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259 pages, Hardcover
First published February 9, 2017
I knew birds were not trivial. They were constantly chirping, and what they were saying, or what I heard them say, was Stand up. Look around. Be in the world.
If I am guilty of hiding among tinier people in a tinier parallel world, it is because I am searching for other models of artistic success. The small is a figure of alternative possibility, proof that no matter how much the market tries to force consensus, there will always be those making art where the market isn't looking.
Most of us don't have time for the malady of stillness. Life is too short for longueurs. The idea of sitting for hours on end, on rocks or bits of log, in the cold, for a bird, is the definition of lunacy and silliness.
And yet –
The birds tell me not to worry, that the worries that sometimes overwhelm me are little in the grand scheme of things. They tell me it's all right to be belittled by the bigness of the world. There are some belittlements and diminishments that make you stronger, kinder.
I began to appreciate the books that were more plainly science-minded rather than piously inspirational. Poetry captures the elusive nature of birds, but it is science that allows us to see them with precision and grace. The best books captured the sweet spot between poetic not-knowing and scientific knowing.
In my husband I see a fellow solitary, a person with his own concentrated, if meandering path, and while I would do anything for him and would choose his company again and again, one of the things I love most about "us" is that we protect each other's independence. [...] The gift of our love is that it has given me an earthed feeling so that I have felt free to float away.
For a long time I did not tell anyone I was writing a book about birds. Depending on my mood I referred to this book as "a project," "some bits of writing," and, finally, and probably most correctly: "a sketch book."This quiet memoir is more a book about life and art (writing), than it is about birds. I went into it hoping for a gentle nature memoir, and although it was not quite what I was expecting, I felt it won me over pretty quickly, and for that reason I'd give it a 3.5 star rating.
To some people, the desire to do small things and stay small may be perceived as a cop-out, a self-protective position or form of pathological timidity and constriction.Another illuminating chapter explored being content with "lull", when "[w]hat most of us do with a lull is try to fill it, with stuff, with recognizable busyness." I could certainly learn a lot from Maclear here; in the last few years, it feels like my own life has shifted from being full of opportunity and "bigness" (travelling the world, dreaming of ambitious plans after graduation etc.) to something "small" and "constricted" (needing to both back in with my parents put a lot of my plans on hold, possibly indefinitely, for reason outside my control). I'm at the stage where I am trying build a "small" life, but one that I can be content with:
Small is a safe harbour. The smaller your goals, the less likely you are to be deflated or "cut down to size." In this sense, a bias towards the small could be a version of low expectations. Or a form of feminized compliance, as in "I don't want to be seen as loud, fat, assertive, or ambitious";
I want for every overextended person in my life stretches of unclaimed time and solitude away from the tyranny of the clock, vast space to get bored and lost, waking dreams that take us beyond the calculative surface of thingsReading these few chapters in particular, it certainly felt like this book had found me at the right time, and it has given me a lot of ponder. Perhaps, it wasn't quite the book I was expecting (a book about birds), but whatever else it was drew me in and I appreciated reading.