Am I truly a writer? I implore the branches of the sour cherry tree and the cedar waxwings gathered there. Or am I merely lonely, creatively sharing this headful of words as a means to be seen and heard?
The birds nibble at the cherries. They quarrel over perches and food and personal space. They don't have an answer for me. Neither does the tree. She lives only to serve, to give air and food and shade and shelter. She doesn't concern herself with the trivialities of identity.
I suppose most writers ask themselves the first question. I suppose many writers ask themselves and are the second, regardless of whether they get paid for what they have to say, regardless of whether what they have to say could fill the pages between the covers of a book on a shelf at Powell's.
Pilot tugs at his leash, but I am not ready to move on. I scoop my little dog up in my arms and continue my bird gazing, hoping he will notice them and share this moment of wonder with me.
The tree is short, and the watercolored waxwings so close. Close enough to score amazing shots if only I had brought my camera. But I did not bring my camera. Nor my phone or any other device.
My life is consumed by internet and screens. When I am not working I am still working, staring, fussing, searching for a cure for an undefined emptiness within yet another void. Today I have decided to ignore the screens, all of them, and spend my time like I used to not so long ago. Before the addiction took hold. I am ashamed to admit this decision makes me anxious.
I nuzzle the soft hair on Pilot's neck and stroke his ears. I feel. And I observe.
The birds move adeptly, in and out of branches and under leaves to reach the ripest cherries, jumping, swinging, craning, contorting, hanging upside-down like feathered mesozoic monkeys. They have no fear. Should they fall they need only to open their wings.
A puffed-up waxwing perches on a branch above us, presumably male by his posturing. He scrutinizes the girl and her dog down below. I avert my eyes and look at the ground, classic displacement behavior that nearly all hot-blooded animals exhibit. When I move my gaze slowly back to him, he is still there.
The writer inside me that I constantly question rushes to find words for the experience, chunking together poetic musings over grey skies and birds that trill and whirr to each other in conversations so easy to interpret and misinterpret as delicate and carefree. The writer inside me also asks if standing on the sidewalk outside someone's living room window in the drizzle while gaping at birds offers anything of interest to her readers. I think I could slap her but I decide the writing situation is not that dire.
A raptor sails into view beyond the scrutinizing waxwing. It coasts on currents of air, barely a speck of an eagle, but an opportunity nonetheless. I turn my head sideways, pointing at the raptor with my eyes the way the crows do. I look back at the waxwing on the branch, back at the sky, back at the waxwing again. I want to show him that I see something of importance. He looks at the eagle, but the profundity of our communication is lost on him. He flits to another branch and leaves me behind to stare into my own ignorance.
I have no nestlings to feed, no flock to attend to, no need for survival that I must place far ahead of my temperamental desire to thrive. By comparison, with my fridge full of food, my apartment, my city life, I have all the time in the world to contemplate the wonders of bonding with my wild urban neighbors.
The waxwing, though...
He's got shit to do.
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