to SoCal!
That there are two bird nests in your yard shows a level of safety and refuge that I know is real. Whenever I'm out walking and ask my worried mind to tell me something it hasn't told me before, I hear a bird singing. When you write you speak for so many of us.
Oh, my god. Elizabeth. I do believe in signs. I believe in sorrow and its indelible mark on us. I believe in the hoof print of trauma and how that kick feels when it comes again and again. I'm beyond sorry that you saw that man fall to the ground and how you felt it in your body. I wish you recovery. I wish you the image of those beautiful birds and their nests imprinted on your eyeballs. Look at them. Study them. Love to you and Sophie and to the bird photographer and his exquisite talents that help us forlorn humans to see our winged fellow creatures.
Validating your experience. This is literally the thing I would hope would not happen to you or around you when you went to get the vaccine. Holding you close Elizabeth. With you.
These times are hard, there is no running away from it. You can put this into such moving beautiful words. reading this here helps, please be sure of that.
The birds, oh yes. For a long time I would imagine that people, esp. my deceased mother, visited me in the shape of birds - and I am the least esoteric person you may have ever met - but overall, birds, I believe are self sufficient, they may look at us with pity but basically, as Mark Cocker, the British author and naturalist once wrote: "They stand outside any moral process. They are utterly indifferent. This absolute oblivion on their part, this lack of sharing, is powerful."
(https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/jul/27/wings-desire-mark-cocker-birds)
I read that hummingbirds mean we must expect joy, love, and good luck. I also read that they symbolize perseverance and endurance, so that's confusing because one doesn't have to "endure" joy, love, good luck. All of it means rising above I suppose, not being mired. The birds in your city garden seem to know there is someone there who loves them, and captures their images in a holy way. Thank you as always, my beloved friend, for your solidarity with all thing just, for your understanding. And that woman in the orange shirt in the photo of the man seizing, could she be any more disassociated from the human experience? For some reason, she shocks me. Also, your writing here is extraordinary.
So beautiful, and I am floored by how well you write about complexity and embodied responses.
A sign is a sign. You don't know of/or for what is the problem. I see them every where too. And I can't even blame it on an Italian grandma.
What reading your post made me wonder who would even find the man seizing after his vaccine, waiting alone in his car, parked in the huge parking lot, where I got my vaccine. No watchers in sight. Nobody in the next car looking into the car next to them. They said there were watchers. A drive through site.
Signs it's the last days, the end of the world. Except the word keeps on. So far anyway.
Days of rage, all around. I was going to mention PTSD too. There's no way I can pretend to fully understand your experience with vaccines, because it's such a deep and personal trauma, but your writing helps me see them from your perspective. This post seems like such a brilliant encapsulation of life in LA -- the hummingbirds, the armed robbery, the beautiful, the hellish. Welcome to SoCal!
I think it's PTSD, years and years and years of trauma that you try to deal with and the body and the mind have their own memory.
And the birds, the hummingbird and the bushtit are signs, signs that life goes on despite everything.
Sending hugs and love woman.
Darling birds. May the man who fell be restored and well.
Elizabeth. Sometimes it's really all too much. Or maybe, it's always too much. And then...a mother hummingbird. Which is everything, all at once.