Yugen Movie VIII (anti-viral video)

Bird Miracle / Wild Wizards

From the cliffs I watched a white egret stand in the tide-pools below, head down, watching, waiting. Patient seems a paltry word for this bird, but it was the virtue she bespoke to me. This is how she makes a living, fills her belly, by casting no shadow, by attracting minimal attention, by standing still & observing.

I am not sure what term of venery (or plural noun) is correct for egrets (I believe it is a siege of herons) but why not a patience of egrets, or perhaps a stillness, or even better: a meditation…

I have even seen them seem to defy the physical laws, like some Tantric demigod, standing on the ocean’s surface on spindly stilts, actually supported by the tangled top of a kelp forest. Again standing perfectly still, waiting for a careless sea creature to flit close to the surface.

As far as I know no mantra is uttered, no esoteric forces summoned, the egret simply stands on the majik of the world itself, which, of course, she co-creates. Giant gas filled algae, hollow avian bones, and millions of years of interpenetration offer up this majik trick. The salt water, the kelp & the sunlight that it reaches toward, the bird & its brood, and the crab or fish it hopes to catch… they cast the spell that makes an egret walk on water; they are the wild wizards.