The Raven and the Kite

Wild wind and the joy of flight

One of the first signs of summer’s end is when the hill farmers begin to cut and bale bracken for winter bedding. When bracken is freshly cut it smells like a beach at low tide bringing to mind rock pools, tangles of bladderwort, curlews and sandpipers picking at the edge of the water. The smell lasts for about 48 hours and then subsides. The loose fronds are gathered and pressed into huge drum shapes, which are then lined up ready to be loaded onto a trailer and taken down to the barns. When our boys were little, this was their favourite thing: to run and leap at the bales, then climb on top and jump from one to the next. They hoped for long rows, 20 bales or more. When they were red faced and tired, they lay down on top of them and stared up at the sky, beaming. Our dogs also loved to do this, and I remember once I saw two sheep doing the same thing. It was one of my favourite things too. Round bales are an invitation to joy.

The bracken cutting also marks the time when the winds come, and so it is this year. This morning I walked on the ridge past a field of bales standing like megaliths on the slope against the first big wind of the season. Flying weather. The ravens, as always, are first to the scene, choosing a steep, V-shaped rise which faces north west, catching the gusts and spinning into vortexes lifting them high above the ridge, before they fold, flip and dive back to ride again. Kite flying weather.

The Japanese Zen poet and calligrapher Ryokan once came across a little child carrying a paper kite who asked him to write something on it to help it fly. The poet wrote - sky above, great wind - one of the most beautiful lines I know. Such wildness, elegance and simplicity in just 4 words. So much playfulness. The wildest things are both simple and elegant, are they not? Consider the raven. What is as simple and as elegant as a kite? It is just a sheet of fabric and a string that can ride into the sky, then hang like a buzzard, or swoop like a raven for hours?

The unfittingly named Poppit Sands is a huge exposed beach on the west coast of Wales, one of those places, like the high hills around my home, which transform hourly. Ocean tides, wind tides, and tides of light interweave there in never-ending, never-repeating patterns. When I visit I always see an old man on the beach, long beard, a fringe of long, white hair merging with it. Wizard-like. He dresses in old, worn, baggy clothes and is barefoot. Monk-like. He pays no attention at all to other people on the beach. He stands staring, leaning out towards the sea, facing the wind. And every few minutes he performs a strange dance, springing forwards, bending low, half turning, then stretching out and reaching with his right arm into the air. Over and over. I had no idea what he was doing the first time I encountered him, until I saw him, on the tenth repetition of these ritual moves, throw a frisbee high into the sky. The disc lifted and surged forwards, then hung like a kite for an instant before returning exactly to the same spot it had left the man’s hand. He caught it effortlessly, then whirled around before pausing for a moment and starting again. I quickly began to admire his dance with the air, his ability to be entirely in the moment, oblivious to everything else. The track of the frisbee was a brush stroke, a piece of Zen calligraphy. Isn’t old age a time to play again, a time to be utterly unconcerned about what others think, free to celebrate the wonder of wind and sky?

Our garage is filled with the dust-covered and battered remains of bikes, kayaks, bodyboards, scooters and skateboards, which I never seem to have the heart to give away. Perhaps I’m saving them for the grandchildren, or perhaps they’re physical prompts for good remembering. Yesterday, while searching through stacked boxes filled with things I’ll never use, I found a little rucksack which my youngest son used to carry on his back on windy days. Inside it is a neatly folded kite, brightly coloured with postbox red, tangerine and pale turquoise stripes. I took it into the house and checked it over - no mouse nests, no tangled strings, no loose stitching or tears. So, for the first time in years the kite will be carried again, up onto a high hill, tomorrow or the next day, not on my son’s back, but on mine, to meet the westerlies while my dogs circle and bark beneath it. And maybe I’ll find an old frisbee. There was something in that old man’s dance on the beach which called to me strongly, in the way that the dance of ravens has always called to me: the wild joy, the proof that we’re not here to produce and consume, but to be part of the play of the universe. Ryokan - poet who would not speak of poetry, artist without paper or brush, monk without a monastery - knew it too: that playing with the wind is a form of prayer.

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My raven ink drawings are for sale as limited edition prints and I deliver worldwide. You can find them on my website - here

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Found Things - recommendations of the week

I have another story about Ryokan which links to a published collection of his translated poems as well as essays about the poet, by Kazuaki Tanahashi. It uses the beautiful words he wrote on the child’s kite as the title. Click on the picture for link to the publisher’s web page.

Fabienne Verdier’s work is a constant inspiration to me. She was incredibly brave as a young artist to travel and seek out Chinese calligraphy masters and to work with them for a period. This was when the Cultural Revolution was in place in China, making those calligraphers outcasts. Her work has now matured into art at its most powerful. There is a short video interview and written piece about her 2023 exhibition at Christies Dubai on their website, which is well worth a look. Link below.

https://www.christies.com/features/fabienne-verdier-studio-visit-12644-3.aspx

Until next week, J.

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