Saturday, May 25, 2019 — 4:06a.m.

Who wouldn’t sleep with the bedroom window flung wide open, given the present Pacific Northwest cool and breezy weather? Of course one risks waking to the chatter of what must be a thousand swallows seeking tiny flying things that for reasons of instinct fly in the morning darkness seeking, I suppose, even smaller stuff upon which to satisfy the need to survive. I’m not sure about what small, winged stuff seeks; only about the swallow chatter that woke me. I meant then to make my coffee and turn to the subject of instinct, and how limited that notion is among humans, and how nearly sorry I am for that—given the overall nature of said beings but rather, I got captured by this question:

“Who “flings” windows open?”

Our window was lifted, not flung. So, before approaching the Thought that drew me from the bed an hour earlier than usual, I’m following a distraction: an image. A window. Flung. Surely the term derives from windows of ages past; long and narrow, leaded, likely. I picture those of English castles, high, and hinged on a long side, latched by a brass or iron rotating handle on the other, and ready to be flung open by someone being pursued or in a hurry to dump a chamber pot. I found a Flung phrase in Arthur Conan Doyle’s Adventure IX, “Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb,” when the hero, using proper English, said,

“‘I was recalled to myself by a frantic plucking at my wrist, and I found myself lying upon the stone floor of a narrow corridor, while a woman bent over me and tugged at me with her left hand, while she held a candle in her right.  . . .’

“‘Come! come!’ She cried breathlessly. ‘They will be here in a moment. They will see that you are not there. Oh do not waste the so-precious time, but come!’”

“This time, at least, I did not scorn her advice (Whew—finally, a woman listened to). I staggered to my feet and ran with her along the corridor and down a winding stair. The latter led to another broad passage, and just as we reached it we heard the sound of running feet and the shouting of two voices, one answering the other from the floor on which we were and from the one beneath. My guide stopped and looked about her like one who is at her wit's end. Then she threw open a door which led into a bedroom, through the window of which the moon was shining brightly. ‘It is your only chance,’ she said. ‘It is high, but it may be that you can jump it.’

“‘As she spoke a light sprang into view at the further end of the passage and I saw the lean figure of Colonel Lysander Stark rushing forward with a lantern in one hand and a weapon like a butcher’s cleaver in the other. I rushed across the bedroom, flung open the window, and  . . .’”

And, THERE! That’s what I was looking for, a window “flung.” The hero “clambered out upon the sill,” hesitated, but before the story line moved to a frantic woman’s cry, “Fritz! Fritz! Remember your promise . . .” and to the response of Fritz saying, “You are mad, Elise!” our hero had “let myself go,’ and “was hanging by the hands to the still” of the window flung open.

Sorry to leave you hanging upon a sill, but “Flung” is a great word and I mean to think about it. I don’t have much opportunity to use it in conversation or to do it to objects; a rock from the shore back into the Sound, sometimes. Words, sometime. Sometimes, words are flung, and those, likely to be what I wish I could retrieve.

I meant to think about instinct this morning before a phrase about a window flung intentions out of the way. I meant to think about how marvelously instinct manages most animals and how I wish our own better served us. But, I got distracted.