It is with great sadness that I report the death of the rook Cornelia. She was learning to fly and she drowned in a tub of water. I am heartbroken and although guilt will not bring her back I chastise myself for not thinking that she might fly upwards onto the rim of the tub and fall in. She had become such an amiable companion and in the day if I was writing she would sit on my shoulder at the computer, often with a cat also on my lap and certainly the dogs lying around at my feet. I have buried her under the trees where the rest of the rooks are and where once her nest had been. Someone told me that she had been sent to teach me something but I can't for the life of me think what except how attached we can become to an animal.
I have always loved corvids - so much so that I did a solo show a long time back where I became one. Below is a picture. Later I used to wear the mask when the children had halloween parties. It was very effective.
Life and death eh? As Beezle and Mark Twain would say "I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience for it."
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| the philosopher Beezle. |
This weekend I was lucky enough to be invited to the Hay- on- wye Literary festival where I was an "event" with two other wonderful writer's of stories Gillian Cross and Emma Carroll. It was good fun and every performer gets presented with a single stemmed white rose. See below.(also half a crate of wine - no picture.}
Rather than a picture of the half crate of wine here is a picture of Pixie who - because of the camera angle- looks as if she's just eaten a small horse or indeed the half crate of wine.
She can't see what all the fuss about life and death is all about.
Meanwhile - outside the alliums are in full bloom. I love these alliums - Purple Sensation - because they seed and each year you get more and more and when they've finished flowering they have seed heads which seem to last forever which you can spray gold at christmas if you so desire and put them in a wreath.(wreath? oh no - blub.}
Life is for the Living.
Death is for the dead.
Let life be like music.
And death a note unsaid.
Langston Hughes.
