...birdwatching...
…thanks to my wife for making this happen…she made a playlist for this article you can listen to here…
https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/b-i-r-d-s/pl.u-4JomE49tMZpqA7
“Caw, caw, caw, caw”
-Unnamed Crow #1 talking to Unnamed Crow #2-
4:58AM
…pink, cerulean, mango, tan…
My mind set an alarm for the sun. The creeping cracks of daylight drop into my dream and with a gentle shoulder tap, tell me to let today begin. I squash out of my bedside, pat and massage the fur of my stretched yawning baby coyote, and head to the windows, unwinding the blinds that block night from looking into our home. Eventually a list will start mapping thought trails for my brain hike. E-mails to send, errands to run, habits to keep, actions to take.
Morning importance is breakfast and energy, exercise and attitude, toilet crosswords and incense matches. I’m starting, I'm stoking, I’m striking, I’m lit. By lunch I’m lost in a story of someone else’s need, these things to do are never done. I’m stopping, I’m stalling, I’m staring, I’m stuck.
I live life in a list. I check boxes and set timers to remind myself to fill more boxes so I can get more checks. I know no other way. It is called productivity because I am a product, my time is spent. These days I pay myself free. I have ethereal value. I am worth an invisible amount of dream dollars.
Seeing my worth in $worth$ feels worthless. Not all of me can be accounted for and paid taxes on. I am a movement. I am a contemplation. I am an action and a reaction. The dance is our relationship. Doing a thing might make another thing do another thing with this initial thing. What a fling. What a flong.
My actions are important in that they provide me hope. My stillness is important in that it provides me myself. And in between is my list, the map of next maybes, my moments in the future holding presence in my present.
To do.
This.
12:25PM
…toast, salt, grass, fence…
I buy two different types of no mess bird seed. Four bags of one, three of the other, and I save seven percent on a clipped coupon. Chipped Sunflower Seed, White Proso Millet, Cracked Corn, Peanuts, Canary Seed, Red Millet. The birds will land on my window as I write. They bark their beaks at me when they need more. It’s not cheap cheap to support a family of infinity, but I am bird brained and submit to their chirpy demands.
The redhead squeaks from the laundry line. She likes small stuff and spits the rest. The ink feathered orange hairs ignore me. They like to eat in pairs, and look like they chew when they feed. The big brown birds eat off the ground. The vermin come do the same on their night shifts. The squirrels get fat on the gooseberries, half eating them young and unripe.
Chirps, chips and calls climb and clamber off the chimes hanging on our cherry tree. The birds chew on the fruit, and make meals with our late planted garden. We gave up growing grub for ourselves and now plant flowers and edibles that the birds might enjoy even more. I have lost all self control. I am here to serve them.
The conspiracy says that birds aren’t real. They are drone cameras the government uses to spy on us. But I am the conspiracy. I stand on a stoop listening to them talk about their favorite winds, the biggest backyard baths, and what trees make for the best afternoon naps.
The birds have no plot. Their story is flap flap flap. They are my witness. I am their camera. They are my television. I am their anchor. My news is brought to you by MORE SEED™ so that I can keep watching you.
The hummingbird likes to visit my wife and hang out with our monarchs. My dogs think the squirrels are assholes. I think the world of these birds. They are worth the subscription. They are worth all the trouble.
The conspiracy says the birds aren’t real. They are robots. I just watched the future take a shit on my socks. Flap flap flap.
4:44PM
…sangria, rust, pebble, pickle…
I am flying down the potholed asphalt, my shoes tied loose enough to let my fat toes slide slightly on each insole with each stride. There is a dead baby bird on the sidewalk I can’t make sense of. There isn’t a tree for blocks, but here he sits, black eyed and nude, curled and new. I should probably bury him, but I’m running. Some stray cat will enjoy his taste later today.
My back cracks, my thighs tighten, my mind stays puzzled. All of the days everything is trying to enter me. I am a shield, I am sunglasses, I am short shorts, I am tall socks. The people talking in my earpods amuse themselves so that I may be amused. The speaker doesn’t entertain me. Their practiced patter is just a distraction. Blah blah blah they blather. Ha ha ha they hope. Fa la la, I flitter and I float.
I flap my wings past a dead charcoal home burnt on the sidewalk. It will still be there in three weeks. It will still be here in twelve weeks. Garbage is more important depending on where you live. It has more value. In some states a can is a penny. In others it is ten cents. This pile of grease black rubbish is worth a picture to me. It is worth stopping my run for.
18 weeks later it still lingers. Its body is dead. Its mind is missing. My run is stopped. I’ll do the same path tomorrow and the baby bird will be gone. One block away there is a sticker that tells me great job. I keep running.
7:28PM
…grimace, big bird, fozzy, grouch…
The birds sing in the morning bright and optimistically. They sing, today, today, right now, right now. They chatter in the beachside comfort at the birdbath. They sing, what next, what next, when and when.
At dusk as the sun sets they start to whisper. They don’t talk about tomorrow, they don’t think about today, they don’t wish about whenever. They dribble the last bits of uneaten eat off their invisible teeth and fling to a nearby nightstick to rest. They see me as the day breaks, and ignore me as it ends. The curtain calls but I am worth no bow. They aren’t here to entertain me.
Distant chirps drown into hoofing engine drone and barely there conversations between neighbors trading parking spaces. I might hear the dog next door pant and wait for his owner to return while my own coyotes take turns pacing our porch and barking through the window at the can collectors and their ambling shopping carts.
10:23PM
…graphite, lead, pebble, sand…
I won tickets to see The Squeeze and Boy George in two Saturdays. The show is canceled. I hug my buddy who lives as a bachelor training Coca Cola robots around the world to can the cans right. I turned my bike in front of a sports bar and let an Oakland pothole eat me. And at that very moment, some poop flavored rat bird floated above my twisted ankle and took a pissy gray dump on me. My leg is covered in the psychedelic white spew of pigeon crap. My elbow and ankle suck asphalt and my mind whispers “great job”.
I make it home, the laundry is done, my dog leaves me for the cold room, and a skunk sets off my fake backyard camera lights. The neighbors are feeding these zebra weasels like they are cats. I can’t go to the car after midnight without fearing for a spray or a hiss. Maybe I need a pet Pelican to watch my yard for me. Is that a bird big enough to protect our palace?
2:22AM
…fleece, wool, redwood, puffy…
I listen to the secret silence. Nightbirds drunk and asleep up on the top tips of local oaks. Crows camouflaged and hanging their feet to warm on power lines. The lamps laying down albatross shadows on the broken roads outside. A woman brought her parrot onto a podcast I produce this week and asked it to say Grandma. It said “gwaaahaaawk” instead. We hear what we want to hear.
Maybe the conspiracy is that I’m not real. This moment as I remember it never really happened. The cuts and scrapes are all special effects. The soggy way my eyelids tell me the show is over is just a distraction of the new show starting behind the curtain.
I don’t know where the birds go at night. Maybe I’m not supposed to watch and listen to them during the darkness. My memory of their beaked whistle is a song enough to sleep on. My pillow is filled with feathers.
I dream I am flying. I dream I am migrating. The wind holds my womb and moves my wings. I float. I soar. I flap, flap, flap.
You have a very surreal manner of writing :)
Yes. A birdwatcher who watches the mind watching the birds. That’s birdwatching. Loved this.