Play Misty for Me

I walked in a Gaussian blur this morning, glasses tucked inside my pocket.  It's an interesting exercise, to view the world through imperfect vision. . . . although it could be argued that there is no other way to see things than imperfectly.

I found this softened view at once disorienting and quieting.  Neighbor and dog, now smeared along the edges, became "probably Jan and Kira" rather than the certainties they usually are.  And the mist, which, yesterday, got in the way of things as it built up on my lenses, had a completely different effect today.  No longer a deterrent,  it became something I could just enjoy, as it found and held me, its cool fingers whispering "hello."

Halfway through my walk, my eyes adjusting to their new view, I found myself looking for the larger lesson, one I could apply to all the stifling ugliness outside of me.   No clouds parted.  No booming voice rattled me from my thoughts.  But I did see something--namely a large, dark mass huddled under a pine up ahead.  My mind went where my eyes couldn't yet take me, from a curious fox to a slumbering man.  It wasn't until I was nearly upon it that I realized it was a flattened cardboard box.

The lesson?  I need to shed my preconceptions and get close enough to see what something--or someone--really is.

There is something to be said for tossing aside a pair of glasses that guarantees only one kind of seeing.

This is the Place Where the Earth Was Breathing

Saturday.  5:17 a.m.

Mark is downstairs, eating a bowl of Cheerios before going to work.  I know this because this is what he does every work-day morning at this time.

It's not him I'm hearing, though.  No, I am roused by something else.  Something lower.  A rhythmic, older sound just outside my window.

I shuffle the sheets and turn towards the window, straining to hear it.   Too airy for a screech owl.  Too quiet for sirens.  It continues, even after Mark pulls the car out of the drive.

Eventually, I get out of bed and crouch near the opened window, waiting intently.  And that's when it strikes me.

Breath.  What I'm hearing is breathing.

The realization confounds me, so I grab a pair of shorts and head outside to look into things.  Finn joins me, his ears standing at alert, which offers me little comfort.

Bare feet on cool patio, I turn my eyes upward, taking in the last quiet moments of a night sky, tracing my fingers along Casseopeia's letter-like edges.  I know this is nothing more than a delay tactic, but I stand there just the same.

I feel unsettled by the task.

As I walk down the drive,  two competing thoughts name the source of the sound and I wonder what I'll find when I reach the space between two houses--a slumbering man or . . . nothing at all.  It is this second prediction that makes me think I'm not fully awake just yet.

I mean, how on earth could the earth actually be breathing?! 

Sure enough, there is no man laying crumpled upon the dewy, uncut grass.  Just the grass and the shrubs and the fence line, wrapped up in cricket song and earthy exhalations.  I stand in wonder, half expecting to see the ground lurch upward.

Eventually, I head inside, for raspberry preserves on English muffin, before going to the park, where a bushful of monarchs flits from flower to flower, as though it were just another day ending in 'y.'

Four Little Birds . . . .

I'm nuts about birds.  Always have been.  And what's not to love about them? 

I mean, they live outdoors.  They sing.  They fly.  And they don't need to buy outfits from Younkers, which just closed, because they are naturally beautiful. 

But, like everything that we love, there comes a time when they break our hearts just a wee.

This is a photo of a Baltimore Oriole (one of my favorite birds) that I saw last spring.  I was on a walk with school friends and the Oriole was in a mid-flight fight with a pesky Grackle.  Seconds later, the two feuding birds swooped low, in front of a car, and the Oriole hit the bumper.  I rushed into the street and nudged the Oriole towards the curb, where it died a few seconds later.  I took a photo of it--lovely and quiet and internally broken--as a kind of witness, I suppose.

We continued our walk and I pretended to be okay, although my mind and heart remained with that lovely, lovely bird, now growing cold on the street behind us.  I hated to think of it deteriorating, alone, on the asphalt, imagining a nestful of babies waiting for their mama.

. . . I'm a lousy faker.

Last weekend, Mark--who encounters creatures of epic proportion out there, where airplanes take off and land--brought home a hummingbird that had died in a hangar. 

My goodness, but she was beautiful.  That luminous coat.  Her tiny feet tucked under her soft, white belly.  And that thread-like tongue, protruding from her beak . . . .

I've been witness to two other lovely, post-mortem birds--an olive-green Ovenbird resting quietly by our sandbox on C Street and a perfect Cedar Waxwing laying on a sidewalk along M Street.

Each of these four birds gave me the chance to lean in and look closely.  In their deaths, I learned more about their lives. 

Holding the Hummingbird, I was taken aback when I parted its breast feathers and saw those tiny, tiny feet.  Leaning over the Oriole, I was mesmerized by the way the colors alternated on its wings.  Gape-jawed and ignorant, I had to hit the books to name that lovely Ovenbird, the only one I've ever seen.  And I don't think I'll ever forget finding the lovely yellow band that ran along the Cedar Waxwing's tail feathers.

I was looking through my address book the other day and found a page filled with bird names.  I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that, next to the list of my human neighbors' names was a list of the birds I've met in my neighborhood since moving here in 2004. 

Both humans and birds have made this a very lovely place to live.