in the night

European Southern Observatory, Flickr creative commons

 

'Coming back into self after a crisis is as slow as mending bone. Psychiatric illness affects the deep centres of the brain that govern perception, emotion, behaviour and personality. These areas - the prefrontal cortex, the thalamus and limbic system manifest the hidden experience of the mind as opposed to the core motor and sensory function of the brain.

In the night I slip past the night staff and go out into the courtyard, lie down on a bench and look up at the sky. The night air ripples. According to Scottish mathematician J. S. Haldane, "the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose." This gives me comfort. The stars are out - gleaming cantos of space. In the wide, wide night, there is only the essential smallness of self and the tiny equilibrium of earth and air on which we exist.'

Kate Richards, 2013, Madness: A Memoir, Penguin.
https://katerichardsaustralia.wordpress.com/ 

the albatross

photo by Ron Knight, Flickr creative commons

 

'Wingspans of these birds can approach twelve feet, a reach so wide they cannot flap to take off. Instead they nest on the highest, most exposed ridges so that it is enough to merely stretch their wings into the wind and be vaulted skywards. After take-off they can watch the ocean heave beneath them for two years straight without touching earth or rock. Human beings seem so marginal to their lives that I had the sense that they could barely see me, as if their gaze passed right through me. I sat within inches of one nest, and though the bird sat stiffly, and was clearly uncomfortable on land it breathed an air of impassive serenity. Its feathers trembled like dusted snow, a dazzling, laundered whiteness.'

'They mate for life, and with increasing numbers lost to long-line fishing hooks more of them are standing lonely vigils on the ridges of Bird Island, waiting for mates that never return. Populations are falling as a result. Ornithologists tell us that albatrosses are not clever birds. Developmentally they are quite primitive, and the stereotyped patterns of their behaviour are sluggish and slow to adapt. But as I sat and watched them I thought not of illegal fishing or their reported simplicity but of Herman Melville's awe on an encounter with them: "At intervals it arched forth its vast archangel wings, as if to embrace some holy ark. Wondrous flutterings and throbbings shook it ... Through its inexpressible, strange eyes, methought I peeped to secrets which took hold of God. As Abraham before the angels, I bowed myself."

Gavin Francis, 2012, Empire Antarctica: Ice, Silence & Emperor Penguins
 

The endurance of emperor penguins

Photo by Christopher Michel, Flickr creative commons

 

'Masters of endurance, they weather the coldest and windiest habitat on earth - they are the only penguin that shows no territorial aggression, having realised that in order to survive personal space is a luxury they cannot afford. They live through storms of hurricane-force winds and temperatures as low as minus 70 degrees C, leading Apsley Cherry-Garrard to observe that in his opinion no creature on earth has a worse time.'

'I wondered if there at the end of the earth I might learn something from the emperors, of the purity of living in the physical senses, of a life without tangles of motives or the radio-chatter of the mind. They seemed to offer a welcome all too rare in the natural world, perhaps even a kind of forgiveness.'

Gavin Francis, 2012, Empire Antarctica: Ice, Silence & Emperor Penguins