Thursday, October 21, 2010

time to move...

"Anyone who has seen the martins and swallows in September, assembling on the telephone wires, twittering, making short flights singly and in groups over the open, stubbly fields, returning to form longer and even longer lines above the yellow verges of the lanes- the hundreds of individual birds merging and blending, in a mounting excitement, into swarms, and these swarms coming loosely and untidily together to create a great, unorganized flock, thick at the center and ragged at the edges, which breaks and re-forms continually like clouds or waves-until that moment when the greater part (but not all) of them know that the time has come: they are off, and have begun once more that great southward flight which many will not survive; anyone seeing this has seen at work the current that flows (among creatures who think of themselves primarily as part of a group and only secondarily, if at all, as individuals) to fuse them together and impel them into action without conscious thought or will: has seen at work the angel which drove the First Crusade into Antioch and drives the lemmings into the sea."
~Watership Down, Richard Adams

*this blog has nothing to do with the fact that we have been in the mind to relocate for nearly ten years now and are finally moving (ready or not), nor am i focusing on the many perils that may lie ahead in this new venture; i'm far too excited for that... but, that being said, this may very well be my favorite sentence of all time.

2 comments:

  1. I have to say that I have tried reading that very, very long run-on sentence 4 times already but keep getting lost in it. Would you please just tell me a paraphrase so I can comment on your blog? :)

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  2. try again. i love run-on sentences. that's why this one's my favorite.

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