J A Baker Quotes

A home isn’t always the house we live in. It’s also the people we choose to surround ourselves with. You may not live on the island, but you can’t tell me it’s not your home. Your bubble, Mr. Baker. It’s been popped. Why would you allow it to grow around you again?

I'm afraid I don't have magic." "You do, Mr. Baker. Arthur told me that there can be magic in the ordinary.

Wandering flushes a glory that fades with arrival.

I have cookies.” “Cookies?” My brows rose. “Yeah, and I made them. I’m quite the baker.” For some reason, I couldn’t picture that. “You baked cookies?” “I bake a lot of things, and I’m sure you’re dying to know all about those things. But tonight, it was chocolate and walnut cookies. They are the shit if I do say so myself.

I have always longed to be part of the outward life, to be out there at the edge of things, to let the human taint wash away in emptiness and silence as the fox sloughs his smell into the cold unworldliness of water; to return to town a stranger. Wandering flushes a glory that fades with arrival.

There is no mysterious essence we can call a 'place'. Place is change. It is motion killed by the mind, and preserved in the amber of memory.

Mr. Baker,” Lucy said sweetly. “Can I get you something to drink? Juice, perhaps? Tea?” He leaned forward and dropped his voice. “The blood of a baby born in a cemetery under a full moon?” “Lucy,” Mr. Parnassus warned. Lucy stared at Linus. “Whatever you want, I can give you,” he whispered.

There’s music everywhere, Mr. Baker. You just have to learn to listen for it.

Are you Mr. Baker? If you are, we've been expecting you. If not, you're trespassing. And you should leave before I bury you here in my garden. No one would ever know because the roots would eat your entrails and bones. I think. I've never buried anyone before. It would be a learning experience for the both of us!

If you’re honest all the time for ten years, but then tell one lie, those ten years have meant nothing. Your integrity is lost.

Terror seeks out the odd, and the sick, and the lost.

For an hour, till greyness covered all, the water shone like milk and mother-of-pearl. The sea breathed quietly, like a sleeping dog.

We are the killers. We stink of death. We carry it with us. It sticks to us like frost. We cannot tear it away.

Cold air rises from the ground as the sun goes down.  The eye-burning clarity of the light intensifies. The southern rim of the sky glows to a deeper blue, to pale violet, to purple, then thins to grey.  Slowly the wind falls, and the still air begins to freeze.  The solid eastern ridge is black; it has a bloom on it like the dust on the skin of a grape.  The west flares briefly.  The long, cold amber of the afterglow casts clear black lunar shadows.  There is an animal mystery in the light that sets upon the fields like a frozen muscle that will flex and wake at sunrise.

Approach him across open ground with a steady unfaltering movement. Let your shape grow in size but do not alter its outline. Never hide yourself unless concealment is complete. Be alone. Shun the furtive oddity of man, cringe from the hostile eyes of farms. Learn to fear. To share fear is the greatest bond of all. The hunter must become the thing he hunts.

Whatever is destroyed, the act of destruction does not vary much. Beauty if vapour from the pit of death.

Fear releases power. Man might be more tolerable, less fractious and smug, if he had more to fear. I do not mean fear of the intangible, the suffocation of the introvert, but physical fear, cold sweating fear for one's life, fear of the unseen menacing beast, imminent, bristly, tusked and terrible, ravening for one's own hot saline blood.

Binoculars, and a hawk-like vigilance, reduce the disadvantage of myopic human vision.

No pain, no death, is more terrible to a wild creature than its fear of man.

Detailed landscapes are tedious. One part of England is superficially so much like another. The differences are subtle, coloured by love.

But Linus Baker was a soft man with a heart longing for home.

Lucy and Talia, you are assigned to Mr. Baker.” Lucy and Talia turned their heads slowly in unison, matching smiles on their faces that sent a cold chill down Linus’s spine. He sputtered. “Perhaps we should—I mean, there’s really no need for—I think we should—oh dear.

The hardest thing of all to see is what is really there. Books about birds show pictures of the peregrine, and the text is full of information. Large and isolated in the gleaming whiteness of the page, the hawk stares back at you, bold, statuesque, brightly coloured. But when you have shut the book, you will never see that bird again. Compared with the close and static image, the reality will seem dull and disappointing. The living bird will never be so large, so shiny-bright. It will be deep in landscape, and always sinking farther back, always at the point of being lost. Pictures are waxworks beside the passionate mobility of the living bird.

Arthur says that we should always make time for the things we like,” Talia said. “If we don’t, we might forget how to be happy. Are you not happy, Mr. Baker?

To see children who aren’t wanted by anyone be allowed to prosper. You know as well as I do that the term orphanage is a misnomer, Mr. Baker. No one comes here looking to adopt.

Who wants to be normal when you can be spectacular?

We liked each other so much we skipped marriage, and went straight to the divorce.

For a bird, there are only two sorts of bird: their own sort, and those that are dangerous. No others exist. The rest are just harmless objects, like stones, or trees, or men when they are dead.

No pain, no death, is more terrible to a wild creature than its fear of man. A red-throated diver, sodden and obscene with oil, able to move only its head, will push itself out from the sea-wall with its bill if you reach down to it as it floats like a log in the tide. A poisoned crow, gaping and helplessly floundering in the grass, bright yellow foam bubbling from its throat, will dash itself up again and again on to the descending wall of air, if you try to catch it. A rabbit, inflated and foul with myxomatosis, just a twitching pulse beating in a bladder of bones and fur, will feel the vibration of your footstep and will look for you with bulging, sightless eyes. Then it will drag itself away into a bush, trembling with fear. We are the killers. We stink of death. We carry it with us. It sticks to us like frost. We cannot tear it away.

And as for girls, his mother needn’t have worried. By then, Linus had already noticed how his skin had tingled when his seventeen-year-old neighbor, Timmy Wellington, mowed the lawn without his shirt on. No, girls weren’t going to bring about Linus Baker’s downfall.

Because it wasn't where I belonged" "Where do you belong, Linus?" And with the last of his courage, Linus Baker said, "Here. With you. If you'll have me. Ask me again, please. I beg you, ask me to stay again

the thought of being lonely didn't even cross Linus Baker's mind. After all, there were people with far less than what he had. There was a roof over his head and rabbit food in his belly, and his pajamas were monogrammed.

Underneath the photograph, in blocky letters, was a name. LUCY. “A boy named Lucy,” Linus said. “That’s certainly a first. I wonder why they chose … the name … Lucy…” The last word came out choked. There, written in clear English, was exactly the reason why. The file read: NAME: LUCIFER (NICKNAME LUCY) AGE: SIX YEARS, SIX MONTHS, SIX DAYS (AT TIME OF THIS REPORT) HAIR: BLACK EYE COLOR: BLUE/RED MOTHER: UNKNOWN (BELIEVED DECEASED) FATHER: THE DEVIL SPECIES OF MAGICAL YOUTH: ANTICHRIST Linus Baker fainted dead away.

Predators overcome their prey by the exploitation of weakness rather than by superior power.

The hardest thing of all to see is what is really there.

As Katie J. M. Baker observed in her Jezebel article, “In Missoula…drunk guys who may have ‘made mistakes’ nearly always get the benefit of the doubt. Drunk girls, however, do not.

wE'rE aLL DePrEsSeD aNd sUiCiDaL, wE'rE jUsT aLL iNdENiAL

Life, Linus Baker knew, came down to what we made from it.

It’s not only this village, Mr. Baker. Just because you don’t experience prejudice in your everyday doesn’t stop it from existing for the rest of us.

Linus Baker sintió por Arthur Parnassus un amor más profundo del que habría podido expresar con palabras.

Life, Linus Baker knew, came down to what we made from it. It was about the choices, both big and small.

It is perhaps the perverse fate of a deeply private person to find that the thing he or she wishes most to withhold or deems least important, becomes the stuff of widest speculation.

Mr. Baker,” Lucy said sweetly. “Can I get you something to drink? Juice, perhaps? Tea?” He leaned forward and dropped his voice. “The blood of a baby born in a cemetery under a full moon?

You’re very dear, Linus Baker. There’s a surface to you that’s hard but cracked. Dig a little deeper, and there is all this life teeming wildly. It’s a conundrum.” He flushed. “I don’t know about all that.

Mrs. Klapper scoffed. "Perhaps you should consider making time, Mr. Baker. Being alone at your age isn't healthy. I'd hate to think of what would happen if you were to blow your brains out. It'd hurt the resale value of the whole neighborhood." "I'm not depressed!" She looked him up and down. "You aren't? Why on earth not?

Linus Baker allowed himself to be selfish. Just this once. He took Arthur’s hand and stood slowly as Nat told him to smile even though his heart was breaking. Arthur pulled him close, and they began to sway back and forth. “Smile and maybe tomorrow,” Arthur whispered in his ear. “You’ll see the sun come shining through for you.

There is plenty of magic in you. You are magic… for me.” He reached up and touched her cheek, making Arleta’s knees go weak and nearly buckle under her weight. “And I will be yours whether or not you want me… until I am no more.

She blinked owlishly at him. “Yes. I am. I’m Talia.” She bent over and picked up a small shovel that had been laying on the grass next to her. “Are you Mr. Baker? If you are, we’ve been expecting you. If not, you’re trespassing, and you should leave before I bury you here in my garden. No one would ever know because the roots would eat your entrails and bones.” She frowned again. “I think. I’ve never buried anyone before. It would be a learning experience for the both of us.

We get trapped in our own little bubbles, and even though the world is a wide and mysterious place, our bubbles keep us safe from that. To our detriment.” She sighed. “But it’s so easy because there’s always something soothing about routine. Day in and day out, it’s always the same. When we’re shaken from that, when that bubble bursts, it can be hard to understand all that we’ve missed. We might even fear it. Some of us even fight to try and get it back. I don’t know that I would fight for it, but I did exist in a bubble.” She smiled ruefully. “Thank goodness you popped it.” (…) “A home isn’t always the house we live in. It’s also the people we choose to surround ourselves with. You may not live on the island, but you can’t tell me it’s not your home. Your bubble, Mr. Baker. It’s been popped. Why would you allow it to grow around you again?

There seems to be a story that you keep telling yourself, and I understand… it has served you for some time. It was real. It kept you safe. But you’ve outgrown that tale, and now it’s holding you back from becoming who you are really meant to be.

Farms are well ordered, prosperous, but a fragrance of neglect still lingers, like a ghost of fallen grass. There is always a sense of loss, a feeling of being forgotten. There is nothing else here; no castles, no ancient monuments, no hills like green clouds. It is just a curve of the earth, a rawness of winter fields. Dim, flat, desolate lands that cauterize all sorrow.

If one were to ask if Linus Baker was lonely, he would have scrunched up his face in surprise. The thought would be foreign, almost shocking. And though the smallest of lies hurt his head and made his stomach twist, there was a chance he would still say no, even though he was, and almost desperately so. And maybe part of him would believe it. He'd accepted long ago that some people, no matter how good their heart was or how much love they had to give, would always be alone. It was their lot in life, and Linus had figured out, at the age of twenty-seven, that it seemed to be that way for him. Oh, there was no specific event that brought along this line of thinking. It was just that he felt. . . dimmer than others. Like he was faded in a crystal-clear world. He wasn't meant to be seen.

She stopped and turned her face toward the sky. “There’s music everywhere, Mr. Baker. You just have to learn to listen for it.” He followed her gaze. Above them, trees swayed, the wind rustling through the leaves. Branches creaked. Birds called. He thought he heard the chatter of squirrels. And underneath it all, the song of the ocean, waves against the shore, the scent of salt heavy in the air.

Maureen O'Brien's Bakery Lingo: A Partial Glossary • 9 donuts - A shutout • 2 croissants - A full moon • 3 croissants - A ménage à trois • 4 bear claws - Full smokey • 2 bear claws - Half smokey • The last one of any item - The gift of the Magi • A baker's dozen of doughnut holes - a PG-13 • Anything in the unlikely quantity of 36 or a lot of something - A Wu-Tang • Blueberry muffin - Chubby Checker • Bran muffin - Warren G the regulator • Any customer who left no tip - A libertarian • Any customer who only tipped the coins from their change - A couch shaker • Any person who requested a substitution - Master and demander • Any person who requested TWO substitutions - Demander in chief • Any person who requested MORE than two substitutions - The new executive chef and finally.... • Any vegan customer - A Morrissey

Mr. Parnassus relaxed again. “No. I don’t think you did. And how could you have known? You don’t know him. You don’t know us. You have the files, but they only tell you the basics, I’m sure. Mr. Baker, what’s written in those files are nothing but bones, and we are more than just our bones, are we not?

I have always longed to be a part of the outward life, to be out there at the edge of things, to let the human taint wash away in emptiness and silence as the fox sloughs his smell into the cold unworldliness of water; to return to the town as a stranger. Wandering flushes a glory that fades with arrival.

Mrs. Klapper scoffed. “Perhaps you should consider making time, Mr. Baker. Being alone at your age isn’t healthy. I’d hate to think of what would happen if you were to blow your brains out. It’d hurt the resale value of the whole neighborhood.” “I’m not depressed!” She looked him up and down. “You aren’t? Why on earth not?

The first bird I searched for was the nightjar, which used to nest in the valley. Its song is like the sound of a stream of wine spilling from a height into a deep and booming cask. It is an odorous sound, with a bouquet that rises to the quiet sky. In the glare of day it would seem thinner and drier, but dusk mellows it and gives it vintage. If a song could smell, this song would smell of crushed grapes and almonds and dark wood. The sound spills out, and none of it is lost. The whole wood brims with it.

Wherever he goes, this winter, I will follow him. I will share the fear, and the exaltation, and the boredom, of the hunting life. I will follow him till my predatory human shape no longer darkens in terror the shaken kaleidoscope of colour that stains the deep fovea of his brilliant eye. My pagan head shall sink into the winter land, and there be purified.

There’s music everywhere, Mr. Baker. You just have to learn to listen

And do you enjoy your work, Mr. Baker?” “I’m good at it.” “That’s not what I asked.” “It’s the same thing.

I’m afraid I don’t have magic.” “You do, Mr. Baker. Arthur told me that there can be magic in the ordinary.

Your bubble, Mr. Baker. It’s been popped. Why would you allow it to grow around you again?

There's music everywhere, Mr Baker. You just have to learn to listen

Linus Baker said, “You’re a phoenix.” “I am,” Arthur said simply. “And I believe I’m the last of my kind. I never knew my parents. I’ve never met anyone else like me.

You are Linus Baker, aren’t you?” He hoped so, because he didn’t know how to be anyone else. “I am.

Blood-red! What a useless adjective that is. Nothing is as beautifully , richly red as flowing blood on snow.It is strange that the eye can love what the mind and body hate.

I swooped through leicestershires of swift green light. A dazzling wetness of green fields irrigated the windswept eye.

The hawkless valley bloomed with the soft voices of the waking owls.

Weak people revenge Strong people forgive Intelligent people ignore Anon.

Muslim store clerks should sell alcohol and pork. Christian bakers should bake gay wedding cakes. Everyone should do their fucking job.

No es mi hogar —reconoció Linus en voz baja—. Yo vivo en la ciudad. Helen soltó un resoplido. —Nuestro hogar no es siempre la casa donde residimos. Son también las personas con las que elegimos convivir. Aunque no resida usted en la isla, no me venga con que no es su hogar. Su burbuja, señor Baker, ha estallado. ¿Por qué quiere que se forme otra en torno a usted?

The valley sinks into mist, and the yellow orbital ring of the horizon closes over the glaring cornea of the sun. The eastern ridge blooms purple, then fades to inimical black. The earth exhales into the cold dusk. Frost forms in hollows shaded from the afterglow. Owls wake and call. The first stars hover and drift down. Like a roosting hawk, I listen to the silence and gaze into the dark.

It is a good life, a seal's, here in these shallow waters. Like the lives of so many air and water creatures, it seems a better one than ours. We have no element. Nothing sustains us when we fall.

This is now a different place from what it was two hours ago. There is no mysterious essence we can call a 'place'. Place is change. It is motion killed by the mind, and preserved in the amber of memory.

Arthur sagt, für die Dinge, die man gerne macht, sollte man sich immer Zeit nehmen", verkündete Talia. "Wenn wir das nicht tun, vergessen wir vielleicht, wie man glücklich ist. Sind Sie nicht glücklich, Mr. Baker?

Oh dear,” Linus Baker said, wiping the sweat from his brow. “This is most unusual.” That was an understatement. He watched in rapt wonder as an eleven-year-old girl named Daisy levitated blocks of wood high above her head.

To share fear is the greatest bond of all. The hunter must become the thing he hunts. What is, is now, must have the quivering intensity of an arrow thudding into a tree. Yesterday is dim and monochrome. A week ago you were not born.

Mr. Parnassus pulled the book back as he closed it. “No one knows, Mr. Baker. There are mysteries that may never be solved, no matter how hard we try. And if we spend too long trying to solve them, we may miss what’s right in front of us.

He’s six years old.” “He proclaimed himself to be hellfire and darkness when he threatened me!” Mr. Parnassus chuckled. “It was his way of saying hello. He’s got a morbid sense of humor for one so young. It’s endearing once you get used to it.” Linus gaped at him. Mr. Parnassus sighed as he leaned forward. “Look, Mr. Baker. I know it’s—a lot to swallow, but I’ve had Lucy for a year. There were plans to … well. Let’s just say this was a last resort. Regardless of his parentage, he is a child.

The peregrine’s view of the land is like the yachtsman’s view of the shore as he sails into the long estuaries. A wake of water recedes behind him, the wake of the pierced horizon glides back on either side. Like the seafarer, the peregrine lives in a pouring-away world of no attachment, a world of wakes and tilting, of sinking planes of land and water. We who are anchored and earthbound cannot envisage this freedom of the eye. The peregrine sees and remembers patterns we do not know exist: the neat squares of orchard and woodland, the endlessly varying quadrilateral shapes of fields. He finds his way across the land by a succession of remembered symmetries. But what does he understand? Does he really ‘know’ that an object that increases in size is moving towards him? Or is it that he believes in the size he sees, so that a distant man is too small to be frightening but a man near is a man huge and therefore terrifying? He may live in a world of endless pulsations, of objects forever contracting or dilating in size. Aimed at a distant bird, a flutter of white wings, he may feel – as it spreads out beneath him like a stain of white – that he can never fail to strike. Everything he is has been evolved to link the targeting eye to the striking talon.

Arthur says that we should always make time for the things we like,” Talia said. “If we don’t, we might forget how to be happy. Are you not happy, Mr. Baker?” “I’m perfectly happy.” “You’re not happy being round,” Phee said. “So you can’t be perfectly happy.

Does he always talk like that?” David whisper-shouted to Arthur. “Yes,” Arthur said as Linus jabbed him with an elbow. “I happen to admire it when he does, but then I’m very partial when it comes to Linus Baker, including his pearls of wisdom.” “I’m like an oyster,” Linus said proudly. “Might not look like much, but open me up and there’s hidden treasure within.” He frowned. “Is it me, or did that not sound as complimentary as I thought it would?” “I would care for you even if you were an oyster,” Arthur promised him.

I can,” Linus agreed. “One doesn’t often meet the Antichrist.” Mr. Parnassus looked at him sharply. “We don’t use that word here. I understand that you have a job to do, Mr. Baker, but I am the master of this house, and you will abide by my rules. Is that clear?

home isn’t always the house we live in. It’s also the people we choose to surround ourselves with. You may not live on the island, but you can’t tell me it’s not your home. Your bubble, Mr. Baker. It’s been popped. Why would you allow it to grow around you again?

A home isn't always the house we live in. It's also the people we choose to surround ourselves with. You may not live on the island, but you can't tell me it's not your home. Your bubble, Mr. Baker. It's been popped. Why would you allow it to grow around you again?

It is an effort to descend down the hand-holds of memory to the plain beneath, to recall the lost future, the dusk hovering above the sunken cities, the dim western world of fallen light and broken skies. My life is here, where soon the larks will sing again, and there is a hawk above. One wishes only to go forward, deeper into the summer land, journeying from lark-song to lark-song, passing through the dark realm of the owls, the fox-holdings, the badger-shires, out into the brilliant winter dominion, the sea-bleak world of the hawks.

Linus Baker was not a fool. He prided himself in that regard. He was well aware of his limitations as a human being. When it was dark, he preferred to be locked safely inside his house, wearing his monogrammed pajamas, a record playing on the Victrola, holding a warm drink in his hands. That being said, Calliope was essentially his only friend in the entire world. So when he climbed out of the car, rocks crunching under his feet in the driveway, it was because he understood that sometimes, one had to do unsavory things for those one cared about.

During World War II, a secret apartment in London was maintained by the office of the Special Operations Executive. Within it, operatives created false documents and designed elaborate disguises for use by British undercover agents. The apartment was located at number 64 Baker Street.

Arthur arched an eyebrow. "Someone like me?" "You know what I mean." "Then why can't you say it?" Linus's chest hitched. "A magical creature." "Yes." "Perhaps the rarest of them all." "So it would seem." "You're . . ." "Say it. Please. Let me hear you say it. I want to hear it from you." [...] Linus Baker said, "You're a pheonix.

In addition to denial and reaction formation, a third defense mechanism, identification with the aggressor, was also at play. This occurred when the children took the fear of the alienating parent and turned it into an allegiance with that parent against the targeted parent. In this way the child transformed him or herself from a victim to a victimizer.

While her moment-to-moment experiences may have been torturous, Gladys was still able to complete tasks. For instance, she could show up for work on time, go grocery shopping, and remember to water the plants. Therefore, if someone’s life could be judged solely by her daily agenda, Gladys Baker would have appeared quite unspectacular. Yet it was how she experienced and reacted to the string of events that made her different.

It’s not only this village, Mr. Baker. Just because you don’t experience prejudice in your everyday doesn’t stop it from existing for the rest of us.” SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING, the sign on the bus had read. And everywhere, really, wasn’t it? More and more lately. On buses. In newspapers. Billboards. Radio ads. Why, he’d even seen the words printed on a grocery bag of all places. “No,” he said slowly. “I don’t suppose it does.

Underneath the photograph, in blocky letters, was a name. LUCY. “A boy named Lucy,” Linus said. “That’s certainly a first. I wonder why they chose … the name … Lucy…” The last word came out choked. There, written in clear English, was exactly the reason why. The file read: NAME: LUCIFER (NICKNAME LUCY) AGE: SIX YEARS, SIX MONTHS, SIX DAYS (AT TIME OF THIS REPORT) HAIR: BLACK EYE COLOR: BLUE/RED MOTHER: UNKNOWN (BELIEVED DECEASED) FATHER: THE DEVIL SPECIES OF MAGICAL YOUTH: ANTICHRIST Linus Baker fainted dead away.

Why have you never seen the ocean?" Phee asked as Linus stared in horror at Lucy. "It's always there. It never goes anywhere. It's too big to move." [. . .] "I've just...I've never had time," Linus said, feeling dizzy. "I-too many responsibilities. I have an important job and-" Theodore attacked the meat Ms. Chapelwhite had set on his plate growling low in his throat. "Arthur says that we should always make time for the things we like," Talia said. "If we don't, we might forget how to be happy. Are you not happy, Mr. Baker?

They were waiting for him as he reached the house in the middle of the trees. Talia and Phee. Sal, Theodore, Chauncey, and Lucy. Zoe, the flowers in her hair green and gold. And Arthur, of course. Always Arthur. They held a sign out in front of them, a long roll of paper with painted words that read: WE’LL MISS YOU, MR. BAKER!!! There were handprints on it. Little ones for Talia and Phee and Lucy. A bigger one for Sal. A line that he thought came from Chauncey’s tentacles. And a drip of paint that looked like claws from Theodore

This was my first peregrine. I have seen many since then, but none has excelled it for speed and fire of spirit. For ten years I spent all my winters searching for that restless brilliance, for the sudden passion and violence that peregrines flush from the sky. For ten years I have been looking upward for that cloud-biting anchor shape, that crossbow flinging through the air. The eye becomes insatiable for hawks. It clicks towards them with ecstatic fury, just as the hawk’s eye swings and dilates to the luring food-shapes of gull and pigeons.

Mr. Baker?” she asked innocently. “Wouldn’t you like something more than just the salad?” “No,” he said. “Thank you. I’m quite fine.” She hummed under her breath. “You sure? A man of your size can’t live on rabbit food alone.” “Talia,” Mr. Parnassus said. “Leave Mr. Baker—” “It’s because of my size,” Linus interjected, not wanting someone to speak for him again. He was in charge here, after all. And the sooner they knew that, the better. “What’s wrong with your size?” Talia asked. He flushed. “There’s too much of it.” She frowned. “There’s nothing wrong with being round.” He stabbed a tomato. “I’m not—” “I’m round.

I found myself crouching over the kill, like a mantling hawk. My eyes turned quickly about, alert for the walking heads of men. Unconsciously I was imitating the movements of a hawk, as in some primitive ritual; the hunter becoming the thing he hunts. I looked into the wood. In a lair of shadow the peregrine was crouching, watching me, gripping the neck of a dead branch. We live, in these days in the open, the same ecstatic fearful life. We shun men. We hate their suddenly uplifted arms, the insanity of their flailing gestures, their erratic scissoring gait, their aimless stumbling ways, the tombstone whiteness of their faces.

Bar-tailed godwits flying with curlew, with knot, with plover; seldom alone, seldom settling; snuffling eccentrics; long-nosed, loud-calling sea-rejoicers; their call a snorting, sneezing, mewing, spitting bark. Their thin upcurved bills turn, their heads turn, their shoulders and whole bodies turn, their wings waggle. They flourish their rococo flight above the surging water. Screaming gulls corkscrewing high under cloud. Islands blazing with birds. A peregrine rising and falling. Godwits ricocheting across water, tumbling, towering. A peregrine following, swooping, clutching. Godwit and peregrine darting, dodging; stitching land and water with flickering shuttle. Godwit climbing, dwindling, tiny, gone: peregrine diving, perching, panting, beaten.