Today, on my way home from work, three pairs of spread wings rose beyond the cliffs. The wing shapes gave me a special feeling. I thought, “pelicans.” When I drew closer, I confirmed: the angular head and neck, the hunched and primal shape, unlike any other creature. It hit me that my relationship with these archaic birds expanded during the writing of my first novel, Braided Dimensions. Further thought made me realize I immortalized them in my soul, or psyche.
How did that happen? I have to recreate the process through reflection because it isn’t an everyday event. On my writing walks on the wild northern beach, I observed them and composed scenes that have also become immortalized in the landscape of my mind, of Kay seeing these birds both in modern and medieval time as they coasted close to the water’s surface in measured procession. In this way, I developed an affinity that has taken on numinous qualities.
I imagine this process couldn’t happen with just any creature. I was predisposed to find pelicans special. My grandfather and mother both spoke reverently of sea birds. I suspect that was ancestral, drawing on the Celtic sacred sense of these liminal beings in their cells.
How poignant that, in my everyday life, in an instant, this expanded nuance of sight and emotion can rise up, filling my heart and breath with an enhanced, immortalized life moment.
Instagram pics:
Marie Judson 