i of the tyger

what a summer. a certain unrest has definitely been burning bright in the shadows of the night, not enough for me to talk about here, but still--I haven't been sleeping well.
Everyone should read Jonathan Franzen's Reflections piece in this week's New Yorker, called My Bird Problem. It gives a surprisingly sensitive and painfully accurate treatment of how birding can turn a self-centered, blase urbanite into a vulnerable, earnest Conservationist. The parts about feeling joy at the mere existence of birds resonated with me: "The California towhee generally, the whole species, reliably uniform in its plumage and habits, was like a friend whose energy and optimism had escaped the confines of a single body to animate roadsides and back yards across thousands of square miles. And there were six hundred and fifty other species that bred in the United States and Canada, a population so varied in look and habitat and behavior--kites, hummingbirds, shearwaters, snipe--that, taken as a whole, they were like a companion with an inexhaustibly rich personality."
Anyway, I can't provide a link here because the New Yorker won't let you see it on their site. But go get it. It's also funny. That is all.