Tag Archives: The Once And Future King

Free Flying

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Sometimes you walk around and everything feels heavy, like the weight of the world is on your shoulders. It doesn’t make your knees buckle but it makes you strain mightily to stand upright. You don’t know quite where this feeling comes from but it’s there. Your friends will stop you and say “Hey,dude, (if they still call you dude) you feeling heavy today, or what.” or “Whatsamatter Atlas, the world a little much today.”

That’s when it’s time for you to go to your quiet place. That place where you can sit back, close your eyes, and contemplate your navel, or any other body part you wish to dwell on. Maybe have a nice hot cup of tea, we recommend Twinning’s English Breakfast, but there are no requirements in the quiet place. Have what you want. Eat spaghetti if that’s what makes you feel good. The important thing is to be alone with your thoughts and convert them from dark, heavy, brooding thoughts to something light and airy and easier to handle.

Some people use drugs to do that. Don’t do that. It’s bad for you. Instead we recommend using the method brought forth in The Once and Future King, by T. H. White. That ‘s where Merlin taught Wart how to change into different animals so he could learn and understand some of the facts of life. You can use it for that too if that’s what you need, but you can also use it as a break and a get away from those heavy thoughts, the ones making you sad and irritating your friends.

Personally we like the to turn into a bird, in this case a raven, and leap off into that great wide open space over the Grand Canyon. Yeah, over that part that’s a mile deep. That’s the rush that changes your outlook. You’re light as a feather, or maybe a whole bunch of feathers, and all those heavy, ugly thoughts are spiraling down into the depths of the canyon.

You can glide in great swooping circles or hover in one place against the wind, or dive and soar or tumble in huge somersaults over the yawning maw of the canyon. Man that feels good. Now we like the bird part best but your mileage may vary. If so pick something else to change into and go at it. The deal is when you’re all done, all those miserable thoughts should be history. Unless you let them back in again. We  would caution against that. Be happy. It feels better.

Dawns Early Light

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Why eagles fly. If you’ve ever asked yourself that question I’m sure you’ve come up with the most obvious answer. Because they can. But I think there’s a deeper answer and that is because they want to.

I’m not talking about the fact that they’ve come down the pike genetically designed to fly, or they need to fly to hunt and eat, or to find mates, all the stuff biologists and those other folks who collect facts and figures about them talk about when they describe birds, of course those are reasons.

I’m talking about the feelings that one gets when seeing a bird gliding effortlessly across the sky, hawks riding the thermals or matching the pitch and shape of their wings so that they hover there against the bright blue sky, motionless for as long as they want to be, before swooping down in a breathtaking dive to collect their next meal. Or seeing two Golden eagles performing the most amazing aerobatics during their mating flights, rushing past each other with all the speed they can gather then turning at the very last moment and grasping each others talons to tumble-down towards the earth in a dizzying spiral, letting go just before they strike the earth to swoop away and climb to the very heights of their abilities, to repeat it again and again.

Or just the gentle flight from last nights perch to a new one, one better placed to catch the dawns early light. Watching the subtle shades of the morning light turn from the warm colors of the early sun towards the harsher colors of full day as they make the flight, exercising those wings stiff from last nights cold.  If we see this and experience that feeling of intense but quiet joy at their limitless freedom imagine what the bird feels.

When I was younger I read a book called “The Once And Future King” by T. H. White. You may have read it yourself, I know you’ve probably seen the Disney movie “The Sword In The Stone” which is the first part of The Once and Future King and it is where Wart, who is to become King Arthur in the not too distant future is changed into various animals and birds as lessons in life by Merlin, his wizard tutor.

The part where he is turned into several different hawks and other birds has always stuck in my mind. I want to do that. I mean it, change me into a Peregrine falcon right now. T.H. White’s descriptions of the various changes that Wart goes through are written in such a way that you almost feel you could understand how that would work. What it  would feel like. It is one of the reasons that I try and capture the feeling in my images in the hope that I can bring to life what I’m seeing and feeling when I get to see sights like the one above. This is a shot of a Bald Eagle heading for a sunnier perch than he spent the night on, at Bosque del Apache wildlife refuge. The colors are courtesy of the early morning sun.