things with wings

my evening was spent sitting in the fresh air under my favourite tree reading and jotting in my journal, reflecting on simplicity and presence in the moment - a lesson i find myself returning to again and again...

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"in all of these particulars, the fact that shines forward for me is that in writing abut my life i cherish it. i value it. i see it. writing is the act of opening the eye to the absolute beauty of ordinary things. that is dailiness and dailiness is sanity."

- julia cameron

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mere minutes after i copied those very words into my journal i received a text that ended with the words, "continue cherishing". and so i cherished the grace of synchronicity...

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i met a mallard down by the ormeau bridge. he had a broken wing. completely dislocated, it was all but hanging off. he kept shaking it as if it might spring back to life and into its rightful place... i hated having to leave him in his bewildered predicament...

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but there were 30 swallows doing their acrobatic best over the lagan, silhouetted against a tangerine sunset.

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moments later, cycling along ormeau embankment, i was thrilled to find a heron flying along at eye level beside me down the river, with what i can only assume was some kind of eel hanging from it's beak. in the moment i felt just like tom cruise whipping along on his motorbike in top gun and punching his fist in the air as a plane overtakes him in take off. i may actually have uttered an exclamating whoop as i lifted myself off the seat and sped up, trying to keep pace with this, my favourite of all birds.
but what came next was even more exhilarating and had me cutting back and forth along the side of the river to follow the action.
mid-flight a gull came up behind the heron and in an outrageously ballsy move attempted to grasp the eel from the heron. there was a mid air struggle like a clumsy WW1 dogfight but the heron evaded the gull and headed to the relative safety of the bank. what ensued over the next five minutes was a game of cat and mouse as the heron moved along the embankment trying to find a safe spot to swallow the eel, now being pursued by four gulls. they flew in co-ordinated arcs and even when my view of the river was obscured by trees their sweeping fly bys told me the heron's position. the drama was concluded as i peered down from above through branches to the water's edge to see the heron finally guzzling down the eel and then taking off back down the river in majestic triumphant flight.

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who the hell needs soap operas when this kind of drama unfolds everyday in our neighbourhoods? it was magnificant, and i cherished every breathtaking ordinary moment.

LB, x