I am shaken to the core.
Poetry is a source of inspiration to me; poets - gods. Poetry elevates me and cuts deeply to my soul, allowing for free breathing and the celebration of the spirit.
I never considered that poetry could create permanent damage. Slander. A nasty misrepresentation of character.
That is precisely what Samuel Taylor Coleridge did in The Rime of The Ancient Mariner.
In Rime, the mariner shoots an albatross and is forced to carry the burden of the bird hung around his neck as a punishment for and reminder of his ill deed.
Hence the origin of the phrase "albatross around your neck."
Obviously, Coleridge was really celebrating the status of the albatross, so I can dig him for that. I can also dig him because he was Hunter S. Thompson's favorite writer.
But that is a story for another time and place.
But the albatross around the neck thing became a dark and condemning reference.
The albatross is one cool and remarkable bird. Cute, in its own way.
The albatross is essentially a sea bird, famous for their mode of flight, especially the ability to endlessly glide low over the waves without flapping.
They use a technique called "dynamic soaring", which makes use of the different wind speeds that occur at different heights. As it glides along losing height, the albatross turns into the wind, which lifts it up to a height from which it glides down between waves to turn around to repeat the process. They can actually fly faster than the winds speed.
The albatross has the largest wingspan of any living bird, which enables them to make the most of the differing wind speeds, but only if they keep them still. They have a specific tendon or muscle or voodoo bird magic that allows them to lock their shoulders into position, which allows the muscles that would otherwise be holding the wings horizontal to the body, to rest.
I am no goddamn scientist; I understand little about the world and creatures that surround me. But this seems pretty damn cool.
These birds have been revered by those who make a living on the sea, and celebrated by writers and poets forever, maybe because they look so cool, so casual just doing their thing.
They keep it real through the comedy of take-off and landing rituals. On land, to take off, they have to run downhill into the wind with wings outstretched. From the ocean they have to paddle furiously until the wind lifts them.
When landing on water they use their large webbed feet to ski to a halt. On land they use their tails and webbed feet as air brakes, and if they miscalculate the proper speed, they fall over onto their beaks.
In the air they are gods; on land and sea they are Woody Allen. This humanizes them; balances them off and makes it easier to identify with them as living creatures.
They can live for up to fifty years, and they mate for life.
That does it for today's segment of "Observing The World Around You." Hopefully it filled you with a sense of wonder about these magnificent birds. At the very least, perhaps it piqued your curiosity.
Maybe this summer when you are drunkenly swilling beer on the high seas, creating noise pollution with an over sized engine and your attempts to sing "Son of a Son of a Sailor" at maximum volume, maybe, just maybe, you will look up and spy an albatross and be immediately humbled.
Maybe this experience will alter your habits to the point where you commit to worshipping nature and reserve drunken singing for whorehouses and disreputable pubs.
Where the hell did that come from?
Christ, I spent one drunken, lust filled night with Mother Nature and her spirit haunts me into perpetuity.
I leave you with this:
"God save thee, Ancient mariner
From the fiends, that plague thee thus
Why look'st thou so? - With my cross-bow
I shot the ALBATROSS.
Ah. well a-day. What evil looks
Had I from old and young
Instead of the cross, the Albatross
About my neck was hung."
"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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