Black Bird
Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Hunters in the Snow (Winter), 1565, oil on wood, 118 x 161 cm (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna)
In Pieter Brugel the Elder’s painting, Hunters in the Snow, a black bird flies over a frozen lake, in the same downward angle as the hill behind the trees. The contrast of this bird’s black body against the blue and white background pulls the viewer’s eyes to the bird and as the eyes follow the bird’s particular angle, the viewer experiences a movement in an otherwise static painting. Without the bird, the painting would appear to be a rather flat pastoral painting. Simply because a bird seems to be moving, sounds from other activities that are depicted in the painting bubble up in my imagination. The chatter of the people skating on the lakes, the crunching of the snow under the feet of the hunters, the exhausted panting of the dogs, the crackling of the fire next to the houses. The calm hollowness of winter air.
It’s surprising what a small detail can do. I ask what details or incremental changes in my life I am not noticing that enliven my personal landscape. It’s true that milestones or large changes drastically shift the direction of what I can only say are meanderings of my life. They are the ones that dump adrenaline into me, but once the large shift has occurred, life settles back again to its routine pretty quickly. Even when I am in the midst of going through the change, I find myself wishing that I could settle back down because it is too tiring to always be on the move. Chasing after large changes is an exhausting way of life. Periods of exhaustion dotted with periods of dullness.
In the constant searching for new milestones, we make large changes less significant than they actually are. One change happens and soon we are itching for another because the one before isn’t enough. Milestones actually don’t happen often. The spaces between milestones last longer than the momentary excitement or joy that each milestone might have on a person. In the weeks and months that occupy those spaces, there are still incremental changes that I believe must be celebrated, not for what they achieve necessarily, but because they make my landscape come alive. They are the black bird flying over my lakes.
When I recognize and celebrate the small changes, whether they are choices that I made or results of a natural cycle of things, that is when my life that can seem rote or stagnant at times can continue to feel as if it is always that winter day in Hunters in the Snow. Rosy cheeks after a spin on the ice, shining eyes at a day fully experienced, and a peaceful anticipation that comes with accepting that today will be no other day than this particular one.