Friday Open Thread (with Nuthatches)
October 29, 2021 7:01 PM Subscribe
Amal El-Mohtar (co-author of This Is How You Lose the Time-War, and other delightful things, and a Houston Spies blaseball *redacted*) recently posted a photo on Twitter of a nuthatch feeding from her hand. She posted on her blog today about the story behind the photo and ended with a request: "I'd love for you to tell me, if you want, whether you've ever nourished a hope in your heart you know to be vanishingly unlikely, but then found it fulfilled; whether, while you felt yourself dull and undeserving, you've ever felt a small, joyous grace light on you like a bird. I wish this for you with all my heart. "
A lovely piece of writing and grateful reminder of my own sublime experiences of intimacy with gaia.
posted by Thella at 8:21 PM on October 29, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by Thella at 8:21 PM on October 29, 2021 [1 favorite]
"I'd been feeling, lately, like an empty stone cup, mold fuzzing up through its cracks, and this day, this bird, with its long clutching toes and its bright black eyes, scoured me clean and filled me with cold, clear water."
Thanks for posting this, curious nu.
posted by the primroses were over at 10:08 PM on October 29, 2021 [1 favorite]
Thanks for posting this, curious nu.
posted by the primroses were over at 10:08 PM on October 29, 2021 [1 favorite]
I did kind of have a moment like that today.
I have been estranged from the crush for most of 2021, when he (appeared to, apparently) cut me dead in public after I gave him his birthday present. I have been sad/mad about the whole thing every day since. Last week, after I'd finally decided I was done with the whole thing and gonna get over this drama, I ended up seeing him IRL again within a week and ah...nope, he did not suddenly start hating me and still likes me.
Today I finally got up the nerve to talk to him about why I'd been gone for seven months and what he did, and he was being accidentally oblivious and did not mean to make me think he'd stopped liking me. And was ah, fairly affectionate about this.
Whether or not it ever goes any farther from here, who knows (in the romantic sense, probably not, I don't know about whether or not I want to attempt to), but I'm glad all this hell drama, which I apparently made up while deranged during pandemic, is now over.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:26 PM on October 29, 2021 [4 favorites]
I have been estranged from the crush for most of 2021, when he (appeared to, apparently) cut me dead in public after I gave him his birthday present. I have been sad/mad about the whole thing every day since. Last week, after I'd finally decided I was done with the whole thing and gonna get over this drama, I ended up seeing him IRL again within a week and ah...nope, he did not suddenly start hating me and still likes me.
Today I finally got up the nerve to talk to him about why I'd been gone for seven months and what he did, and he was being accidentally oblivious and did not mean to make me think he'd stopped liking me. And was ah, fairly affectionate about this.
Whether or not it ever goes any farther from here, who knows (in the romantic sense, probably not, I don't know about whether or not I want to attempt to), but I'm glad all this hell drama, which I apparently made up while deranged during pandemic, is now over.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:26 PM on October 29, 2021 [4 favorites]
Unsurprisingly, there’s a Mary Oliver poem for this.
Winter and the Nuthatch
Once or twice and maybe again, who knows,
the timid nuthatch will come to me
if I stand still, with something good to eat in my hand.
The first time he did it
he landed smack on his belly, as though
the legs wouldn’t cooperate. The next time
he was bolder. Then he became absolutely
wild about those walnuts.
But there was a morning I came late and, guess what,
the nuthatch was flying into a stranger’s hand.
To speak plainly, I felt betrayed.
I wanted to say: Mister,
that nuthatch and I have a relationship.
It took hours of standing in the snow
before he would drop from the tree and trust my fingers.
But I didn’t say anything.
Nobody owns the sky or the trees.
Nobody owns the hearts of birds.
Still, being human and partial therefore to my own
successes—
though not resentful of others fashioning theirs—
I’ll come tomorrow, I believe, quite early.
posted by the wine-dark sea at 1:41 AM on October 30, 2021 [16 favorites]
Winter and the Nuthatch
Once or twice and maybe again, who knows,
the timid nuthatch will come to me
if I stand still, with something good to eat in my hand.
The first time he did it
he landed smack on his belly, as though
the legs wouldn’t cooperate. The next time
he was bolder. Then he became absolutely
wild about those walnuts.
But there was a morning I came late and, guess what,
the nuthatch was flying into a stranger’s hand.
To speak plainly, I felt betrayed.
I wanted to say: Mister,
that nuthatch and I have a relationship.
It took hours of standing in the snow
before he would drop from the tree and trust my fingers.
But I didn’t say anything.
Nobody owns the sky or the trees.
Nobody owns the hearts of birds.
Still, being human and partial therefore to my own
successes—
though not resentful of others fashioning theirs—
I’ll come tomorrow, I believe, quite early.
posted by the wine-dark sea at 1:41 AM on October 30, 2021 [16 favorites]
I love watching LeslietheBirdNerd's Out in the Woods videos where she walks around the woods and feeds all sorts of birds from her hands. In that video she's feeding blue jays, Canada jays, and nuthatches.
posted by bleary at 7:13 AM on October 30, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by bleary at 7:13 AM on October 30, 2021 [2 favorites]
Yesterday squirrels stole my grandchild's Halloween candy from the stroller we parked outside the petting zoo. Watching that squirrel bound off with a tiny wrapped Three Musketeers gladdened my heart in a similar way. I'm sorry.
posted by Peach at 7:18 AM on October 30, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by Peach at 7:18 AM on October 30, 2021 [4 favorites]
Amal is the best, and is exactly the sort of person one would expect to have photogenic little birds landing on her whenever she walks in the woods. (Her sometime co-writer Max Gladstone also writes a fantastic newsletter, if one that gives the impression of a monk contemplating the universe while subsisting on occasional bowls of rice, rather than of a Disney heroine.)
posted by restless_nomad at 7:25 AM on October 30, 2021
posted by restless_nomad at 7:25 AM on October 30, 2021
Last week a Brown Creeper flew around my legs and then my wife's looking to land while we were watching a Northern Flicker. Made my day.
posted by srboisvert at 6:45 AM on October 31, 2021
posted by srboisvert at 6:45 AM on October 31, 2021
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posted by Oyéah at 7:57 PM on October 29, 2021 [4 favorites]