The introduction to one of her books. I just read it again, for the umpteenth time, and it always is incredibly moving to me (and, yes, the reference is deliberate):
When my body was smaller (I was never young,) there was this big beautiful crane that used to come every year and land on the roof of the house across from ours. I say that it was beautiful, not because it had any physical characteristics that would recommend its appearance, but because it was there every single year. It would always come very early in the spring and always land on the same roof. It would land there for three consecutive days, each year, and it would stay landed for most of the day before flying away.
When it left, for good until the next year, I had no doubt that it was being called away by some other pocket of outlandish movement that required its calming influence. It had a mission of stillness to perform.
I loved that bird. I loved that it came each year. I loved that I was a dot on some instinct transmitted map that was manifested only in stillness.
Migration took on a whole new meaning for me when I looked at that bird. The process of migration became a string of still moments, strung together by a shimmering strand of clear purposeful movement. That sort of movement I had never known until then. The movement itself seemed so insignificant, so merely functional, as stringing the moments of stillness together. The stillness dictated the movement. Stillness guided every movement, stillness was the departure and the arrival.
I wondered fervently what it thought about while perched up there on “the crazy old guy of our street’s” house. I could see it perfectly from our kitchen window, in the morning before I left for school. Usually the window was steamy from breakfast preparations, and this gave the bird a shimmery silver, enchanted appearance standing rigid against the glowing morning sky. And, it was still standing there when I trudged home from school. It was the only testament I had that stillness remained the goal, and that it was attainable.
The memory of that bird has made me realize that there is no difference between running to stand still, and just running. None of my migrations have ever lead me to the Stillness of the Crane.
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