Under the Music of the Wings

I remember the feeling I had that first week as a smug music major in college, cradling between my chin and wrist a viola for the very first time. After years of guitar, piano and organ lessons, after an intensive high school choral experience that not only involved challenging vocalise but also music theory education, I felt like I pretty much knew this world of music. I was no tourist here, I was a native - my heart a rhythm instrument and my breath a tuning fork. But in a single awkward grip on an instrument foreign to me in the company of a dozen other freshmen, I found myself in a whole other country. Far, far from "knowing this music thing", it became disorientingly clear that I had merely scratched the surface.

Sitting this morning on a Berclair front porch dotted with bird feeders, I marvel at the complexity and diversity of birds fluttering mere feet away. The hummingbirds especially captivate and punctuate a sense of both awe and ignorance. It's not simply that there are so many, it's that they all seem so different - as though to comprehend that it narrows it down about as much to simply refer to them as "hummingbirds" as it does to say "stringed instruments". Only in the narrowest of ways does it limit the vast generality. Differing colors. Varying Shadings. Nuanced patterns.

So I sit here in the coolness of the morning, animated by the purring wings, unsophisticated enough to fully understand the wonder around me, but fully able, nonetheless, to appreciate and enjoy it.