Wednesday, December 03, 2003

winter migration

This morning as I drove out of the village the skies were filled with birds - Starlings perhaps, Dad would know... whatever they were they seethed across the surface of the sunrise soaked clouds like a re-enactment of a Hitchcock film, only not threatening: these birds were a joyous affirmation, a sign of life's shifting patterns of renewal not a gathering menace: Telephone lines to either side of the road were alive and thick with this teeming, feathered, excited mass of pent-up energy and optimism, and I remember feeling that this should be significant in some way - an augury perhaps, but at the time I didn't know of what.

This afternoon at the end of a long and absorbingly productive work-day (which is unusual) I grabbed a coffee (which is habitual) and checked in on a friend's weblog. There I found the page alive in the same way as those telephone lines were - my morning's sense of portent was bookended into clear and happy focus by an entry dated November 27th (but which I'd swear wasn't there two days ago,) where flocks of words and ideas crowd together, coalescing in swooping paragraphs - almost blocking out the sky with their clamouring mercurial message of movement, renewal and change.

Anyone who's been reading these pages for a while might remember an entry entitled Icarus (September 16th in the archives) and so might perhaps share a tiny fraction of my joy at the news that my friend has now spread his wings again.

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