Connecting Dots

More evidence of strange things afoot:

I was checking my email, and the subject line on one was "Mortality".

The email directly above it was from the public library, informing me that a book was in that I'd reserved ages ago, one that Shelley (my sister-in-law, whose funeral is tomorrow) had recommended to me.

The title: "Disappearances".

And my Astrodienst horror-scope short-term forecast, from last April:

Valid during many months: This influence signifies encounters that cause various aspects of your life to be transformed. Most commonly, this transformation will take the form of disappearances of persons, circumstances or even possessions that you have become used to.

Mortality.
Disappearances.
Transformation.

And then there's that hummingbird, seemingly always present....

I was sitting outside today eating lunch under the hibiscus, and directly above my head heard an odd trilling song, one I'd not heard before. Without looking, without really knowing, something in me knew -- knew for certain -- that it was a hummingbird.

I sat very still, not wanting to disturb it. In slow motion I unwound myself from my chair so as to look backwards and up, and sure enough, about three feet above me, was a hummingbird perched on a limb, singing its tiny heart out.

My steps seem to be trailed by hummingbirds: they hover and bathe in the spray from the hose, buzz my noontime dining, attend to my outdoor suppers on the deck, in and out of tendrils of kiwi vines, of grapes vines.

They snatch insects mid-flight, gather nectar from crocosmia. I've never seen so many in a single summer. I have not planted anything to particularly attract them, and I'm no more attentive than I've ever been.

But still.

They're present in full-on iridescence, with a song that I couldn't hear until today, in a language I don't yet understand, but singing nonetheless.

I'm listening.