My hummingbird has been showing up regularly again, now that the flowers are fading and my apartment is a major source of food, and I wonder about why it is that the zugunruhe seems to vibrate more consistently along my bones than it does along hers. If it's true that the length of the zugunruhe is supposed to correspond to the length of the instinctual migration, it worries me slightly that I seem to be constantly fighting the urge to move, restless and adventure-laden basically all the time. Seems to be baked into my bones.
I like to consider the Valley of Flowers, a nearly inaccessible national park sitting way up in the Himalayas. It's a place of incredible diversity, they say, partly just because it's so hard to get to that no one willing to travel there would be willing to damage what they see. It's the sort of place where the only real reason to visit is simply that it exists, to look at it and then leave again. The fight between hope and experience is daily so much work, and it helps that the Valley of Flowers exists. If only for its use as a metaphor, and an anchor.
But I've been thinking about constellations, about all the paths in the stories that ended with being placed in the heavens. It was a punishment just as often as it was a reward, sometimes both in the same story, but immortality is immortality. Even if you're being held up for your mistakes forever, it's still something to be able to always light the way. Maybe that should be the goal, rather than spending so much effort on the execution.
I like to consider the Valley of Flowers, a nearly inaccessible national park sitting way up in the Himalayas. It's a place of incredible diversity, they say, partly just because it's so hard to get to that no one willing to travel there would be willing to damage what they see. It's the sort of place where the only real reason to visit is simply that it exists, to look at it and then leave again. The fight between hope and experience is daily so much work, and it helps that the Valley of Flowers exists. If only for its use as a metaphor, and an anchor.
But I've been thinking about constellations, about all the paths in the stories that ended with being placed in the heavens. It was a punishment just as often as it was a reward, sometimes both in the same story, but immortality is immortality. Even if you're being held up for your mistakes forever, it's still something to be able to always light the way. Maybe that should be the goal, rather than spending so much effort on the execution.