“Something inside me ordered me how and where to step without me knowing much about it. It might be a million years of evolution, it might be intuition, but on my goshawk hunt I feel tense when I’m walking or standing in sunlight, find myself unconsciously edging towards broken light, or slipping into the narrow, cold shadows along the wide breaks between pine stands. I flinch if I hear a jay calling, or a crow’s rolling, angry alarum. Both of these things could mean either Warning, human! or Warning, goshawk! And that morning I was trying to find one by hiding the other. Those old ghostly intuitions that have tied sinew and soul together for millennia had taken over.”
The narrator’s movements are an affirmation of passion for the goshawks. Through the unconscious movements, the narrator increases the odds of getting a glimpse of the goshawks. Searching for the goshawks is a pleasurable exercise for the narrator which is governed by inherent yearnings. The unconscious desire for the sighting of a goshawks motivates the narrator to forfeit sleep. The narrator’s utility of viewing the goshawks is greater than the utility of sleeping.
“I was ravenous for material, for love, for anything to stop the loss, and my mind had no compunction in attempting to recruit anyone, anything, to assist. In June I fell in love, predictably and devastatingly, with a man who ran a mile when he worked out how broken I was. His disappearance rendered me practically insensible. Though I can’t even bring his face to mind now, and though I know not only why he ran, but know that in principle he could have been anyone, I still have a red dress that I will never wear again. That’s how it goes.”
Psychoanalytically, the narrator falls in love with the anticipation of finding an Objet Petit a for the deceased father. She expects that the lover will occupy the father’s place in her life. The red dress is a reminder of sad occurrences which would be remembered should the narrator don it. The man literally ran for he knew that it would be impossible for him to mend the narrator’s broken heart; he would not be the father figure that she hankered for.
