Like a Scene From a Hitchcock Film (2014 Journal Entry #7)
When a cat stops what it is doing to look straight into the air at nothing, it is such a strange thing. It makes me think. I wonder what the animal is seeing or hearing. Is there some sort of apparrition only visible to those golden orbs, slit black down the middle? Mirrors shining brightly in reflective light? What makes the cat jump and run away? I look around and I see nothing. I won't allow myself to feel afraid because I don't have any kind of idea what it is I should fear.
Life seems so full of these strange nuances. How many footsteps that go unnoticed? How many ghosts travel the same roads as the living, leaving crumbs behind? Like an icy grip in the pit of your stomach or a sudden sadness that comes and goes so quickly, or a shadow out of the corner of your eye? A murder of crows suddenly taking flight in the forest, all blasting toward the sky at once as though a bullet pierced the air. Only, there was no bullet. Not a sound for miles. Just stillness and a scattering of loud, lustrous black birds, swarming and screaming in what seems like an angry protest. Black shades heralding to the forest behind our house. For decades, the forest knew all about these crows.
I never really understood what drew them to us but I know sometimes in the early thaw of winter they came to us when the air was not as cold. Some kind of ominous thing, foreboding and undefined. The temperatures gnawed with sharp claws and the sky was an unbearable blue as clouds passed by swiftly, never lingering for long above us. Moving along on that persistent wind.
Everything, for weeks, was almost silent and then, out of nowhere, these crows came to us. Not just a few. Not a dozen. It was more, more, more. They came to us in a innumerable force and perched atop every tree. They came in like a black cloud. They swooped in and down among the trees. They screeched and flapped their wings.
I cannot explain why but their presence brought me comfort. I felt like I wanted to tell them I knew. I understood. I understood what drew them there.
If I were a big black bird, I would settle in the trees. But I could not speak to them. I just knew something about their presence confirmed a nameless fear. Something is out there, in those woods, drawing the attention of these creatures.
When they finally flew away, I watched out of the kitchen window. Gone as quickly as they came.
They left me alone. They left me to the silence. The rustle of beech leaves and the cat with the blank stare. The trees dancing in the wind. The blue sky. The clouds.
I felt so cold and I felt so a sad sense of curiosity. I wanted to find a bright lining to the presence of these wild animals, en masse, at my very door. I wanted to limn their behaviour in some mysterious way. I wanted to be able to say they came to us because of our wealth or this or that.
It was a thin desire. Underneath the wonder and the feigned joy was a confirmation to something I KNEW. I knew there was something about it that whispered something otherworldly. A parallel universe. Or something.
To break it down, and make it seem sensible, in a way that touched the ground with sandled feet. It was just the scene itself that was phenomenal to me.
The day the crows visited us I could only ever describe as spooky. Aesthetically spooky. Like a scene from a Hitchcock film.
Musée des Beaux Arts by W. H. Auden
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on."
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