More Crowing

I am not sure if I write this to validate my crow story in all self-righteousness. Or further prove my weirdness, by simply failing to drop the topic. But here goes.

My sisters remind me of the crow story on my last trip to India. (This one: https://clustersofmoments.blogspot.com/2024/11/conversations-with-crows.html ) The reason it stays with me is partly because on the same trip, my friend tells me her family’s crow story. Yeah yeah, that’s right… whatever it is that they say about ‘birds of a feather…’

She tells me how their crow would visit their balcony every day. They start feeding the crow, but the crow clearly has a favorite. Her husband. He takes the cracker only when her husband hands it to him. No one else. Sorry folks.

“See…” I tell her all indignation, “They do recognize people”. Case in point. I need no more validation. I do a mental jig in my head. I make a mental note to tell my sisters. I soon forget all about it.  

The nerd in me wants to research this further and perhaps write about it too. “The secret habits of crows” will make fine reading. As will “Your neighborly crow knows you better than you imagine”. Coming “this summer” to a bookstore near you.

And while it would be far more educational and informative if I did some scientific research on crows and their human recognition patterns, that is simply not the point of this blog. Wait, is there a point to this blog? All metaphysical questions I suppose.

Metaphysics or not, this blog is about simplicity. It’s an attempt to make sense of ourselves in relation to our world, to distill life into an easier understanding of its experience.

All that we deem strange and weird (even if much later), is really not strange or weird at all. And if you need external validation, you will find there are others doing the same thing. If I dig further, I will find that many people have their own crow stories. 

And while some see the wonder in it, some see the weirdness in it, some see the complete normal in it. And the wonderful thing is that we get to choose. 

Conversations with crows

Of all the friends I had as a child, one was a crow. Yes, a big black, cawing crow.

I had forgotten about my feathered friend, till on my last trip to India, my sisters recounted my daily “conversations” from our balcony, with this particular crow. It all came back quickly. I insisted it was the same crow returning daily. It was. Of that, I am sure. They also recounted that I insisted we (the crow and I) communicated with one another. Of that, I am not so sure. Or at least, some decades later, no longer so sure.

I was probably eight or nine years old and determined to master animal and bird sounds around me. I spent hours perched on the apartment complex wall, perfecting my goat bleat. A herd visited a well at the back of the wall, every day. And while my bleat is quite perfect (ahem… even today), the goats simply looked around nervously and scampered away.

The crow, on the other hand, stayed. And came back. Every. Single. Day. Just to caw with me. He was a friend, my friend. I remember the exact spot on the balcony from where I communicated with him. Of where he perched himself. And even if my caw was not quite as perfected as my bleat, he still came back daily.  

There are times when we are grateful for the families we are born into. Oddly enough, this makes me grateful for mine, despite all dysfunction. For I realize only now (and with much gratitude), no one ever thought to discourage me from talking to crows or from the many other strange things I did. They sometimes discussed it, laughed it off, and accepted it all as part of who I was.

I also remember writing an essay in school, about the crow – not sure if I wrote about “my” crow, or crows in general. But I know my words came strong in defense of all crows and why we need to look at them with wonder rather than as nuisance – given their beautiful black sheen, their friendly demeanor and even their cawing that was crisper than a peacock’s ugly meowing.  

And while I was simply stating what was true to me, I do remember my teacher calling me aside to chat with me about my essay – whether she was amused, captivated, or simply worried, I will never know.

As for my crow friend, was he just flying in to check in with me, have a little conversation, or did he consider me as part of his flock? I will never know. And while that may have been the beginning of my love of foreign languages (crow, not included), I wonder if I even felt the need to know what he was saying.

He looked at me and cawed. I cawed right back at him. And then he repeated, And then, I repeated. What he said, I may have never known (or maybe I did, as I claimed), but the delight I got from this whole business was one hundred percent real.

He was simply my friend and we cawed along, just fine.

Clarity is a murky thing

Serendipity is a funny thing. In that, it happens. Over and over. Just when you need it. Just when you’re looking for it, in the least.

I am in the middle of a book, “The Sense of an Ending”, by Julian Barnes. Too distracted and saddened by the events of the past week, I do not wish to immerse myself in the happenings of fictionalized worlds of books. My head swims in the many questions related to events around me, to pay head to those Barnes raises, even if most eloquently.

I pick up the book again, and what I read stops me in my tracks. The protagonist talks about history. And although his context is a little different, I apply it to mine.

“The history that happens underneath our noses ought to be the clearest and yet it is the most deliquescent.”

It truly is, isn’t it? It flows away from us before we can make sense of it, and yet it is our history, in our time. It belongs to us, and as Barnes points out, it ought to be the clearest.  

But it isn’t. Maybe it will be to those who look at it in the future. Which is probably why Barnes talks about past history, “Perhaps I just feel safer with the history that has more or less been agreed upon”

And while our history in our present may not be the clearest, it is ours and we will have to own it. And it is ours, to help remind us that only we can shape it.

Thank you, Julian Barnes.

Grief and love

To lose a loved one… to have a human being removed from our lives… forever. Even when it is the truth, the truth seems elusive. Even when there is no denying the reality, the reality seems slippery.

For how can a person be gone? Their smile is still with us, their grace, their kindness, their humanity still lives. How then can the person be gone forever?

Certain places and situations will never feel complete without them. Unconsciously, we expect them to join us, but they never will. Even when homes and walls that have been filled with their life and presence, can never be without.

We talk in the present tense about them, only to be reminded of the permanence of death. Our mind wants to trick us into believing that they are still here.  Perhaps it is a way to protect the heart. For it may be harder for the heart than for the head. Allowing small escapes from reality, even when the stark, steely, certainty stares at us.

Slowly we train ourselves to accept it. Coax our hearts into believing that they are in a place beyond suffering. Reminding ourselves of the full lives they led with meaning and purpose. Of the good they did and the world they changed for the better in their small and generous ways.

Grief fills us, and so does love. And you wonder how you can be so filled with grief and love all at once. The loss of a loved one will do that. Slowly you notice gratitude seeping in. For what they added to your life, and you can only hope that you added something to theirs.

Travel notes… History repeats…

A recent trip to Germany was a sobering lesson in the history of the past, in the history of our times.

We do this to ourselves, I thought. History of the times. History of our times. Over and over again. In different parts of the world. 

Unbridled power-hungry individuals, operating on fear and terror, greed and prejudice… slaves to their own agenda, they let loose terror, often in the guise of protection, nationalism and even progress. 

History repeats, they say, we accept. I studied history in college. As an idealistic teenager, wanting to change the world, I could never fathom how we could nonchalantly accept that. As a jaded middle-aged person, I still don’t understand why we don’t want to learn from our past. After all, the signs are all there. Yes, history repeats, they say, we accept it. 

Unlike the idealistic teenager I once was, willing to change the world, I offer no solutions. I offer no hope.  What my age (and lack of maturity (?) sigh… according to what my mom said to me recently, sigh…), do offer is our ability to notice, to connect the dots, to see patterns. What my age does allow is to see history in shades of grey and not black and white. Of the motivations and backstories and even the best intentions (and oftentimes greed) of the perpetrators of terror in history.  To see them as human, knowing fully well, humans can simply be cruel and self-serving, even if their pretext (or disillusioned goal) is to serve a nation and the betterment of its people. 

And just perhaps, sitting with unsettling uncomfortable thoughts and occurrences in history, may somehow begin to stir something within us. Something that enables us to connect the dots from the past to our present, to an invisible line of the future.

And then perhaps, even if history repeats, we may be in a position, at least, once in a while... to notice it, to pause it, to change it.  

Holocaust memorial - Berlin

The book burning site in Bebelplatz, Berlin. The specific spot in the square is now poetically, "The Empty Library" where you stare in the ground, to see lines of bookshelves, in the cobblestoned square near Unter de Linden. (Not the best picture, sorry!)   

Mother with her dead son - a Pieta sculpture in Neue Wache serves as a memorial 

Remnants of the Berlin wall

East Side Gallery - art on the wall

According to our tour guide (a historian) below this spot lies the bunker where Hitler and his wife, Eva Braun (who he married a day before) they took their own lives, along with Goebbels (his propogandist) and his wife. As per our history tour guide, the Germans choose to not make any fuss over the location, or turn it into any kind of place of remembrance.  

Reading lists

I read a lot. But when asked to come up with a list of my favorite books, I falter. And yet, I find myself saying, “Oh! That’s one of my most favorite books. An all-time favorite.”  All the time. About many different books, of many different genres. I must be fickle. 

I find myself saying, “Oh! She/He is one of my favorite authors. I want to read everything they have written.” All the time. About many different authors, of many different genres. I must be fickle.

I never fail to closely peruse a reading list when I see one. I love it when it when people have the wide perspective to put together a list of their favorites. In a year. Or a lifetime. I will excitedly examine a reading list, looking for the ones that I may have missed, to add to my list of next books.

Books make us feel. Books make us think. Books bring us characters we love and hate, the ones we see in ourselves, the ones we want to learn from, the ones we want to stay far away from.

I may continue to read, but I am growingly aware that I may not immerse myself in a book, the way I did as a child or teenager. An odd thing to say, I suspect. For with age, comes perspective and experience and wisdom. So, do all these “good” things somehow stop us from plunging with abandon into a book, its characters, and its world?

Don’t get me wrong, I still immerse myself completely into a good book, and believe the make-believe characters to be my family and friends for a little while. So much so, that I’d rather stay with them, than cook dinner. Oh well…

And yet, just somewhere, the head rules over the heart. And that, right there is the distinction between the books I read as child and youth and the ones I read now. I now rationalize. I now think. I now analyze. I no longer simply feel, and leave it at that, as I did before.

An odd realization, I suspect. I may be writing this before I have processed it, or writing this is my processing.

I recently came across a reading list, in a book by the same name. It had a list of books that help and give perspective to a bunch of people who need it at the time. I was excited to read the list.

I had read all but one from that list. Of the ones I had read, I had read all but two as a teenager or younger. For the couple I had read more recently, I thought, “Oh those are good books, and I can see why they’re on the list”.

But for the ones I had read a long long time ago, I simply went,  “Sigh… how I loved that one.” I didn’t necessarily have any analysis of why they were on the list, but I simply felt the feelings I felt when I first read them. From my heart. And not so much from my head.

On this list, was Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier. I loved Daphne Du Maurier so much that when I was done reading all her books that I could lay my hands on, I started on her autobiography. I did the same with Agatha Christie. I wanted to know the writers hiding behind the words I had so hungrily devoured, behind the stories they had woven, the characters they had created, and the worlds I temporarily inhabited with them.   

Of Du Maurier’s book, Frenchman Creek, was an all time favorite. A bored and beautiful noblewoman, ahead of her time, confined and restless in the expectations of English society, finds adventure with a swashbuckling French pirate. I read it at 13 or 14 and loved her free-spirited sense of adventure and rooted for her to stay true to her spirit.

I read it again in my 30s, as a young mother and wondered, “what about her kids? Will she feel guilt and loss, and miss them?” I pondered these and other “grown-up” concerns that were mundane practical and related to her children, that might have a bearing on her emotions later.

Sigh… I simply could never read it the way I had read it at 14. My life experience and ideas of responsibility and correctness would no longer allow me to root only for her spirit, even when I did.

Perhaps, it’s a truth we accept. We can never go back to being the person, we once were, even when that person still lives inside us.

Funny that a reading list should make me see that.

Monastery notes

I had read about a nunnery in Dharamshala where the nuns have continued the art of making tormas and was eager to visit. Tormas, or Tibetan butter sculptures are an ancient tradition kept alive by Tibetan monks and nuns in monasteries in India.

Like the art of Mandala, intricate tormas are made patiently and painstakingly as offerings during religious rituals and ceremonies, among other purposes in traditional belief. Sacred tormas are made from the butter of dri, female yaks. Pictures of beautiful intricate creations made wondrously with yak butter and flour lead us to this nunnery.  

We walk into a nunnery in Dharamshala. Burgundy robes swish around us as the nuns go about their day. Work, study, prayers - a certain peace surrounds the place, a certain peace surrounds us. They are welcoming and friendly; smiles are abundant and handed out freely. Language is not a barrier where the language of smiles and peace speaks so loudly.

Amidst the peace is also the energy of youth. The nunnery has many kids, some as young as eight. They may have burgundy robes and shaved heads, but the unmistaken signs of the energy of children within is intact and palpable. Giggles and laughter fill the hallway as they walk to classes or prayers, from rooms they share, two or three kids to a room, minimalistic and neat. They are filled with sweetness and curiosity and love being photographed. Despite the outwardly seeming austerity and discipline of monkhood, the place seems filled with laughter and love, the kids all look so happy, there seems no reproach or harsh disciplining. The rules seem clear, but they also seem to be instilled with love and compassion by the older nuns.

The kids look wise with their shaved heads and robes but the child inside them is intact. We attend an evening prayer, where the monks sit cross legged on wooden benches in rows. We see a kid nun bend forward, still seated, her head dipping and arm reaching under the bench she’s on. I wonder if she will fall. She doesn’t. Instead her head reemerges, face victorious and trying to stifle giggles, a bead in her hands. Her prayer bead rope has broken and she is trying to retrieve the beads. The kids around her stifle giggles too. A lot of excitement surrounds the activity of her going down like a diver, while still seated on her bench, her head popping up, her beautiful face dazzling a victorious smile each time she finds a bead.

A few older nuns nearby watch. None try to reproach or discipline her. She is a child and she is allowed to be one, even when the apparent expectation in the prayer hall may be different. How I wish I had seen this when my child was still young.

I wish we would all raise our kids like this.

All images Copyright © Ruta Kale, 2024

 The Butter sculpture room in the monastery

Dipping down to retrieve her broken prayer beads

The gazebo where a thousand lamps were lit - notice the Himalayan range on the horizon

A thousand butter lamps lit - backdrop of the Himalayas 

and Tibetan prayers chants fill the air... the sheer magic of it all.

All images copyright © Ruta Kale, 2024