project 365 #30: frightful the peregrine

project 365 #30: frightful the peregrine
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry.

Frightful (of course her name is Frightful. What's frightful is how little imagination kids have when it comes to naming falcons.) the peregrine came to visit the museum where I work today. Good thing too, since I was utterly useless otherwise all day, so being called in to photograph a falcon in front of a picture of the earth was at least something good. She's very beautiful and sort of awe inspiring and grounded forever due to an injured wing, which makes me sad.

But it isn't taking much to make me sad today. I'm kind of a mess, actually, and I'm not sure how much of it is grief and shock and so on and how much is hangover from the whole intensity of my trip, also the driving, which does tend to get me the next day. I remember this feeling, though, this wide eyed inability to focus, jagged throat, numbness and exhaustion. It's always a shock to lose someone, no matter how much you expect it, or so my mother says, and she has had some practice, so I believe she knows. I do not want to know. I do not look forward to that part of getting older when this shock isn't so much a shock anymore but a perpetual creepy small thing at the small of your back: another one lost, another down.

For now, though, it's a shock and a feeling that I thought I'd forgotten, that comes back like a blow and I remember, ah yes, this is how grief feels: this is sorrow, this is that feeling that someone is missing from the world, this is that disturbance in the force.