Nature and theatre

Today, happily, is a day off. Work was hard but very valuable this past week for many reasons. So much was gained and learned through repetition and study and just being in the moment and listening, finally, to what the other actors were saying!! Plus, I finally figured out the end of the play.
Actors memorize words and say those words over and over but, sometimes, don't really realize the full meaning of parts of a script or character's story. Much of the meaning is evident, nonetheless, from what other characters say and do and from the musicality of the speech. Leonard Bernstein lectured on this vis a vis the language of musical notes and how evocative specific notes and chords were. I digress a bit.

When Carrie Watts (at the end of "Trip to Bountiful") looks around her and fully realizes what it is that has restored her dignity, she says this:
"...the river will be here. The fields. The woods. The smell of the Gulf. That's what I always took my strength from...Not from houses, not from people. It's so quiet. It's so eternally quiet. I've forgotten the peace. The quiet. And it's given me strength once more... To go on and do what I have to do. I've found my dignity and strength.........
it's all woods now. But I expect someday people will come again and cut down the trees and plant the cotton and maybe even wear out the land again and then their children will sell it and go to the cities and then the trees will come up again......
We're part of all this. We left it but we can never lose what it has given us."

She realizes that we're part of the earth, the world and, with luck and work, that will continue. All will decompose and be reused and reborn.

As you have read, we've been following the assemblage of the bushtits' nest and documenting the progress with photos and reportage here. This morning, seeing the sun through the shades, I opened the curtains in the back to see if one of the roses had opened it's blooms and saw, instead, a large crow and a pair of stellar jays flying towards the back fir trees and away from the nest area. When I looked at the nest, I saw what looked like disaster. It was severely altered. I couldn't tell if those bigger birds had attacked it or if the overnight winds had bashed it. Whatever the case, I jumped into some clothes, grabbed my glasses, and fairly ran outside to the back yard. Once there, I could clearly see that the nest was ruined. From what I could see, it looked like a larger bird had swiped it violently with it's claws and opened an entire side of it exposing all that soft, downy inside which I had been imagining.

I almost burst into tears. One would think I was one of the parents! The real parents (or perhaps others in the bushtits' social grouping) flew around and around the broken nest chirping continually in alarm and, probably, sadness. Despair was quickly enveloping me when I saw something remarkable that snapped me back to " Bountiful". One of the bushtits removed a tiny, downy feather and flew away with it. Then it's partner did the same. It dawned on me that they were already rebuilding, reusing, and working toward a new world. Indeed, the efforts and travails of those tiny birds gave me "strength once more to go on and do what I had to do".

One last note: On closer examination, we found one wee egg which had fallen to the soil below the nest and had broken. The egg, pictured, was only the size of my thumbnail. It looked unreal because of it's size but it was real enough. This little bird didn't make it but, given what I witnessed this morning, others will in the new nests being built and, hopefully, camoflaged better than this one was.