a gift from linda

this blog is not just meant to be a performance, but also an interaction. it sometimes restores my faith in fundamental goodness to see how many people come visiting every day, just to participate in somebody else’s creative project. a comment from the right person at the right time can change the trajectory of a day or even a week. this week i got a package in the mail from linda. it was a nest that she said made her think of me, but it wasn’t just the gesture of sending the nest that i found moving. it was the fact that first she had spent a summer watching a cardinal family be born and raised in this house. and then she had gone online to confirm that cardinals only use nests one time and build new ones the next year. and only then, knowing that she would not be making the difficult life of a songbird even more difficult, did she take the nest down from her climbing vine and send it to me. in other words, by her actions and her words, she gave a gift that was completely and consciously in the spirit of STILL blog. it has gotten easier to be seduced by the temptation to think the worst of people lately. but still, and by gestures like this, i am finding that i am right more often when i think the best of them. thank you linda for the gift of a physical nest, and a moral lift.

cardinal nest