Jodi Hills

So this is who I am – a writer that paints, a painter that writes…

Tag Archives: birding


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In the birdsong.

Maybe nature knows, how the gifts are only borrowed. From nest to song, how it’s all impermanent. We’re given everything we need between sky and tree, but it has always been for the sharing. We were meant to live in the birdsong.

I think all creative ideas (and I’m including love here, perhaps topping the list) are like dandelion seeds floating on a summer breeze, with the bravest of barefoot children chasing them, stretching to pluck them from the blue, knowing if they don’t, there are countless chubby legs running behind and beside, willing to make the journey. And just as the summer child borrows the fleeting day, I gather the words and the paint, into the shape of love, and hope and try and pray it makes it to the next season.

Painting in a new room yesterday, brush in hand, I sang along with each stroke, the Christmas songs so generously lent to me, to us, each year. Within the music, somewhere on the canvas, I am suspended in time, in the gift of the moment. No doors of advent are opening. No rushing toward the next. I’m catch myself in the song of the bird, in a moment of happiness, and I find myself in the most wonderous gift of all. I know I won’t keep the painting. It must be shared. Chubby summer legs will be waiting.

The gift we only borrowed.
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Ever the heart.

I didn’t have words for it when I began. It all seemed too much. Too long. And it wasn’t like I was simply out on a limb, I was gone, so far off into the distant future, a future that I could awfulize into every worst scenario. So I brought myself back. Gave myself only the space of this sketchbook. Allowing myself any emotion, but confining the worry, the fear, to about 12” of my day. Feel anything, everything, I told myself. And once I gave it a voice, without my knowledge or permission, that voice began to turn into a song. And that song calls me each day to the page, not the fear. 

And the most joyous thing happened yesterday. Looking at the bird woman, with her wicker bag at the market, birds resting on her head, I imagined her saying, “Seriously, I really need to shop faster.” And I laughed. Out loud. 

And it isn’t time making the difference. It’s the work. Giving myself a place to grow, to feel. A place where perfection isn’t required. And it’s ironic, I suppose, so beautifully ironic, that in this tiny space, I feel so gloriously free. 

It just occurred to me, maybe that’s what the heart is after all, a sketchbook. Not the place with all the answers, but beat by beat, page by page, a tiny space where we are free to feel, to learn, to grow, to become. Ever the artists of our own choosing. I suppose it’s never the brain, nor the hand, that says, I can make something beautiful out of this, but the heart…ever the heart… turning the page, crossing over to the beauty that lies ahead. 

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Nesting

We will never meet the owners of the VRBO we are staying at, but I think I like them, because of the birds. They are throughout the apartment. On plants. On the walls. A feather above the nightstand. Even a book beside, “Better living through birding.” 
Maybe it’s because I, too, love birds. To hear them sing on my walks. To paint them. Again and again to be feathered with a stroke of a brush. To give them a bit of my own song, my own words, knowing that no one can share it with a more widespread and gentle touch as they do. 

Perhaps it’s even, “whatever you did for one of the least of these….”

I am at fault as anyone. As guilty as anyone. I can lose my patience. Become ungentle. And I don’t like it. So I paint them birds to tell you that I know better. That I can do better. And if you can see the love in that, in all those flutters, then, then I think, as I pull my shy and daring head from beneath my wing, I think we will soar.

I open the book beside me. There is a quote on the first page, and reading it, I know that I, we, were meant to be here. It reads — “I believe the best way to begin reconnecting humanity’s heart, mind, and soul to nature is for us to share our individual stories” — J. Drew Lanham, from The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature.

I sit at the kitchen table of these birding people. I do like them. I, we, are nesting.

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Lunch for the soul.

There was no logistical reason for her to write my name on the paper sack that held my lunch. I, alone, carried it from our kitchen table to the bus to my locker at school. Still I looked for it every day, along with the small note. It was only ever a few words, like have a good day, or I love you, but truth be told, it filled me much more than the half sandwich enclosed.

Knowing how little it takes to make someone’s day, I wonder why we don’t do it more. I need to do it more. Give compliments. A smile and a wave. Write letters — small notes even. Because it always comes back. I was schooled from the best. 

Yesterday, I wrote two cards. Sealed them with wax, placed the international stamp in the corner, and walked them to the mailbox. This morning, I opened a random sketchbook, looking for inspiration for the blog, and there it was, a note saved from my mother — “To my little feathered friend — Love you forever and for always!” — and my heart is full. 

I hope you can hear them, these songs of hope, songs of joy, truth, and inspiration, these tiny messages of love I send out on wings. They didn’t start with me — They must not end here.