The Art of Flying is a short film about “murmurations”: the mysterious flights of the Common Starling. It is still unknown how the thousands of birds are able to fly in such dense swarms without colliding.
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Even though a cloud’s white curtain in a far-off corner flashed
An’ the hypnotic splattered mist was slowly lifting
Electric light still struck like arrows, fired but for the ones
Condemned to drift or else be kept from drifting
Tolling for the searching ones, on their speechless, seeking trail
For the lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale
An’ for each unharmful, gentle soul misplaced inside a jail
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
Starry-eyed an’ laughing as I recall when we were caught
Trapped by no track of hours for they hanged suspended
As we listened one last time an’ we watched with one last look
Spellbound an’ swallowed ’til the tolling ended
Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an’ worse
An’ for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
Challengers of oblivion
Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down,
The square-limbed Roman letters
Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well
Builds his monument mockingly;
For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun
Die blind and blacken to the heart:
Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained
thoughts found
The honey of peace in old poems.
— Robinson Jeffers
Reason will not decide at last; the sword will decide.
The sword: an obsolete instrument of bronze or steel,
formerly used to kill men, but here
In the sense of a symbol. The sword: that is: the storms
and counter-storms of general destruction; killing
of men,
Destruction of all goods and materials; massacre, more or
less intentional, of children and women;
Destruction poured down from wings, the air made accomplice,
the innocent air
Perverted into assassin and poisoner.
The sword: that is: treachery and cowardice, incredible
baseness, incredible courage, loyalties, insanities.
The sword: weeping and despair, mass-enslavement,
mass-torture, frustration of all hopes
That starred man’s forehead. Tyranny for freedom, horror for
happiness, famine for bread, carrion for children.
Reason will not decide at last, the sword will decide.
His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o’clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.
— Eliot
The scientists are in terror
and the European mind stops
Wyndham Lewis chose blindness
rather than have his mind stop.
Night under wind mid garofani,
the petals are almost still
Mozart, Linnaeus, Sulmona,
When one’s friends hate each other
how can there be peace in the world?
Their asperities diverted me in my green time.
A blown husk that is finished
but the light sings eternal
a pale flare over marshes
where the salt hay whispers to tide’s change
Time, space,
neither life nor death is the answer.
And of man seeking good,
doing evil.
In meiner Heimat
where the dead walked
and the living were made of cardboard.
Even though a cloud’s white curtain in a far-off corner flashed
An’ the hypnotic splattered mist was slowly lifting
Electric light still struck like arrows, fired but for the ones
Condemned to drift or else be kept from drifting
Tolling for the searching ones, on their speechless, seeking trail
For the lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale
An’ for each unharmful, gentle soul misplaced inside a jail
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
Starry-eyed an’ laughing as I recall when we were caught
Trapped by no track of hours for they hanged suspended
As we listened one last time an’ we watched with one last look
Spellbound an’ swallowed ’til the tolling ended
Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an’ worse
An’ for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
Gerard Van der Leun
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If you can crack that nut you’ll also figure out how hive mind leftists think and spout Media Matters talking points like robots.
We never knew it until some birders discovered: a half million migrating shorebirds on a weekend in the springtime will layover in my hometown. They perform these aerial displays by type, and several are happening all at once. Don’t go there, though. It sucks.
Actually, back in 1986 a computer scientist named Craig Reynolds figured out that each individual bird only needed to follow 3 rules, and created a simulation called boids. Here is one implementation: https://owenmcnaughton.github.io/Boids.js/
That boids thing is pretty cool.
Just read about this phenom somewhere this morning, something about predator and prey (poids and sharks?), and each bird is constantly trying to get to the center of the herd to avoid becoming a victim. Dense urban areas demonstrate the same thing.
Me? A high speed moving target in a sparsely populated area is the place to be if survival is your goal.
I’ve seen similar flights of starlings. Circumstances were late summer, sunset, birds assembled each evening and put on a show. Darkness descended and they dispersed. That was in the northern fringe of the Corn Belt, 1958. If it was like here in the Central Sierra at that time of year, it might have been a flight of beetles or those insufferable face flies. We could have used a few million starlings over the last few years. Ips moved in this year, following the damned pine bark beetles. Bat populations enjoy that, but can’t keep up.
Crows are fun to stalk. We don’t have the large flocks here in the mountains like we had in the Midwest back then. Patience is critical. Don’t get me started.
Hey, Edward, leave them crows alone!
The Wall
I thought they were democrats trying to figure out a winning strategy. Everyone following everyone else, never arriving anywhere despite lots of movement and noise, nevermind the smell.
Ghost: I stalked them. I wasn’t hunting them. You must be very patient. They send out scouts before moving to another tree. I hopscotched all over the interior of a section of farm land getting closer and closer until I was right under the main flock.
I thought of adding to my first comment that if I had been ghostsniper, I could have put a 12 ga shell on the muzzle of a bb gun, pointed it upward, and bagged a bunch of crows. That would have been a gross error on my part. I’m glad I didn’t.
I have respect for crows. I just played ’em.
Ed: I’m a fan of crows, luvs em luvs em luvs em. And all the other creatures.
Yesterday the blue jays came back, finally, and they partook heavily on the new double shepherds hook I installed outside my north office door with 2 suets on it. A little later the BIG GURL came by and then the BIG BOY, a couple of pileated woodpeckers. Man they’re prehistoric, and their eyes are downright predatory. Scaled down pteradactyls and in flight they look like thunderbirds. The males have red on their cheeks. And do they ever talk their shit. The females are the worst. jabber jabber jabber, even while stabbing the suet with their beaks. When I hear her running that line I wait a few minutes then open the door scaring her off so that she doesn’t destroy the whole suet, the sparrow, cardinals, titmice, nuthatches and blackcap chickadees wanna eat to ya know. Someones gotta be in charge around here otherwise there’d be anarchy and misery for all, so I am the chosen one to regulate the wilderness ebt cards. heh
“Hey, Edward, leave them crows alone!”
I saw what you did there. Didn’t see the hint til just now.
I am plagued by blue jays. They shit all over the deck. I bought a couple plastic red tailed hawk decoys, the last at Tractor Supply. They work like a charm. I see the power company over around Cayucos uses owl decoys on their poles to keep birds off’n the lines along 101.
Identicle behavior can be seen in schools of fish like sardines for example.
Ed,
I love the squawking Blue Jay. It reminds me of mornings at my grandmothers’s house in WVA under a large sycamore and gum tree. Every time I hear them, it takes me back.
The crows at work hate me and sound the alarm as soon as I get out of my vehicle. I think they purposefully crap on my truck after I go into the building. Yes, I throw snowballs at them in the winter.
In Kansas: Face flies = Pecker Gnats. Hate ’em.