Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Tickell’s Blue Flycatcher: Little bird that dares

Birds are amazingly fickle the moment they see you they flit away (that is a view of a human being the bird's view would be much interesting!). So one has to take some precautions and follow certain basic rules like for instance wearing dress that are dull and gels with the surrounding, walking very slow, avoid stepping dry leaves and so on. Tickell’s blue flycatcher doesn’t fall into the category of birds that seems intimidated by human presence indeed it comes forward as if to challenge, I found that quite intriguing, and then it vanished. I couldn’t take the pictures since it was against the sunlight. Found a stone to sit and in ten minutes or so our bird was back and posing for the camera. It is a beautiful looking little bird of the size of sparrow. The male has dark blue upper part and the throat breast and flanks are rufous fading into the white belly (the pics). Female is duller blue. They are found in light forests where there is thick undergrowth.

It is strictly insectivorous and so sits on the bough few meters above bushy undergrowth scanning, swooping down on spotting an insect. They keep themselves busy like this for an hour or so then quite surprisingly our bird broke into song to my much amazement. Once the belly is full it is time to sing I guess.

Mihai Eminescu is regarded as the national poet of Romania. He died at the age of 38 years in Bucharest, suffering from paralysis the last five years of his life. In his short life he could not realize many of his literary ambitions. Only a small part of his work was published during his lifetime. As he had studied the German philosophers and poets, his work was influenced by them (Schopenhauer being prominent). Eminescu is very popular in Romania and is very much appreciated by the common people, children learn it at school.

Eminescu wrote poems on nature, love and so on but there is an overwhelming melancholy in his lines. Like these …

May all tempting eyes vanish from my pathway
Come back to my breast, you indifferent sorrow!
So that I may quietly die, restore me
To my own being!

The poem ‘To the star’ is intricate mixture of science, love and sadness of time…

To the star

Look, that star that's shining
up there, so far away;
Her light has traveled eons
to meet our eye today.

Perhaps she even perished
a long, long time ago;
only her light but now
did cross the way we go.

The icon of this now dead star
slow in the sky it rises.
She was, while we could not her see.
Now that we see, she's vanished.

So, just alike, when feelings faded,
prey to the grinding wheels of time,
the spectre of our weathered love
is doomed to haunt us for a while.

But my favorite is this poemA Dacian's Prayer’, doesn’t early part remind of rigveda (I guess it is Schopenhauer’s influence, who was into Hindu philosophy) and latter tantalizing mix of Christ’s compassion?…read this poem (it is a translation, original written in 1879), one of the best

A Dacian's Prayer

When death did not exist, nor yet eternity,
Before the seed of life had first set living free,
When yesterday was nothing, and time had not begun,
And one included all things, and all was less than one,
When sun and moon and sky, the stars, the spinning earth
Were still part of the things that had not come to birth,
And You quite lonely stood... I ask myself with awe,
Who is this mighty God we bow ourselves before.

Ere yet the Gods existed already He was God
And out of endless water with fire the lightning shed;
He gave the Gods their reson, and joy to earth did bring,
He brought to man forgiveness, and set salvation's spring
Lift up your hearts in worship, a song of praise enfreeing,
He is the death of dying, the primal birth of being.

To him I owe my eyes that I can see the dawn,
To him I owe my heart wherein is pity born;
Whene'er I hear the tempest, I hear him pass along
Midst multitude of voices raised in a holy song;
And yet of his great mercy I beg still one behest:
That I at last be taken to his eternal rest.

Be curses on the fellow who would my praise acclaim,
But blessings upon him who does my soul defame;
Believe no matter whom who slanders my renown,
Give power to the arm that lifts to strike me down;
Let him upon the earth above all others loom
Who steals away the stone that lies upon my tomb.

Hunted by humanity, let me my whole life fly
Until I feel from weeping my very eyes are dry;
Let everyone detest me no matter where I go,
Until from persecution myself I do not know;
Let misery and horror my heart transform to stone,
That I may hate my mother, in whose love I have grown;
Till hating and deceiving for me with love will vie,
And I forget my suffering, and learn at last to die.

Dishonoured let me perish, an outcast among men;
My body less than worthy to block the gutter then,
And may, o God of mercy, a crown of diamonds wear
The one who gives my heart the hungry dogs to tear,
While for the one who in my face does callous fling a clod
In your eternal kingdom reserve a place, o God.

Thus only, gracious Father, can I requitance give
That you from your great bounty vouched me the joy to live;
To gain eternal blessings my head I do not bow,
But rather ask that you in hating compassion show.
Till comes at last the evening, your breath will mine efface,
And into endless nothing I go, and leave no trace.

This I wrote few days back…

It is not the dead who die
souls leaving the body don’t carry any thoughts
they are brutally discarded into the minds of living
to negotiate renegotiate.
It is the living who are condemned every day every moment
by the memories that clog their actions
and leave traces of death even in their wishes.