Between numb ponderings of my looming fate and Bonnie Henry et al shitting the bed re masking in healthcare settings, I’ve continued to write distressing articles that just never seem to be worthy of hitting ‘publish’, nor so addled that I hit ‘delete’. They’re no worse than the output of established authors making millions, or possibly better than, but I hesitate. I procrastinate. I doom-scroll on Twitter and self-medicate. Unfinished, but not unworthy, to irritate one Eric Arthur Blair. At least, he was named that on the jacket of the collected essays from which I gleaned that dislike, though he’s properly known as George Orwell. “A not unblack dog was chasing a not unsmall rabbit across a not ungreen field.” Legendary.
So, I stumbled out of the suite with intent and began this morning’s walk with a troubled mind. My 2 most reliable birthday remembering friends had snubbed my 63rd, but I sucked it up and texted the first a couple of weeks ago, and fretted the composition and delivery of the second on this celebratory June 17th, also the birthday of the greatest cyclist of all time, Eddy Merckx. This duo had gifted me a credit for a mountain bike rental the previous birthday, and a year later, nada. I meant to get fit, got injured and fatter instead, and put it off interminably.
Sorry guys. Hurting unit here. Still, the trend is obvious. Nothing gets finished.
I take the standard route, see a towhee watching me from a low tree branch, and wonder if it’s ‘Vreepy’, the young female who learned I was safe to approach for handouts when foraging was impossible due to snow accumulation. Naturally sourced food is plentiful, so I carry on without a seedy gift.
A couple of blocks later, the ginger cat I’d seen on a steeply pitched second story roof and chastised-up one time was sitting under a car, and we met eyes and I merped and we cat-smiled at each other. This was near the road-crossing wires from which the crows descended for seeds in Birdwalk Part 1.
My long-term crowbuddy hit me up on the stretch before the pond park, hopping from branch to branch, so I doled out seeds after some cloying praise, and carried on to the park. There, I was met by the crew of red-winged blackbirds who know my habits, and we chipped and whistled and guardedly scanned the surroundings for the crow dickheads prone to gobbling their young. It’s a competitive world, as was sung in an 80’s song. They nibbled atop the perimeter fence in peace for a spell until Mr Crowbuddy showed up and began to muscle them out of the way, for which he was aggressively swooped and forced to flee momentarily.
I posted and beamed seeds to an extent unthievable, leading to several noshing blackbird bro’s and gals getting along famously with their aggressive passerine relative, and carried on up the path, pausing at times to see if the feral goldfish were visible in the late spring murk of the first pond, and noting the continued desiccation of the second. The top rail above that pond had featured a bodiless duckling a few weeks ago, stark evidence of that competitive world mentioned above, and the female mallard and two surviving youngsters then noted were nowhere to be seen. I told myself they’d migrated to a less mucky pond, and looked up.
Waaaay up, to steal the Friendly Giant’s idiom, where a crow was badgering the living shit out of an eagle, banking in at high speed and forcing evasive maneuvers from the apex (hah!) avian predator. A second crow gained enough altitude to bomb in from above, and the flummoxed eagle threw everything it had at its tormentors, twisting and tumbling and ducking. A third closed in, and the eagle threw in its cards, diving away and heading for crow free skies.
As they grew more distant, I suddenly noticed how they made an emoji in the sky, the crows as eyes and the unhappy eagle as the mouth, and as I marveled at that, the eagle slewed evasively with right wing down, and this appeared: 🫤 , though slanted the other way, and I wondered if the eagle felt that way, unfairly hassled by fellow assholes. Like, WTF! you raid nests, I raid nests… give a bird a BREAK!
I continued on, a bit happy that I’d timed the walk to observe the eagle-moji and was the sole human on the loop, when a couple approached from the side of the loop I typically avoid, as it’s mostly grassy and often features ranting and/or slumbering addicts on the benches. I’ve devised self-defense strategies for dreaded physical encounters, and felt a bit foolish when nothing untoward happened, for years. The upcoming encounter was clearly nothing to fear.
The woman suddenly hailed me, so I pulled out an earbud as I paused my podcast, and apologized for failing to hear her. She asked again if I knew ‘Raveena’ or equivalent, and I confessed I did not as she neared. She then told me that her son had died on one of those very benches a day or two prior, overdosing on oxycontin, misinformed that it was something less potent, and that Raveena had told someone of this fatal error. I told her I was sorry for her loss, and she nodded, looking resigned to the situation, as if she’d known it was inevitable.
I wondered if she took me to be one of the local hard-core users, but didn’t hold it against her: during my darker moments, I think that’s exactly how I appear, beat up runners, ancient jacket, ragged beard…I fit right in. No one ever thinks to rob me because I’m obviously indigent: self-defense via poverty.
She continued speaking as we fell in step together, her husband joining to our right. I asked if her son was a regular there, as I was familiar with some, and she said yes, and described him: tall, sandy brown hair, and my heart sank. I’d been in ‘nodding’ familiarity with a young man of that description for some time, and thought him to be on the way out of that scene. He’d been looking fitter, and surprised me one day when he pulled out a phone at the liquor store and called someone, saying he’d be over shortly and had some beer. ‘He has a phone?! and money!?’ I took this experience as a ‘don’t judge a book’ moment, and thereafter always said hi or nodded when we crossed paths. He was no longer a threat.
‘Bit of a gut?’ I asked, and she agreed, saying he’d been in better shape and had been a security guard in the past. Her husband listened and nodded for the most part, and I called them ‘an older couple’ in my mind, though I’d be surprised if they aren’t 10 years my junior. I changed the subject to our beautiful natural surroundings, how what had initially seemed a pointless exercise in backhoe and bulldozer activity had somehow become a wonderful escape from tract housing and condos. I mentioned the feral goldfish, and my relationship with the crows and blackbirds, and the peace I felt there. Perhaps that’s what always brought their son back, to while away the hours and find respite from his demons. Peace and solitude without human judgement. I didn’t tell them that I’d heard his furious rants in the past, and even bypassed the park to avoid him.
I’ve done similar, elsewhere, and not that long ago.
Therapy isn’t always guided and monitored.
We continued north out of the park, said our goodbyes as our paths diverged, and I walked home and wished my old friend a happy birthday.
Happy Birthday old friend (no pun intended) 😉