Ariel, you are so very generous and I am most grateful. I believe I've cleaned up my careless mistakes, thanks to your gentle, generous spotlights. Thank you! I'm so very pleased to make your acquaintance, and am in your debt.
This reverence and regard for all the various lives you meet shows such a kind spirit! This is goodness, to notice when a beautiful, or even not-so-beaituful, one has passed; to pay attention that way. I love how you, with intention, do what you can to minimize your own impact. Yes, sacred stuff, this.
The way of fly fishing is new and interesting to me---but the illegal, barbed fish hooks being used by thoughtles persons makes me so sad and mad as I imagine this beautiful warbler's struggle & demise. Your images are so potent. Thank you---I take it all in---and remind myself to wander as softly as I can...
I had to sit with this one a while. Appreciating both the importance of you sharing an all too common, careless, brutal & entirely unnecessary tragedy, and the fact that I’m still feeling the reverberations of the horror of the yellow-rumped warbler’s final moments in my own body.
Stephen Jenkinson, in Come of Age, says that a ‘wake’ is something like “the array of consequence that fans out from what happens or what is done, intentional and otherwise, whether in water or in life.” How strange to think that the wake of this careless fisherman has included the both the warblers barbaric end, and the tears of strangers on different continents.
Your sharing makes me endeavour to be far more mindful of the wake that I leave behind me as I move through this life, and whatever follows it. I’m grateful to you, as always, David
I'll admit that I've worried that the graphic nature of the photos might tug a little too hard on some psyches, but couldn't figure out a way to show the truth of it without showing the sad, awfulness, too. I appreciate your honesty about needing to sit with it a while.
I've actually been sitting with this story for a decade or so, never quite certain how to tell the tale that made sense of the pictures. Finally tried to tell it in a writing workshop last summer where I leaned more on the anger it stirred up in me than the sadness. Fellow storytellers coached me on how to dial it back a bit, ridding it of the cheap shots I'd taken to help me get it out, which certainly had that ring of truth, but then I needed to sit with that a while. Anyway. I'm grateful for your read of it, Chloe and your generosity in voicing your response.
Oh, I think the photos were integral. You honour this bird by telling this part of its story; we’ve honoured it with our anger and our grief. You honoured it with its burial.
And, as an aside, I personally appreciate my psyche being tugged 🙏
Ariel, you are so very generous and I am most grateful. I believe I've cleaned up my careless mistakes, thanks to your gentle, generous spotlights. Thank you! I'm so very pleased to make your acquaintance, and am in your debt.
As Michael Jackson said, "I perfect perfection."
Love this!
Thanks for this poignant reminder.
Silent tears and gratitude, once again, for your acute observations and mindful responses.
Thank you, Jann. Namasté.
💔
This was gripping. I felt it. Thanks for sharing
Thank you, Ronald for making time to offer such kind encouragement.
Poignant and insightful. Makes me stop reflect and think about where I can be more conscious. 💗
Thank you, Annelle. Right there with you...
This reverence and regard for all the various lives you meet shows such a kind spirit! This is goodness, to notice when a beautiful, or even not-so-beaituful, one has passed; to pay attention that way. I love how you, with intention, do what you can to minimize your own impact. Yes, sacred stuff, this.
The way of fly fishing is new and interesting to me---but the illegal, barbed fish hooks being used by thoughtles persons makes me so sad and mad as I imagine this beautiful warbler's struggle & demise. Your images are so potent. Thank you---I take it all in---and remind myself to wander as softly as I can...
This!
"I take it all in---and remind myself to wander as softly as I can..."
I'm grateful, once again for your generous, heartfelt reply. Thank you, Toni.
So good to see this here. I believe you shared this image in the workshop we shared, right?
Yes. And the coaching about using unnecessarily inflammatory words, steeped like tea, was most helpful.
I had to sit with this one a while. Appreciating both the importance of you sharing an all too common, careless, brutal & entirely unnecessary tragedy, and the fact that I’m still feeling the reverberations of the horror of the yellow-rumped warbler’s final moments in my own body.
Stephen Jenkinson, in Come of Age, says that a ‘wake’ is something like “the array of consequence that fans out from what happens or what is done, intentional and otherwise, whether in water or in life.” How strange to think that the wake of this careless fisherman has included the both the warblers barbaric end, and the tears of strangers on different continents.
Your sharing makes me endeavour to be far more mindful of the wake that I leave behind me as I move through this life, and whatever follows it. I’m grateful to you, as always, David
I'll admit that I've worried that the graphic nature of the photos might tug a little too hard on some psyches, but couldn't figure out a way to show the truth of it without showing the sad, awfulness, too. I appreciate your honesty about needing to sit with it a while.
I've actually been sitting with this story for a decade or so, never quite certain how to tell the tale that made sense of the pictures. Finally tried to tell it in a writing workshop last summer where I leaned more on the anger it stirred up in me than the sadness. Fellow storytellers coached me on how to dial it back a bit, ridding it of the cheap shots I'd taken to help me get it out, which certainly had that ring of truth, but then I needed to sit with that a while. Anyway. I'm grateful for your read of it, Chloe and your generosity in voicing your response.
Oh, I think the photos were integral. You honour this bird by telling this part of its story; we’ve honoured it with our anger and our grief. You honoured it with its burial.
And, as an aside, I personally appreciate my psyche being tugged 🙏