Currawong Song
The days are getting shorter again, just a little, just enough to notice. It’s a strange time of year. The sun has yet to relinquish her grasp, but the air is changing despite her best efforts, and many a day seems broken into chunks - cardigan on, cardigan off … cardigan on again. I love autumn, but it seems a little tainted this year. Aside from the fact that happiness and purpose still seem to evade me, like a pair of elusive mythical creatures, there is something else in my peripheries. In April last year, my mind broke. I had a complete nervous breakdown and though it was not entirely unexpected, it was no less awful for it. While I still have quite a way to go, a lot of healing and learning to do, I am a darn sight better than I was this time last year. But for some strange reason, the feeling of the cooling air, the hint of winter, which I would normally be reveling in, brings horrible pangs of where I was the last time the seasons shifted. The air cooled around me, and the ice built up inside me. Unable to eat, barely able to move, shaking uncontrollably, too scared to be alone, overwhelmed by the sense that I was losing everyone and everything. Untethered. Alone. Cold. I felt like I would never, could never, feel safe again, that I would never truly be warm again. Beauty passed me by. I couldn’t see it, or rather, I couldn’t feel it. That was lost to me as well, something for other people to notice and enjoy. Anything that I knew to be logically beautiful only hurt me more. They seemed to be things I might once have looked upon and admired freely, but I could only see it as already gone. Fleeting, fragile, lost.
This year is a little different. I’m still scared, but I have noticed beautiful things. I have noticed the nip in the evening air, the bite in the breeze, nights cool enough to make me thankful for that extra blanket, the soft whisper of winter. The leaves on the pear trees just beginning to change, their outer leaves tinged crimson. The first fire of the season, that glowing companion in the middle of the living room, revived and delighted about it, flickering, warm, and so alive. And currawong song. The sound of currawongs is not new to me, but it feels new. When I hear it, I think of autumn, but I’ve never really noticed how lovely it is. There is a great flock of currawongs which periodically descend on the pine trees around our house. They’re out there today, I can see and hear them as I write. The black birds with golden eyes and white tail-tips flitting and fluttering around, singing their little hearts out. Like most birds, they have a variety of calls, but the one I love the most is a high-pitched swooping whistle. They all call together, bubbling and busy sounding, but the whistle in the background seems almost a little melancholy. I used to be scared of currawongs as a child, I think I thought of them as the magpie’s slightly more evil cousin, for some reason. But I look forward to them now, I pause and listen to their song, and I’m a little sad when the flock moves away.
Pied Currawong Calls and Sounds - This is a really lovely recording of a currawong flock (with various other birds thrown in for good measure).
Poetry Pause
It seems that I am a woman after Emily’s own heart. I much prefer the cold of winter to the heat of summer, and long for the fluttering of autumn leaves, and cool, grey days.
‘Fall, Leaves, Fall’ by Emily Brontë
Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;
Lengthen night and shorten day;
Every leaf speaks bliss to me
Fluttering from the autumn tree.
I shall smile when wreaths of snow
Blossom where the rose should grow;
I shall sing when night’s decay
Ushers in a drearier day.
Art Appreciation
I love the hazy quality of this painting, the tired, end-of-summer veil lowered over the scene. The water, sky, and town seem pearlescent and drowsy, making the trees on the left bank seem almost riotous against their quiet backdrop. A strange contradiction, for it is those trees which are actually sleepy, blinking slowly, yawning softly, waving their leaves over the river in one last colourful hurrah before they retreat into a wintry slumber.
Wonderful Words
‘Suthering’
This is a poetic term found in John Clare’s poetry. It refers to the sound of wind in the trees. We often get a lot of wind in the autumn, in fact, it’s quite blustery now. Several doors have already slammed in the house. I can hear it blowing in the pines, whistling mournfully. It almost sounds like rough surf, salt water on sand.
Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for today.
TTFN