Signs

Pictures taken from the net (definitely not mine).

Here you are one moment, living the sub-urban life, increasingly becoming the center of your world, and making Godzillas out of the geckos of everyday existence. And the next moment, Nature grabs you by the balls and shows you something so majestic, so unabashedly glorious that you can't help but revel in the understanding that you are just a tiny smidgen of Nature itself, no less beautiful, no less scintillating.

Driving to work a couple of days ago, NPR fighting for oblivion in the rest of the habitual morning noise, we swung onto US 682 where it hugs the Hocking river, and shoots off a driveway to the allegedly haunted Ridges, where I earn my keep. Before we could take that turn, however, a huge bird alighted on the fence. It was definitely larger than the ubiquitous turkey vulture. We drove past, missed our turn, turned around and drove back. Oblivious to the rush of the morning traffic, not a mile from the town's busiest thoroughfare, feathers glinting in the morning sun, there it was: a glorious golden eagle. Its cursory glance at our passing vehicle held all the dignity of aeons of perfection. All noise seemed to go silent. It was timeless.

Then it happened again, this morning. Going about our everyday scramble to decide what to have for breakfast, what to take for lunch - our overarching issues of the day, we were accustomed to seeing our lanlady's five canine companions potter around the front yard and litter by our window. But as I looked out today, I froze, only to breathlessly whisper to my wife to come see. The yard had emptied, the frigid temperature and frosted ground dissuading the dogs from staying out too long.
And right in the middle of the yard, still as any of the garden ornaments, but oozing life from every sinew, stood a magnificent six-point buck. Proud head raised, broad shoulders poised to spring, it listened to maybe the dogs barking from indoors. I had a brief vision of our neighbors (who had a dead deer hanging on the back of their house for weeks last year) coming out and blowing its head off, but it faded soon. Then, as though realizing how pathetic the little chihuahuas really were, it turned around and walked lazily to the three-foot high fence that surrounds the yard. It stopped when its forelegs were almost touching it, as if it had just noticed the fence's existence. I was wondering if it had to pace back in order to jump, when it raised its forelegs and cleared the fence with such fluidity and effortlessness that I burst out laughing. It sauntered down our driveway and back into the woods whence it had come. Again, total silence.

These moments seem to be Nature's way of laughing at us. Our little fences, our little vehicles, all our ruses to get around our little two-legged nakedness, and if we can't dominate, we pull out a gun (or bomb) and kill whatever (or whoever) does something better (or differently). But in such moments, we are the proverbial "deer-in-headlights", where we stand, in all our nakedness, shocked at the self-sufficiency of a being that is a perfect part of its ecology, awed by the prospect that we still have the choice to follow that path, scared by the very fences that we have built in our way, deafened by the very silence we have disowned.

The little bird of happiness

One of the highlights of the intelligent movie K-Pax (Kevin Spacey, Jeff Bridges) is when Prot (Spacey) cures a person suffering from severe depression by asking him to look for "the Blue Bird of Happiness". This patient, being totally non-responsive to medication, is seen to find incredible elation in witnessing an aim come true for him, although the aim itself is no more than a small bluebird fluttering busily in a bush - an almost common sight for the ordinary person. The scene touches you at various levels.

And today, I saw my bird of happiness.

In the yard in front of our house stands an august gathering of hooked iron bars, from which are suspended several receptacles containing matter which members of the aviary species regard with esculent interest. One such receptacle, in particular, is an inverted pitcher with a narrow channel at its bottom, and contains a bright red, semi-sweet, fragarant solution. The liquid is contained within purely through the phenomenon of atmospheric pressure, the outlet being too narrow to allow the liquid to escape and air to enter at the same time. Unless, of course, an outside agency were to flutter up to it and suck the liquid out.

After weeks of moving into this beautiful cedar-sided house in the country, I have seen several feathery fliers that I could never have witnessed in my life in uptown Athens. Cardinals (scarlet streaks), woodpeckers (aerobatic experts), blue jays (bullies with ADD), chickadees, finches and bluebirds (size doesn't matter), mourning doves (clumsy fliers), waxwings (wannabe cardinals)...are all regular partakers of the hospitality of our landlord. It thrills the heart to watch these winged beings, flying seemingly effortlessly (except for the doves who make it look as difficult as it probably is), living a life of defying gravity, yet exhibiting personalities and mannerisms as unique as the human fingerprint.

However, once in a while, when the light is just right, and the wind is blowing in the perfect direction with just the right speed, there is another magnificent mystery of nature that manifests itself. With a drone it hovers over the flowers, gently persuading them to open up their innermost hearts to yield libations which only the humble bees can claim to have tasted. Despite its absolute mastery over aerodynamics, there is a quietness to its movement, a simplicity that mocks the elaborate showiness of beings even other than birds. The sheer innocuousness of the process is belied by its complexity - 90Hz wing speeds, stationary and reverse flight, air speeds of upto 70 miles an hour - unparalleled in any example of flight conceivable. And as I stood on the porch today, sipping my white-tea-and-honey, this 3-inch-long phenomenon made its way to the incongruously red pitcher of faux-nectar in the yard for an early morning breakfast.

"Hummingbird", I whispered/prayed.

For a second it flew at a perfect "standstill" under the feeder, quenching its hunger/thirst; and then it receded, turned and shot directly past my head into the trees behind our house. I turned to barely follow it with my eyes, while it perched for a moment on one of the lower branches of a pine. Then as I stared open-mouthed, it retraced its path by my head and flew across the yard, the road by it and the valley on the other side, a speck over the yawning openness, into the woods beyond the valley.

People pray for all sorts of things. For a mate, a job, a house, a car. Give me this one thing, they say, and I won't ask for more. Sometimes those prayers are answered the way they are expected to be...but at other times, when you know that prayers are not the answer, but you pray nevertheless, the Power answers with a gentle joy sent your way....

a little bird

of Happiness.

"What have you learned?"

We were sitting in the living room, strangers to each other months, days, even hours ago. It was late, almost 1 a.m. and the children had gone to bed. Some of us lay spread-eagled on the floor, others in armchairs with their legs up, still others leaning on whatever was near and back-worthy. One in particular, whom I had persuaded to stay, half-sat half-lay on the couch, nodding in sleep and looking beatiful.

Someone asked a question.

"I don't really ever think of it as learning", replied one, whose last job forced him to work 12-hour days starting at 3 am. "But I guess I learned that with two kids, you can never really keep track of time. I hardly talk to my wife...and then there's the thoughts I don't talk about anyways. But one day I'm screaming at my 5-yr old daughter, and my 2-yr old son walks up and hugs me. I look at him thinking 'What are you doing? I'm screaming at your sister!' He smiles his shy smile. Man, that's unconditional love right there."

"I'm learning about powerlessness," said another, whose 1-yr old daughter had had surgery when she was a month-old and has learned sign-language and is the most active child I've ever seen. "I know I'm doing what I love to do as a teacher, and it's challenging when people who know nothing about it take charge of it; but I'm learning about the faith and strength to keep doing what I do."

"Sustainability," said a third, who had ridden a Greyhound for 7 hours to get here. "I've sold my car, drive my bicycle around, use public transport, and I'm loving it. I'm living with people with similar interests, and it's great to see that we're trying to make a difference by living out our ideal."

My turn. "I'm re-learning simple things", I said, "It's frightfully easy to go back to where you were even after learning and changing. The other day as I was waiting for my bus, the sun was shining and it was snowing at the same time. It was beautiful, but people all around were just bustling about their daily lives, not stopping to look, to taste the snow on their tongues...I re-learnt that it's a privilege to be able to see beauty, in whatever small way, every day."

"I've learned that I'm exactly where I want to be," said the person next to me, a single mother to a 13-yr old dog. "It was a big decision to quit and work from home, and it was really shaky for a while, but I figured it out and now it's fairly smooth. But," she turned to me. "I miss what you talked about."

It's easy for me to say, I thought, I'm a college student who doesn't have to work the whole day, and doesn't (for now) have a career to worry about. But is it that hard to miss? When a rainbow sears across the sky, how can you not see it? When the setting sun kindles the clouds ablaze, would you rather talk on your cell-phone? How far do you have to go to hear a bird chirping or a child laughing? What does it take to turn off the TV and find a moment of silence?

Or to sit with a group of friends, coming together from different parts of the country, even from around the world, and find the comfort to share the thoughts in your heart?

Or the freedom to fall asleep?