Solid Air

Earlier in the year I was in the kitchen, when there was an urgent tapping on the window. Looking up, I expected to see my partner, whose house key decides periodically not to cooperate with the front door lock (or it might even have been bloody Greta Garbo again [1]), but there was no-one there. Spooky!

A minute later, there it was again. This time, I spotted the tapper: a Blue Tit was perched at the edge of the window, scrutinising the kitchen interior with that revved-up, robotically twitchy swivelling of the head that they do. For a week or two afterwards it would turn up regularly, first at one of the kitchen windows, then at the other, give everything a rapid once-over and a few taps on the glass, then fly off. Whether it was frustrated by the glass blocking access to the kitchen as a potential all-mod-cons apartment and larder or, more prosaically, gathering spider-web for an actual nest somewhere nearby, I'm not sure.

Then just yesterday, I was sitting quietly reading in this back room where I "work" these days, when there was a series of muffled thuds on the French windows (or les portes-fenêtres if you happen to be French). When I looked outside to see what was going on, I could see a dazed-looking squirrel backing away from a confrontation with its hard-headed, identical rival, who seemed to know and counter its every move, and presumably could also be seen backing away into the gloomy ghost garden inside my room. Outcome: a headache-inducing draw.

I am intrigued by the inability of creatures ranging in size and intelligence from flies to pigeons and even the more stupid cats to cope with the existence of glass windows. If a fly gets into the room, it will immediately make for the window, attempt to fly through it, then spend the rest of its short life trying to puzzle out why the air has become impassably dense, like a tiny mime with six hands. In late summer, the windowsills bear the dried-out husks of the fallen: bold but baffled flies who tried and failed to answer the riddle and pass on through to the other side.

On the outside of the glass, however, smarter spiders diligently rebuild and refine the webs that get wiped away periodically by the window-cleaner, having somehow understood that these zones of solid air make for a good trap: even the biggest flies that can crash through a web will smack into the glass and rebound, stunned, into the sticky mesh. It's amazing to watch how quickly an apparently comatose spider can snap into action and skate across a web to paralyze and wrap its next meal. Although it must be tantalising for them to see a plump fly repeatedly banging its head against the other side of that thin, invisible barrier; within reach but, according to some unfathomable, unbreachable law of the spiderverse, untouchable.

All of which poses one of those interesting-but-unanswerable questions. In an infinite universe, what are the chances that we, too, are baffled by, or unaware of the existence of structures or entities we are simply not equipped to detect or understand? We may not really understand gravity, but it is clearly there, and measurable. Speculation aside, our intelligence and awareness cannot push very far, if at all, beyond the limits imposed by our bodies and sensory apparatus. So I wonder: do we, too, invariably end up as detritus on some cosmic windowsill, having repeatedly tried and failed to answer the riddle and pass on through to the other side?

Heh. Just my Thought for the Day... Cue up "Don't Fear the Reaper"...

Once there was a way...

1. Allusion to a classic Pete and Dud sketch.

(BTW, if you don't know it, the song "Solid Air" by John Martyn is worth a listen (as is the whole album of the same name). An all-time favourite around here. It's true, as my friend Dave complains, that, as with the other stand-out song on the album, "May You Never", JM's songs can be simple and unvarying – they lack a middle eight, etc. – but this has never bothered me, I have to say. Best consumed very late at night, immobile on someone's floor, very stoned...).