Starlings
The starlings who roost under the pier begin their murmuration each morning at around 7.45am, just as I turn the corner from the harbour. An agitation of starlings. They swoop and swirl in a fantastic, fluttering, flapping, wave of a dance. I expect it but it always takes me by surprise. A chaos of birds, insect-like in their scary thousands. It both thrills and frightens me. Perhaps that is what being thrilled is all about - a shaking up of the ordinary. An ordinary life. An ordinary person. It seems that I have been fighting the taking on of this concept all my life.
I begin to think that the approach of one's fiftieth year is about acceptance, non-resistance, and that therein lies the grace and wisdom that ageing has the potential to deliver.
I find myself making my next home in an ordinary place. I have joined a doctor's surgery, a dentist's, and the town library. I carry their various cards in my wallet. And this morning I have put down a deposit on a flat. How will it be to live a life more ordinary? I return to the details. A flash of images I have caught up, saved, of a collie dog in a window, his nose pressed against the window, louvered blinds pushed roughly to one side and a look of sad longing on his face, a somewhat haphazard line of men walking down from a station to a funeral, in black coats, anoraks and suit jackets an air of sunday self-consciousness to their movements and a male student, dressed in orange and white striped tights and a pink ra-ra skirt, striding past me with that post-party, slightly lobsided gait.
Walking the prom each morning brings a wildness, a startlingness that I hold onto with such force. The sky was a gentle stroking of pinks and blues. No snow reports here. I love the lights out to sea, mysterious and inexplicable to a landlubber like me. But their beam still touches me, I am part of their range, their scope, their blessed communication.
She was asleep when we arrived yesterday - a toothless wizened figure, curled up awkwardly in a semi-foetal position, with a tight, heavy breath. Not sleeping peacefully. We didn't wake her. Outside another resident took both my hands in his and talked to my eyes, full on, deep, penetrating.
'I'm Roy', he said.
I am. I exist. An ordinary existence.
(image borrowed from: www.ceredigionbirds33.blogspot.com)
