We live..

We live, Alex and I about 100 feet from the freeway. The city sings to us all day long, all night as well, never the same music. Wind, temperature, where the neighbors are, when the moon is tugging or shoving - all these things matter. People running out of the building, the door closing swiftly, the disinclination to give pause leaves growling in the rush of the day. Coming in is more playful. Joyful laughter of home echos in the halls. Every day my walk along the city streets grants me a second waking. My feet are nimble, now my ears wake and give thanks for the song of passing cars mixed in with chirping birds and protective dogs.

This enormity, this cauldron of changing greens and blues is the greatest palace of the earth. Everything in it - monsters, jewels, angels, soft-eyed strangers that unhesitatingly exchange looks with us as we pass them in the park; the quietly inviting library that asks us to explore the artifacts of past decades of centuries; heartfelt stories of the here and now - the remembered and faithfully repeated recitations of language - the acknowledgment of the multitude of self. How can we not always know that we already live in paradise?

The Feeding of Birds

Bird on a Swing, by Katy 2008

So my dad has fixed the "squirrel proof" bird feeder. It is back, hanging in the tree in our back yard. I couldn't help but notice that it was missing something. Birdseed. I asked Dad about it and he was happy to explain the whole thing to me. You see, he couldn't bare the thought of spending $20 on the feeder only to have it taken out of commission 2 days later by a gang of deviant squirrels and one lost bolt. So he took the feeder to the hardware store where a clerk helped him find the bolt that he needed to fix it. He then got a new rope. He says the new one is stronger. (I'm not really clear on why that matters because the failure in his rig the first time had nothing to do with the rope, and everything to do with squirrels equipped with wrenches.) Once home, Dad fixed the feeder and used his new super rope to hang it in a tree. As he explained all this he turned to gaze at it out the window, clearly proud of how cleaver he is. "So why didn't you put food in it?" (I thought that was the question I had asked.) He looked at me in that "you just don't get it kind of way" and said, "So the squirrels won't get it!"


Yeah, don't worry. I don't get it either. Why have a feeder with no food? Is the goal to trick birds into landing in our backyard? Maybe when they are flying around they will spot the feeder from the sky and decided to make a pit stop at our place, landing before they realize that there is nothing there for them. If you really want to see birds, all you have to do is go down the street to the stop light. I always see birds over there. We have the wires in our yard, all we need now is some second hand traffic signals. Before you know it, we'll have a whole colony of birds pooping on us while we swing or play catch in the yard.

UPDATE: When I got home this evening I found the birdfeeder lying on the ground. Dead. It looks like the squirrels were not fooled by dad's idea to not fill the feeder up with seeds. They cut the super strength string and took the feeder apart, again. From the looks of things, there were seeds in the feeder after all.