Wow, this is so beautiful. I have never known much about cliff swallows, and now I will always think of this meditation when I see them. A thermodynamics of love. You brought them alive. I especially loved this passage: "If love is defined, like Weber suggests, partly by enlivenment, we might consider swallows quintessential lovers. Their aerial dynamics flitting to and from the nests with clay or insects between their beaks makes the air dance with their flight. Dirt too, becomes animate as the swallow takes clay and shapes it into a vessel for fledgling forms. Earth and sky quicken as a result of the work of wing and beak in service to their mate, their offspring."
And the imaginative scene at the end brings me so close to them as more-than-human beings with agency—brings them so alive, and awakens my love for these creatures.
DAVID! So glad I found you via Holly Haworth’s note today. I’m stunned by this essay and you have yourself a new subscriber.
many thanks!
I'm heartened by this too!
I love that piece around the agency of all beings! Yes!
Thanks for sharing these stories, images & reflections w/ us Papa Pritchett :)
Wow, this is so beautiful. I have never known much about cliff swallows, and now I will always think of this meditation when I see them. A thermodynamics of love. You brought them alive. I especially loved this passage: "If love is defined, like Weber suggests, partly by enlivenment, we might consider swallows quintessential lovers. Their aerial dynamics flitting to and from the nests with clay or insects between their beaks makes the air dance with their flight. Dirt too, becomes animate as the swallow takes clay and shapes it into a vessel for fledgling forms. Earth and sky quicken as a result of the work of wing and beak in service to their mate, their offspring."
And the imaginative scene at the end brings me so close to them as more-than-human beings with agency—brings them so alive, and awakens my love for these creatures.
Thank you, David!
thanks for reading!