My back garden looks like a scene from The Birds: there’s a lot of stuff in our cupboards that doesn’t fit with my new food plan (I’ve lost about nine pounds I started, which is really just a side-effect), so I’ve taken to putting things out for the little creatures that flit around our house. On this morning’s menu was couscous, softened and sweetened, and some over-ripe bananas.
The little birds always scout out these treats first, then some middle-sized birds come along, then the seagulls will flap and squawk their way in like laundry on the wind, chasing everything else away and chugging down chunks of food that look sure to choke them (yet don’t). Then they move off and the little ones come back in.
I managed to quickly snap a blurry picture of this bird on the wire outside my office:
I think it’s a jackdaw; I love the look of these guys.
I’m actually starting to remember the birds we have up here, especially when we visit the coastline, as we did when my dear friend Margaux visited last week. The fulmars, kittywakes, shags, and razorbills — they’re so distinct, and it’s exciting to see them nesting and cuddling in the ragged cliff-edges.
There’s a stillness to moments like bird-noticing which feels like the antidote — or at least the opposite — of the frantic, desperate feeling I had last night, the “What’s it all about? Where’s it all going? I must produce!”
This morning, as I reflected on last night’s post, wondering if I should delete it (“You said too much!”), it struck me that the solution to what I was talking about is probably something along the lines of “You should get out more.” It’s true: while I work on the audience thing, I can help myself out by giving myself more real-world input and finding more stillness by making the effort to get away from the desk. Otherwise I’m trying to grow a garden in sand.
Last night I did manage to get back into the book. I’d drifted away from mind-mapping, but going through materials for Craig’s presentation reminded me of it. That helped me get started again in a low-pressure way.
Another favour I did myself, which has been a long time coming, is to press the Blue Button of Death:
Yes, I finally deleted my Facebook account. As a Twitter follower in Shanghai wrote me yesterday, “Time sink privacy suck.” That’s the gist: a whole bunch of people I love are shoved together in this closed system that’s become like a shoebox of photos and scraps under the bed: such a jumble that it’s unapproachable. Much as I tried to just leave it alone, people still sent me messages through it (many of which were irrelevant mailshots to everyone they’ve collected), and replying required me to log into the site.
I didn’t do it because I don’t care about those people. I did it because the Facebook connection isn’t a real relationship, and comes with a garbage scow of distracting clutter. And it doesn’t help that the site’s functionality constantly shifts in annoying ways and its owners keep doing morally suspect things.
So that’s done.