Crows and other things

Reading Janet Frame's An Angel at My Table.  Have ordered Faces in the Water, a fictionalized account of her time in mental institutions (she was in more than one).  Her book shows how strong the human spirit is - even when she sabotages her own happiness, even when she's weak, even when she allows herself to be thistledown blown by the whims of others.  And her books make me ashamed.  I who have so much and do so little with it.

     Even now with Richard away, the perfect excuse to stay inside and create (a large blue band of rain is crawling across the weather map toward us) and this page before me for the first time since June, I am finding it difficult to settle and concentrate.  

     Often when I am walking I compose things in my head.  Observations to be recorded, thoughts to be considered but I do none of those things.  People write novels while working full time and raising a family.  What excuse do I have?  None, except when I look at the sites saved on this computer, even the blogs written by others, they are all about art, none about writing.  

     Isn't it odd how adept we are at beating ourselves up?  And how certain we are that we need to be beaten up?  So rather than carry on with the same old crap I'll write about crows.

     Crows.  I've been entranced by them for quite awhile.  They are so common they've become invisible.  We revile them because their song is more like dragging rusty car bodies across stones than anything resembling music.  Among other things they feed on carrion.  Although their black feathers are glossy we see them as dusty harbingers of decay.

      But they lead lives of mystery.  Each afternoon when I walk the dogs I watch them.  Sometimes they all seem to be heading north, the next day south, the next west, and finally east.  Flying in twos and threes (so as not to attract attention?) they make their way to what?  I have no idea but I am certain this casual gathering is deliberate.

      One day I watched two crows flying overhead.  They squawked and squarked while they flew a large irregular circle.  Soon they were joined by another pair of crows.  The four of them flew another circle.  Then two more and finally, two more after that.  The eight of them winged around this aerial circle and then, after a few turns, they drifted apart until two were left.  The original two?  I don't know.  Finally they too drifted away. 

     What was the purpose of that?  Was it a corvid version of afternoon smoko?  Was it a family gathering?  Friends catching up?  Neighbourhood Watch?  

     Yesterday I rode up the road.  On the way back I allowed Balthazar to graze while I crow-watched.  A 'murder' of crows had gathered in a tree halfway up Mt. Whitestone.  *Murders* are common around here.  They seem drawn to the flanks of Mt. Whitestone, or any good sized hill.  The gatherings are another mystery.  The crows all talk at once and at the top of their voice.  

     Trying to understand them as a human I cannot help but put a human interpretation on them.  If people got together to discuss something and all of them shouted continuously no one would understand anything and nothing would get done.  But understanding crows I would need to be a crow.  Maybe they gather to shout with the joyousness of being alive.  Maybe it's choir rehearsal.  Or a contest.  Whatever it is, it is meaningful.