Hoodle, Random Thoughts, Shadows

This post is assembled from notes scribbled on a small spiral-bound jot pad at odd moments of relative calm between recent downpours of strange events, flurries of problems and frenzies of repair and resolution. What this tempest has to do with the photo above is this. It is a view of the woody end of our yard, which I often watch from an outdoor table or, on blustery days, the back porch pictured in this odd Normaphoto:

In the upper terraces of those tall trees I have lately monitored the progress of an eyas. Eyasses are what falconers  call nestling hawks. There is a hawk's nest up there. You can see the woody end reflected behind the brilliant ball of light that precedes Norma and over an array of philosophical instruments I use to decode the universe from inside the back porch. It is a confusing spectacle and I will not refer to it again except when I need my field glasses.

Of course, I am leading up to something. Last week, hours after a visit to one of my two cardiologists, I was contacted with alarming news. Due to a compromise of personal security that I won't go into, my identity had been stolen. My attempt to file taxes was rejected by state and nation because someone had used my name, birthdate and social security number to file ahead of me. So I've spent the past five or six days doing hurried paperwork and making bewildering phone calls to faraway places with strange-sounding names. I have visited offices full of wonderfully helpful people who work behind bullet-proof plexiglass. This is how one reclaims one's legal identity. Think about it: two cardiologists; stolen identity. I am a man of my time!

From Barrie's Peter Pan: "Boy, why are you crying?"
          
                " I am crying because I can't get my shadow to stick on."

Here by the house, I notice daffodil shadows are held down by pebbles and pavers. And I hear the hawk from further out. She launches onto a majestic circle, calling her call --a sonorous "screeeeeeee!"-- and her shadow undulates over the green field. Her hysterical fledgling remains treed, flapping awkwardly from twig to topmost twig yelling, "Hoodle! Hoodle! Hoodle!" His shadow is fragmented, claimed by leaves and branches.

In this modern world, our documents and records comprise our shadows and, when they come unstuck, must be painfully sewn back onto our toes. I could go on but it would be the same as shouting "Hoodle!" all day. So I go out to the woody end and say: "Hoodle, don't cry boy. We'll both get through this and then...well, then we'll fly like Peter Pan."