All The Birds
Balter’s Essays of Mostly Acerbic Witticisms
When I die I want to become all the birds
Not a single one. Not a blue jay or a cardinal or parrot or even the call of a single songbird.
All of them. All at once.
I'd like to fly as the ocean is laid out before me. To feel the rustle of the wind, to sense when it shifts; to access flight's natural fluidity, smooth like the fingers of a virtuoso musician. I'd like to understand the other birds, their formations, their sounds. I'd like to feel their senses and to sense their instincts.
Being all the birds means one can be everywhere. It means feeling the vibrations of the planet, breathing the clouds, realizing calmness in rain or snow and strength with rock or plant.
It means landing on the outcrops of buildings and avoiding humans, cars, predators. It means waking at dawn, seeing the sun, feeling the moon; weightlessness on the brink of sleep.
It means all of time, for all of eternity.
I'd like to be all of the nests on all of the rafters on all of the porches. And be the roosting of all of the American Cardinals. I'd like to startle and take flight any time a screen door is opened. I want to hunt for countless worms for every baby's beak. To fall endlessly from the nest; to teach flight to every chick through boundless chirps and short directional hops; to be the very call of every mother to every child.
Being all the birds means beginning in the endlessness of the cosmos.
It's the caw of a crow
A child feeding a raft of ducks
The bald red cap on a Sandhill Crane
A seagull on the windowsill
A feather caught in a patch of deer grass
Eggs, droppings, organs, bones, talon nails, anisodactyl and metatarsus
An Australian emu booming and grunting, a red crowned crane performing a courtship dance in Japan, a Marabou Stork's throat pouch in sub-Saharan Africa, a pair of Peruvian condors preening each other, the flute of a Brazilian Rufous-bellied Thrush as the sun crests noon.
Being all the birds is multi-modal reincarnation. Every bird is every person we've ever known or any stranger we are destined to meet. It is resolution to consciousness, cloaked in the warm embrace of awareness - yet unencumbered by the effort of human existence.
When I die I want to become all the birds.
And today, right now, while still present and living, I want them to know this, to understand that I see them and they see me and we will find significance together before each of our journeys are complete.
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The Psyche of the Men’s Haircut (114,111 reads)
A lesson in Assholery (4,557,013 reads)
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