Monday, May 26, 2008

The Secret Language Of Crows

The Language Of Crows

Have you ever wondered if the mood you are in is your's?  Or if you are catching the cross-currents from someone elses journey? 

I woke up this morning bright and clean.  I had nothing that had to be done, so I took a leisurely pace into the morning. I went out and took a quick walk around the neighborhood, made some oatmeal, made a pot of coffee, turned the stereo on (I've been in a classical binge all day, mostly Mozart), and settled in to read e-mail and chat.

That occupied most of the morning  - at times I was engaged in chat, at times I was a spectator, at times I was both.  The morning slowly unfolded cold and gray, one small piece at a time.  I drank coffee.  I thought, I laughed, I joked, I teased, I encouraged, I nutured thoughts and I surpressed thoughts.

And I felt the currents of the world flowing over me like a giant river.  There were parts that were bright and clear and cold.  There were parts that were deep and still and hinted at hidden lights somewhere in the darkness.  In its own voice the river told stories - some clear, some not, some shouted, some echoed.  There were rapids.  There were backwaters.  There were currents and cross currents and I felt them all swirling around me.

It was exhausting. After enough coffee that I was twitching, I rose up and started for the shower. I never made it to the shower.  I made is as far as the bed, where I stripped down and climbed back under the covers for an hour and napped.  It was a good nap - I closed my eyes and I fell asleep for an hour or so.  Then, I woke up and took a shower and essentially started the day all over.

Except it is a different day.  The sun is shining.  I have a few errands to run.  Mozart has run his course.  I am...brighter. On a personal level I have been working to be more aware of myself and my environment in a particular moment or set of moments.  I am not sure if that is altering my moods, or making more aware of them. 

One of the things I have certainly become aware of is one of the things that rippled through me today - I seem to catch other peoples moods, seem to be more susceptible to them, almost on a visceral level.  That has been an interesting ride - and this morning - with its wide variety of ripples, has been an interesting day on that ride.

I am trying to tease some sort of meaning out of it.  At the surface of course is our wonderful human ability to connect to other people - to be empathic - to feel them, their hopes, their joys, their sorrows, their stories. 

For me the act of writing is the act of deliberately placing myself into an empathic state.  I start with a character or characters and the barest bones of a notion - a journey, an end point, a transitional moment, a brilliant vignette.  The character may be entirely fictional or the character may be a real person or the character (most common of all) is a fictional person with the traits of a real person or real people.

What inspires a tale can be something very simple - a word, a phrase, a half-told tale.  The hint at something that the imagination and the muse seizes.  Whether you are aware of it or not you are all muses to me and to other people.  You inspire us in the stories we tell, whether we tell them as fiction or as poetry or as music or as art or as essay.

The things you do ripple.  Today they rippled through my morning.  They are still rippling through me and I will carry them through the day and some into the next day and some into the day after that and on and on and on. I often wish I could follow you through your days, like a crow, with sharp eyes, at the edge of your world, watching. I wish I could see more of the tale.  Gather them up. Fly them back to my nest.  Then take pen in hand and write the stories on parchment in the secret langauge of crows, a language of ripples and currents.

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