Beginning, Again

McKeany's submission for the Soaring Twenties Social Club Symposium issue on the theme "Beginnings." A reflective essay (illustrated with a New York Public Library lithograph of Chinese birds) about the kinds of beginnings that don't announce themselves: the unremarkable Mondays that turn out to be the start of a new chapter, the silent ones that you only recognise as origins in retrospect, and the difference between the new starts you choose and the ones life imposes.