what may be
four birds and other monthly favourites
May was not the month I expected it would be. It was full of grief and joy, exhaustion and rest, distance and reconnection. A month of strange weather: spring snow, dramatic thunderstorms, and days under the sun. I’ve struggled to figure out how to write anything adequate about this month, to report on its events or make sense of its narrative. In this newsletter you will find enclosed:
a reflection on May in four bird anecdotes.
monthly favourites.
recommended further reading.
photos of mountains.
(a note before we begin - the cloudtopia newsletter is best viewed in a browser!)
i.
On a much needed break at home for the end of the semester, my cat is desperate to hunt the baby blue jay which has taken up residence in the back garden, and I have to drag her inside while she cries and cries. All day, blue jays fly overhead, hopping around from tree to tree, finding food to eat, shouting at us. One morning the fledgling falls down into a window well and must be rescued again. Beatrice and I watch the jays from the windows, transfixed as they go about their business in the evening, returning occasionally to feed the baby, a blue and grey sphere nestled on top of a tree stump, who seems to have no idea how many times it has already had to be rescued from danger.
ii.
On the first day of the month, I defended the first two years of my Ph.D work, and successfully was approved to continue onto the Ph.D register. The experience was intense; utterly terrifying but ultimately triumphant. I have now a clearer picture of what the path ahead of me looks like, and all the work I have still to do, but also a better sense of everything I have already accomplished and grown in. Two years behind me, two years to go.
On my walk to the university in the morning, I walked along the canal and checked on two moorhen nests which I had been observing in recent days. Built precariously from reeds and rushes, just floating on the surface of the water, the woven structures each held a nesting moorhen—a waterbird with dark feathers, massive yellow feet, and a characteristic bright red face—along with several tiny eggs. As I walked home later that day, my head spinning still thinking about all the discussion topics and questions that had come up during my defence presentation, I was amazed to see that one of the nests was now completely empty, and nearby, three tiny, fluffy black chicks darted through the water plants, so light that they could walk on top of leaves at the edge of the water without sinking in. They followed closely between two adult birds, who eventually lead the whole parade out into the water. Several days later I returned to walk along the waters’ edge and found them again, the chicks darting through the water and along the banks, always sticking close to one another. Further down, the second nest had also produced two chicks, tiny black balls of fluff which miraculously danced between water and land as they explored the expanse of the water before returning again to the safety of the dense plant growth at its edge.
iii.
At an ivy covered cafe, I ordered the biggest cold brew I could get my hands on to try to combat the jet lag. We spent the surprisingly sunny morning driving through memory, and I spotted cardinals and tanagers, scarlet feathers bright against trees. In the song “Casimir Pulaski Day”, Sufjan Stevens recounts the death of a childhood friend, “the great divide,” and the image of a cardinal striking the window. I had not known at the start of the month that I would be flying across the ocean to Ohio, that I would be watching red birds on the lawns of storybook houses in a neighbourhood I had not seen in years.
The next day in the cemetery I see a red-breasted robin, thought of in Ireland as a sign of a lost loved one’s presence. I am looking for signs in everything, tired and lost, and, still, struck with gratitude for time spent with family and the moments where we sit outside together and talk for hours and listen to the birds.
iv.
High up in the Rocky Mountains, late spring snows left the hiking trails covered in snow, ice, and mud, making the already rocky and steep terrain especially treacherous. On a mission to view four beautiful mountain lakes, we encountered numerous stellars’ jays, a particularly striking jay with a dark head and bright blue wings and tail, which would appear perched in pine trees above the trail. At the very top of our climb, after a long and difficult trek to Emerald Lake, a whole band of jays hopped around on the rocks and trees overlooking the dramatic landscape, speaking together as a chorus while we sat for a while to take in the incredible view.
Elsewhere in the national park, we encountered even more incredible and rare wildlife: massive, majestic herds of elk, two solitary moose, big horned sheep that had come down from the mountains to graze at the sheep lakes. Even though I knew that these animals lived in the area, it was still astonishing to get to see them in person and to take in the awesome might of wild creatures and open spaces. The skies and meadows and forests were full of birds and beasts, and despite the time of the year, snow covered the hill sides and high mountain roads.
During my time visiting the rocky mountains, I made progress with not only my 2026 goal to encounter nature, but also to visit more haunted places by going to one of the great haunted landmarks of north america, The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park. This site brings together a number of fascinating stories and hauntings: mountain cures in 19th century medicine; the role of tuberculosis in the colonisation and settlement of the american west; the writing of and hauntings within The Shining by Stephen King; the lost dream of steam-powered cars in the early 1900s. Today it is under construction, largely inaccessible to the public, and, according to a lot of online reviews, pretty overpriced, but I am glad to get to see it. Visiting the towns of the Colorado rockies will always feel like coming home to me, and in the morning we take the long route along the peak-to-peak highway, through mountain passes and strange old mining towns, and over the great continental divide. The mountain peaks and cozy villages at off-season ski resorts sing with the infinitely layered memory of my life growing up here and of the decades and centuries of haunted histories that shape the versions of them we see today. At the end of a long and exhausting month, sitting in the sun in the mountains is a dream, a rare moment of solace and real relaxation. Ten thousand feet into the sky, I can finally breathe.
may favourites!!
fragrance: strawberry jam - the seven virtues
Strawberry, pistachio, vanilla, and a subtle note of jasmine feature in this sweet, bright gourmand fragrance. I am often suspicious of fragrances labeled ‘gourmand’, and on paper I think I should hate this, but the jammy, nuttiness of this strawberry fragrance is surprisingly wonderful. It’s a perfect fun, light, and layer-able scent for early summer.
beverages: cold brew with basil and blueberry cold foam; fragolina de bosco and prosecco spritz; bear lake blend coffee from kind coffee in estes park, a nutty medium roast with notes of cherry; trader joe’s strawberry soda; a lovely glass of red wine enjoyed on a patio.
album of the month: Belle and Sebastian Write About Love
I dug out the vinyl copy of this record one evening before dinner. Released in 2010, this is one of my favourite albums in Belle & Sebastian’s vast catalogue, from the propulsive pop of “I Want the World to Stop” to the jazzier groove of Norah Jones feature “Little Lou, Ugly Jack, Prophet John”, the album is filled with bright soundscapes and a chorus of voices and instruments that construct a sonic world for the listener to inhabit. One of my long time favourite tracks is “I Can See Your Future”, a song which feels like sunlight breaking through a cloudy day and ends with the refrain that “forward’s the only way to go”. I find listening to this album nostalgic, reflective, and comforting. On another of my current favourite tracks, “The Ghost of Rockschool”, Stuart Murdoch sings:
“I’ve seen god in the sun, I’ve seen god in the street/god before bed and the promise of sleep/god in the puddles and the lane beside houses/I’ve seen god shining out from her reflection”
Write About Love seems to reflects this idea in a different way in each of its songs, finding new ways to tell stories about finding love, humour, beauty, and mystery in the mundane.
favourite book: House of Leaves1 by Mark Z. Danielewski
I’ve had this book on my reading list for years, and when I finally got around to it, I finished the entire 700 page text over two days as I sat in a big armchair with my cat and drank too much coffee. house of leaves is a novel about an academic manuscript about a documentary about a haunted house. It’s a genius work of postmodern literature, a horror masterpiece, and an uncanny work of experimental visual art all in one. The novel is filled with narrative layers, critical academic discussions, and linguistic puzzles, its exquisitely constructed and utterly unique structure mirrors the strange house at the centre of the whole story, one which measures a fraction of an inch more inside than it does outside, which contains geological samples older than the earth itself, which spirals out into endless hallways and impossible staircases.
It is a novel filled with echoes and distortions, from the sounds of voices in darkened corridors in the mysterious house to the overlapping, contradictory narrative voices found within and throughout the text. Footnotes and appendices come into conflict as different authors lay their claim on the ever spiraling story of the house. I found the experience of reading this text to be a thrilling, disorienting, and fascinating experience, and I’ve continued to read about it and think about its complex narrative and larger ideas about text, authorship, and readership since finishing it. In this(broad) direction, I’m also sharing a few of the articles I read this month that I found interesting and which I think continue to raise interesting points about reading, readership, and how we think about texts in an era where booktok controversies and AI generated fiction dominate many conversations about books.
Common Readers: BookTok’s critical values by Selen Ozturk for The Point
“But when relatability is fiction’s primary metric of value, the algorithm shifts. The author becomes the provider of a service (the book) serving the emotional needs of the reader (who the protagonist reflects if the book is good).”
Here’s one for all the haters and the losers: RF Kuang’s Yellowface, reviewed, from the Leave it (un)read substack
“There is the DNA of quite a few decent novels in Yellowface– if only Kuang could stop clapping back at her haters long enough to pick one.”
Trevor Paglen and Holly Herndon on Making Art with AI and What the Discourse Is Missing interview for Totei by Max Read
“Slop is in the eye of the beholder, I guess.”
‘SEE THE WEB OF THE WORLD’: THE (HYPER)TEXTUAL PLAGIARISM IN JOYCE’S FINNEGANS WAKE AND NABOKOV’S PALE FIRE by Annalisa Volpone, published in volume III of the Nabokov Online Journal
“both Nabokov and Joyce challenge the very nature of the book as a privileged medium for writing, prefiguring in some way the postmodern notion of literature: a proliferation of textual data, a con-fusion of texts that can be read, manipulated, parasitized and endlessly reproduced in a flexible unit-oriented writing space.”
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may green be the grass u walk on, may blue be the skies above you, may pure be the joys that surround u, may true be the hearts that love u xoxo
-isobel
had to add a hyperlink to ensure that house appears correctly here! The link takes you to a forum about the novel, filled with interesting discussion threads from the years after the book was published in 2001 that try to unravel its many mysteries and complexities. very interesting to click through some of the threads if you have read this book + are interested.