It is so self-conscious, so apparently moral, simply to step aside from the gaps where the creeks and winds pour down, saying, I never merited this grace, quite rightly, and then to sulk along the rest of your days on the edge of rage. I won’t have it. The world is wilder than that in all directions, more dangerous and bitter, more extravagant and bright.
[Annie Dillard]

Flannery O’Connor raised peacocks, which required, also, a supply of peachickens for the laying of eggs. She speaks frequently of peachickens, which is really just a great word; it completely undercuts the stately exotic-ness of the word “peacock.” In an essay called “The King of the Birds,” O’Connor writes that the peacock “frequently … combines the lifting of his tail with the raising of his voice. He appears to receive through his feet some shock from the center of the earth, which travels upward through him and is released: Eee-ooo-iiI Eee-ooo-ii! To the melancholy this sound is melancholy and to the hysterical it is hysterical. To me it has always sounded like a cheer for an invisible parade.”