The Immeasurable

On being close to Things.

The kite, when it slipped from the child’s hand, flew free on the offshore wind. White string unravelled from the handle like fishing line, but this one was getting away. If anyone had grabbed hold of that handle, it would have been warm from the young boy’s fist, but no-one even tried; it was too far gone.

We watched it dip and soar above the soft sand, where families had pitched windbreakers to shelter from the worst of it. Then, it travelled seaward over the smooth, hard sand, to the place where the shoreline was rippled by retreating waves.

“Think of all the poor creatures who’ll get tangled in that cord,” one of us said.

“That was a great kite, too,” said another.

Then, a streak of black wetsuit whipped by. Her little legs pumped harder when she hit the hard sand, then into the surf, jumping waves until she was waist-deep. We continued to postulate from the blanket: She’ll be out of her depth in no time. The kite will sink before she gets to it. Somebody stop her!

I watched, knowing that to wade in would rob her of something important. She can do it, I reassured the others.

It was up to her neck when she reached the handle and raised it above her head in triumph. Then, she met the current’s resistance. The rainbow-striped fabric, so light when full of air, weighed a tonne in the water.

Another blonde head bobbed into view – her brother. They worked hard, winding the string, riding the waves, and together they reeled it in.

The kite dripped seawater when it took to the sky again, and the little girl, not so little now, ran the length of the beach with it streaming behind her like sunlight.

Breaking their fast

In the early morning, heron stood ankle deep in water knotweed. Had I not paused to consider her straight neck and hunched shoulders, I would have missed what came next. She struck the water with surgical precision and lifted a large, flat fish into the air. This juvenile heron, raised on the lake in front of me, took several sidesteps to the bank, then pinned her catch to the mud. She stayed like that, bent over her prey, for a long time.

Okay, I said. I accept. For surely this was an invitation to pause.

Behind the heron, in deeper water, cormorant broke the surface with an almighty splash. His beak was clamped on an eel, and he appeared just as shocked as I. His wings flapped the water with a dull thud as his breakfast wrapped itself around his neck.

Eel silvered in the dawn light. This master contortionist fought for freedom with every inch of her body, and I willed her to live from the shore. The cormorant held eel above the water, swimming in harried circles, hoping she would tire.

All the while, heron was bent in two with a fish skewered and gasping beneath her.

Eel made me think of epilepsy, electricity and the twitch of a toddler too far gone with tiredness.

On the bank, three hooded crows closed in on heron. They pretended to be about some other business. One hopped into the knotweed, another pecked the ground, the third shuffled sideways, its gaze turned the opposite direction.  She knew they were there; she discerned their thuggery.

Heron straightened. The fish slipped off the steel of her beak and floundered briefly in the air before disappearing down her throat. The three scundered crows scattered and heron resumed her poker posture in the shallows.

But what of eel?

The ray-finned fish continued to seize in cormorant’s beak, until it too was tossed skyward. Suspended like that, I wonder, did it feel like it was flying? Did it believe, for one flickering moment, that it was free? That it would dive into the water and disappear?

That’s not what happened, of course. Cormorant timed it perfectly. He caught eel by the head and swallowed her straight; he swallowed her alive. I watched the wriggle and bulge of eel in cormorant’s crop. He swam beneath the willows then, and I cannot be sure eel did not loose herself from that dark canal after all.  

The Mosh Pit

Moshers, when viewed from above, look like honeybees waggling on a comb. They are trying to communicate: let it all go, they say, you’re safe here. It is not random, the way they crash into one another, knock off rough edges and dizzy themselves with dancing. It is an intentional choice to jump into the chaos, and it looks like a lot of fun.

My 12-year-old drums on the balcony with sticks he was given by one of the earlier bands. I tell him it might take a few more heavy metal gigs before I am ready to mosh; he is mortified by the prospect.

While the strobe lights light up the room and The Chop Sueys roar, men and women spin sufi-like in the mosh pit and it is beautiful. When one falls, another takes pains to dust him off and hug it better. If someone spins out too far, they are brought back into the fray with a pat on the back. There are rules here: kindness, generosity and care for the other. One man, built like a brick oven and bald, stands in the centre of the pit to be a thing against which other moshers can bounce. It is marvellous.

In the run up to Whiplash, someone asked me if a late-night heavy metal festival was appropriate for my young son. There are so many things from which I want to protect him at the moment, but a pit full of heavy metal moshers with soft hearts is not one of them.

The Starlet

In the hazel woods that border our house, we have made many remarkable discoveries: a red squirrel’s cache of hazelnuts, the feather of a jay and a single oak tree rising clear of the canopy.

This week, we made the best discovery yet. At the end of an overgrown boreen, we found a 1988 Toyota Starlet to which nature had laid claim. The key was in the ignition, the wipers mid-swipe and the bonnet popped up with little resistance. We climbed in and closed the doors. It smelled of earth and rust, hart’s tongue ferns licked my feet, and my daughter found the soft skull of a baby bird on the dash. We were miles from any civilisation - how did it get there?

That question sparked conversation, wonder, creativity and, ultimately, art. We returned to the starlet two days later with friends and a recording device. They made a horror short featuring zombies, the mossy car bumper and other apocalyptic details; it is terrifying.

Be Close to Things

‘When you feel no commonality between yourself and other people, try to be close to Things, which will not abandon you…Amidst the things and beings of this world so much is happening that you can take part in. And children are still the way you were as a child, that happy and that sad…’ (Letters to a Young Poet, RM Rilke)

These vignettes are the Things to which I drew close these past weeks when hatred spread like a virus close to home. Kites, cormorants, herons, heavy metal and the mysterious happenstance with Starlet - the meat of my days; the fuel I need to better engage with what is happening around us.

‘I too leave the fret and enclosure of my own life. I too dip myself towards the immeasurable.’ (Winter Hours, Mary Oliver)

So much is happening that you can take part in …