fleeting moments
of everydayness
captured
frozen
eternalised
in a seemingly contradictory
instant
forever to be
an object of anticipation
of what might come
of what might be
of what might never have happened
Everyday life is full of opportunities to lose oneself in the beauty of everydayness. When we really look, we will see a new world emerge full of colours and newfound strangeness, one we can look at with wonder. Recently, I had to opportunity to see life through almost pastel or water paint colors.
A small little bird, we call a "sysie", called blue waxbill (Uraeginthus angolensis) that rarely, if ever, visits my garden, jumped in front of my camera when we drank some coffee at a coffee shop. The lighting was textbook - the little sysie or bird was illuminated by the sun, and the background was a soft almost water paint colour - as if someone coloured it in for my photographs.
In a rare moment, one of fleeting everydayness, the sysie or little waxbill bird cleaned its beak on one of the branches it sat on. Luckily my finger was on the shutter button and I kept it down. In this rare moment, one we all see so many times when we go birding, I caught the beak-cleaning moment in action.
It is when we dare to look at life, at these innocent and moment no one would miss if they do not look, that actually makes life so beautiful. It is when we really look, as I like to say, when we bend down to actually take time to appreciate, that we will realise that we need nothing more than what we already have.
After the intense beak-cleaning was done, it posed for me again, almost like it wanted to show itself off. But it did not know of my presence, as I snuck behind a tree, only with some luck capturing its tiny presence in the tree.
Its tiny feathers and small little feet were adorable and one cannot even think that such a small animal would survive in the wild. They cannot be bigger than 10 cm but they surely have enough energy! Just like so many of the other small birds, they are difficult to capture on photograph, always flying away from you.
In a last moment, before the little bird flew away, it sat still for a moment in time so that I can eternalise the portrait, the brief moment, the instant that have never been captured. How much of life has gone by without anyone seeing it, contemplating it, or even writing poetry about it? Now, we have the technology to do all of this; we can eternalise the instant and contemplate it for eternity.
It stretched its little wings, and with that my portraiture stopped and I was returned to my everyday life, one without the beautiful momentary moment. One without the little bird just being itself.
The little birds flew away from me, to a piece of grassland where they ate some seeds. I had a last moment with them before they flew away to a nearby tree. (The last photograph you can see just how small they are.)
It was a beautiful moment, one that in its fleetingness became even more beautiful.
I hope that you enjoyed this momentary pause in life with me. If we can only contemplate these rare moments long enough...
For now, happy birding and keep well.
All of the photographs in this post are my own, taken with my Nikon D300 and Tamrom 300mm lens. The musings and meanderings and writings are my own, albeit inspired by the little bird flying around me.