(no subject)

I was walking back through cambridge this afternoon, and took the green route down the Backs and along the path that runs behind Queens, Peterhouse and the Fitz (this is perhaps the only place at ground level that you can verify the existence of the Peterhouse tower-block from, if you had any desire to do so).

I was walking through Coe Fen, which is the narrow strip behind the school on Trumpington Road, and looking up, saw two flocks of birds against the sky. As watched, they flew in circles, split up and rejoiced, harried each other, swooped in and out of each others midst, and generally had the most fun 200 birds can have of a winter's afternoon. There was no-one else there - the only sounds were my footsteps, and the distant drone of traffic on the Fen Causeway. I was transfixed, the only spectator of this dazzling show of aerobatics. What was so special was that it gave the momentary sense of being lifted into the pure exultancy of that moment, set free from the squalid compromise of workaday existence, and released into a space whose laws and possibilities are within the beat of your own wings, and those around you. What reason the birds had for flying in such a way I have no idea, but in the unending pattern of their display, I felt for a second the glory that some find in churches, some in laboratories, and some at the presence of new life.

I was on soon after, before the sensation could be destroyed. It was only a moment in time, but sometimes a moment can be enough.