“Vitality is zest, enthusiasm, fizzing like a vitamin in the psyche. Vitality is the inextinguishable life force, the sap-rising iridescence. Vitality is not necessarily correlated with age, and an eighty-year-old, drinking in vividness, can be elastic with vitality as a core inner strength. It is a key measure of psychological health, the mind's appetite for life and vigour, the vivid experience of being alive, playful and alert.”
Jay, Joanna and John discuss the ways in which vitality demonstrates itself — in the laughter of animals — including humans, but also bonobos, rats and dozens of other species — and in the ear-dazzling song of the tiny wren.
“This is undaunted gift” Jay says, before asking: “how much sheer magnificence can you pack into one tiny wren?”
“Birdsong seems to happen on the horizon of the human mind, just beyond the extent of our senses. Immanent but untranslatable — the dash — ! — the glimpse, the hint, the ellipsis. All birdsong is light, where light is both weight and sound, both brightness and joy. It exists in the place between.
Between sound and silence. Between earth and sky. Between visible and invisible. Between literal and metaphoric. Between seeing and dreaming. Between sight and insight. Between memory and longing, a synaesthesia of the soul in its pure vivacity.”
