“There is a time in life when you expect the world to be always full of new things. And then comes a day when you realise that is not how it will be at all. You see that life will become a thing made of holes. Absences. Losses. Things that were there and are no longer. And you realise, too, that you have to grow around and between the gaps, though you can put your hand out to where things were and feel that tense, shining dullness of the space where the memories are.”
"What I had just done was nothing like bird watching. It was more like gambling, through the stakes were infinitely bloodier. At its heart was a willed loss of control. You pour your heart, your skill, your very soul, into a thing - into training a hawk, learning the form of racing or the numbers in cards - then relinquish control over it. That is the hook. Once the dice rolls, the horse runs, the hawk leaves the fist, you open yourself to luck, and you cannot control the outcome. Yet everything that you have done until that moment persuades you that you might be lucky. The hawk might catch her quarry, the cards might fall perfectly, the horse make it first past the post. That little space of irresolution is a strange place to be. You feel safe because you are entirely at the world's mercy."
Reading H is for Hawk, I feel Macdonald has a special way with words just like a conductor has his way with musical notes. Her word assembles onto page so naturally, captivatingly so that I am left with my soul deeply etched. It cries when she talks about grief, it tastes freedom when she talks about redha (opening oneself to God's Mercy). She sees depth and meaning in the most mundane of objects - teaching me how subjectively one's eyes can see and the true power of reflection. Akin to a crash course in emotions, the self, history, literature and philosophy in one, it is a hard book, yet one that is definitely worthwhile.
