Our two Company Sparrows - born in the office, nesting in a Cape Ash one story down - have produced a couple of fluffy grey chicks, which they promptly dumped out of the nest as soon as they could fly a little, yet spend all their time feeding, seemingly.
The chicks were huddled together on a cement slab which supports one of the table-shades on the first floor when I saw them this evening.
Dad flew down to them with a tasty titbit and spent the next ten minutes trying to get rid of one importunate child who started to follow him everywhere.
Unwilling to just bugger off, father tried to coax chick down from the ledge, back to his sibling. No go- chick was determined to follow Dad around, probably figuring him for a safe source of food and whatever birds feel in the way of family closeness.
Reminded me of myself, at times in the past.
Our weather has remained irritating and surprising, both, since just after Beltane.
The normal Highveld summer is an endless sky of (what else but) cerulean blue, high and wide as you could ever imagine.
But for the last month or so, we've had a procession of thoroughly overcast drizzly days , followed by a great carnival of conditions from chilly to cooking and back again all in one day.
Tuesday I wished I'd had a camera on me-but I've got it all here in my mind. The sky from the northern horizon to about 30 degrees altitude was bleak and grey with that inverted-grey-sea look. From there on up to the zenith and all the way to the southern horizon the highveld-summer-blue was strewn with cumulonimbus and cirrostratus, both - which looks very odd in our skies.
The chicks were huddled together on a cement slab which supports one of the table-shades on the first floor when I saw them this evening.
Dad flew down to them with a tasty titbit and spent the next ten minutes trying to get rid of one importunate child who started to follow him everywhere.
Unwilling to just bugger off, father tried to coax chick down from the ledge, back to his sibling. No go- chick was determined to follow Dad around, probably figuring him for a safe source of food and whatever birds feel in the way of family closeness.
Reminded me of myself, at times in the past.
Our weather has remained irritating and surprising, both, since just after Beltane.
The normal Highveld summer is an endless sky of (what else but) cerulean blue, high and wide as you could ever imagine.
But for the last month or so, we've had a procession of thoroughly overcast drizzly days , followed by a great carnival of conditions from chilly to cooking and back again all in one day.
Tuesday I wished I'd had a camera on me-but I've got it all here in my mind. The sky from the northern horizon to about 30 degrees altitude was bleak and grey with that inverted-grey-sea look. From there on up to the zenith and all the way to the southern horizon the highveld-summer-blue was strewn with cumulonimbus and cirrostratus, both - which looks very odd in our skies.
The whole effect was one of imminent apocalypse.
We live in interesting times, reflecting, perhaps, our own rising fear for the stability of this shell we've drawn around ourselves dubbed civilization.
Yes, you've guessed it - I'm about to say good riddance to an untenable and unsustainable system which works on the bones of women, children and those of a peaceful bent, which feeds its great consumerist maw with the bodies of those who don't buy into the system, and some of those who do.
There - I've said it. I won't mourn this misbegotten pyramid of hierarchy when it's gone.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,As I foretold you, were all spirits andAre melted into air, into thin air:And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,The solemn temples, the great globe itself,Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolveAnd, like this insubstantial pageant faded,Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuffAs dreams are made on, and our little lifeIs rounded with a sleep.
Weather patterns are changing all over the world and there is so much complacency, especially here in Brighid's Isles as the more Mediterranean feel is to people's liking. But it is also getting wetter and more windy. Sparrows are suffering a lot and there are far fewer than there used to be.
ReplyDeleteAny system that requires the resources of more than one Earth to sustain it simply has to be unsustainable and a complete disaster.
I love your metaphor of the bones of women and children.
Love from the dark days of a Northern Winter
Paul
It's weird how often you and I are thinking about the same things. I've been on a lot lately about how things are going to REALLY have to change, not just at the edges or cosmetically.
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