Peregrinate...

Sometimes the keeda in my head is a word. This morning at the Toastmasters meeting that I attended, the word of the day was peregrinate. It won’t leave my head, has been playing on loop like a broken vinyl and not like it’s the first time I heard it.

My earliest memory of the word is Robert Kincaid saying “I am the highway and the peregrine and all the sails that ever went to sea” to Francesca Johnson during one of their deliciously long sessions, described thus: “The leopard swept over her, again and again and yet again, like a long prairie wind, and rolling beneath him, she rode on that wind like some temple virgin towards the sweet, compliant fires marking the soft curve of oblivion”.

Leopard didn’t stay but peregrine falcon did and is back with a vengeance today. The word "peregrine" means "wanderer" or "pilgrim”. This post is a meandering into my rabid mind, why does this appeal so much to me! After all peregrine, aubergine sound almost alike and the poor vegetable doesn’t beleaguer the duffer head, like ever. Ok so it’s not the consonance.

It is the visions that the word conjures, of the majestic hunter that the falcon is soaring above the skies, free and powerful. A terrible attempt at Freudian interpretation here, if indeed he had to, I’m sure he’d find a phallic association, kinky fart that he was.

The Peregrine Falcon is a very fast flier, and may reach speeds of 320 km/h (200 mph) as it drops toward its prey.

I like that. It’s fast and furious, businesslike, calculating and precise. But this ain’t it.

What appeals most is not the bird or the word but how it was used by Robert Kincaid to describe himself, offering it almost like an apology to Francesca and telling her that he was here, now and will be gone the next. For those of you who have read the Bridges of Madison County know that this was the greatest fallacy of the book.

He writes her a letter years later which reads thus: “I live with dust on my heart. That's about as well as I can put it. There were women before you, a few, but none after. I made no conscious pledge to celibacy; I'm just not interested.

I once watched a Canada goose whose mate had been shot by hunters. They mate for life, you know. The gander circled the pond for days, and more days after that. When I last saw him, he was swimming alone through the wild rice, still looking. I suppose that analogy is a little too obvious for literary tastes, but it's pretty much the way I feel.”

Technically I should now hook up on Canada geese after the bloody leopard and the falcon but no… peregrine stays and soars.

Maybe it echoes the wanderlust in my soul that although builds nests, seeks to peregrinate… all the time!