It may be obvious if you scroll through my recent posts, but I’ll just restate that I’ve got ancient Egypt on my mind. I haven’t really sought it out, but Egypt keeps popping up in documentaries and in the books I’ve been reading. Well, maybe I have sought it out a bit because I did read the Corpus Hermeticum twice this week. But still, Egypt has been popping up spontaneously in other places too.
I wrote a couple of weeks ago about a dream of Osiris and his family that I had a while back, and explained that it seemed I needed to use that dream in some way. Work with it creatively somehow. Well, I have a pretty good idea on how to use the idea now, and it keeps unpacking itself in my mind and becomes more and more interesting to me all the time.
The truth is though, as an artist, it can be easy to question yourself. Is this idea really a good one? Is it worth my time? Where do I start? Etc.
Recently, while I was walking up in the hills, I was having these sort of questions. But I was also thinking of my new idea too. Thinking of Osiris. Thinking of his son Horus. What’s weird is, while I was thinking about Horus there was this birds in the trees on my right. I could sort of see it and hear it moving, but it flew away pretty quickly too. Then, about a half an hour later or so walking the other way back down the canyon, having these same questions, thinking of Horus, Osiris and my new idea…
This great big shape came flying down at me on the trail. A bird. So close, at first I thought it’d fly right into me. But it didn’t hit me. Instead, it called out and flew into the trees to my left and perched there about 15 feet or so away from me. A hawk. We just watched each other for a while, a few minutes at least. Usually, I find that the birds I come across up close don’t really want me to take their photo, but this hawk didn’t care. Even after a few minutes of watching each other, it stayed patiently in the tree to let me take a blurry photo (below), and then flew away.
As I walked on, I saw the hawk flying overhead through the trees, and over the next few minutes and could hear it calling out. I could also hear another hawk replying from further away. I started wonder if I might have been by a nest or something, and maybe that was why the hawk flew down and me and stuck around. I don’t know, but I wondered.
A little side experience that I also liked… about 20 minutes later a deer also came charging up from the stream below, running right in front of me. We didn’t spend time looking at each other though. The deer was off and away, running up into the trees.
I wasn’t sure if I should write this post. To try and explain this encounter and what the hawk meant to me. What it meant to me is personal after-all, and I don’t expect it to mean much to anyone else. Also, it might seem silly to a lot of people, but I guess I don’t mind. The modern world likes to tell us that in our materialist world, these things just happen and really have no significance. And maybe they don’t rationally… but the world isn’t completely rational.
For me, in my own mind and imagination, these things always have meaning. On a personal level, I think everybody should pay attention and listen to these kind of experiences. When a hawk comes to you and hangs out for a bit while you’ve been thinking about Horus, and whether or not you should pursue a creative idea involving him… well, I think that is important.
Aristotle said, “Art completes what Nature cannot finish.” There is some truth there. But that completion cannot happen if we don’t listen to those personal messages that Nature is sending our way, no matter how subtle.
Maybe that hawk is just kinda saying “go for it kid. Why not?” And I agree, why not. It may take me some time to get to the idea, I’ve got so many other things I am working on, but I am excited to put Horus down on paper (even if Horus is really a falcon).
