‘It was eluding her again: the essence of bird.’
From ‘Nest‘
by Inga Simpson
I love this sentence. Jen, the protagonist of Nest, is an artist, and in this passage she is trying to draw a fairy wren.
I’m not an artist; in fact, I’m spectacularly untalented when it comes to drawing. But I know the feeling of trying to capture — in a photograph, perhaps, or in conversation, or in writing — what you see when you see a bird. To say that a bird flies, or that it sings, or that it is beautiful is true, but those descriptions come nowhere near to capturing what a bird really is, or how it makes you feel.
The essence of bird. Perhaps it will always elude me, as it does Jen. Perhaps that’s part of the fascination.
It’s true – it is tough to express what a bird is. Air, flashes of light? 😉
And song?