Status Updates From The Peregrine

December 22nd

They seemed bored, sterile; they had no meaning […] They had no song. Their calls were harsh and ugly. But their soaring was like an endless silent singing. What else had they to do? (p. 123)

A shift in tone. Baker compares with older days and establishes things are looking bad for the peregrine: the eggless nest, foul poison burning within them like a borrowing fuse…

(December 21st)

Now their colour is like the mauve rim of a clear sky where the sun has just gone down. (p. 118)

The hawk puts out his feathers, looking cuddly and harmless. Only the armour-plated legs and the sickle toes do not relax, will never relax in life. (p. 119)

December 18th

what was left smelt fresh and sweet, like a mess of raw beef and pineapple. It was an appetizing smell, not the least bit rank or fishy. I could have eaten it myself if I had been hungry. (p. 117)

(December 17th)

(December 15th)

He fell so fast, he died so furiously from the sky to the dark wood below, that his black shape dimmed to get it, hidden in a shining cloud of speed. He drew the sky about him as he fell. It was final. It was death. There was nothing more. There could be nothing more. (p. 114)

(December 12th)

All the monstrous artefacts of man are natural, untainted things to them. All that is still is dead. All that moves, and stops, and does not move again, then very slowly dies. Movement is like colour to a hawk; it flares upon the eye like crimson flame. (p. 108)

(December 5th)

December 3rd

Too long to quote, but the first half of this short diary entry is a simply beautiful form of poetic prose on the many properties of mud as another element.

(December 1st, December 2nd)

I scanned the sky constantly to see if a hawk was soaring, scrutinized every tree and bush, searched the apparently empty sky through every arc. That is how the hawk finds his prey and eludes his enemies, and that is the only way one can hope to find him and share his hunting. Binoculars, and a hawk-like vigilance, reduce the disadvantage of myopic human vision.

November 30th

Unconsciously I was imitating the movements of a hawk, as in some primitive ritual; the hunter becoming the thing he hunts. (p. 102)

(November 29th)

(November 28th)

(November 26th)

(November 24th)

(November 21st)

(November 18th)

(November 16th)

(15 november)