Watching the Birds' Eye Views
by Starwing J. Vardrewan
All quiet on the western front of the
closed Botanic Gardens. Inside, not far
from the main gateway, above a large lily-pond the salt and
pepper-shaker
seedpods nod in the breeze. At a far edge of the surrounding
lawns, stone
lions stare along each margin of an empty path across which a
burnished
oak leaf stumbles and tosses in the wind.
Evening is descending and the sounds of the outer realm are
curiously dim.
For some reason things have emerged in twos today, each a
distorted
reflection of the other. For behold, here come almost identical
twin clouds,
one low in the west like a frozen flare of fire, another an
unfurled angel's
wing. Counter-clockwise and clockwise spiralling, mirrors of each
other, two
dust whirlwinds spin fading to either side of the Cactus House.
Between the stone lions the sparrow hops and stops, hops and
stops, fluffs
his feathers, twitters, and is gone. Sparrow number two picks up
a piece of
string and shakes it like a worm.
At the edge of the lily-pond, near a clump of bamboo stalks,
occurs a scarcely
detectable shimmer of pond-reeds, a faint fluctuation then
accentuation in
light, a circle of strange silence. At the far side of the
pond several
moorhens peek out from shading stalks and with ungainly
flourishes of legs
and wings, fluster away. One hen with poised strides edges along
the murky
outlines of the reed-patch toward the hovering sphere of pale
light that
suddenly vanishes. And in the wake of its leaving the moorhens
raise a
flurry of drops like juggling stars, while in the lily-pond the
moon's
reflection melts, shimmers, segments like a sliced banana, fuses,
and reforms.
The shimmering and wavering pass on, refocus at a riverbank
nearby,
discreetly hovering behind a female Casuarina tree. In the
distance an
unknown singer stretches the cord of a high, thin note, snaps it,
and lets
each segment fall. Unruffled, the owl, preparing for her nightly
hunt and
vigil, gives a muffled hoot, wrapped up in a tree as the clouds
cool to embers
of vermilion and gold.
Someone was watching the feathered watchers. Someone was taking
an
inventory of birds, threading them together like beads on a
string. She noted
their sameness and their differences. She saw Birdness in its
rich variety of
manifestations. And she wondered with a haunting blend of
nostalgia and desire.
She had come from a place of No Birds. To this place, distant
beyond
imagining, others of her kind had returned, spanning the
light-years in an
instant beyond motion, and with bland tones and gestures of
ineffectual
anger had said, "Yes, yes; it is the same there, just like
we've seen elsewhere
and before. Like and yet unalike. Sameness amid difference."
Upon this world a Greyness had set in. Long ago the Watcher's
world had
left behind the coexistence of the Many as One. A strange force
had lifted its
claw, not to rend but with blunt force to congeal, to clot into
conformity and
sameness. Over aeons of time a parasitic law of decay had
dissolved the
differences, its smug victory rampant in structures of the same
height and
shape and colour, in monotonous sounds of small-ranging tone and
volume, in a sky filled with neatly aligned moons, evenly spaced
and sized
and rising in a straight line at regular intervals; for the
moons'
homogenization had been contrived when the powers of that world
had
scaled the heights of technical ability while plummeting to a
nadir of imagination.
They were an ancient race, old beyond reckoning, and forgetful of
their
origins. In the beginning the colours, shapes and sounds that in
unique
blends expressed each individual distinctly, had flourished in
vibrant
harmonies. Artifacts and shrines of rite and pilgrimage and
celebration had
abounded, and beings other than their kind had roamed the land,
wild and
unfearing of death. Over an immense distance of time the ancient
race had
evolved toward a discarding of the clumsy outer substances of
matter.
Gradually abandoning their outward forms, their powers of merging
and
uniting had become immense, but had in time poisoned their
individual
distinctness till it had wilted, and in most eventually died.
At times, though, like a listless solar prominence, dim curiosity
would in a
few flicker into a decision to find out if the Many-as-One still
survived
among the outflung worlds of the galaxy. And some in whom the
flicker
was at least warm would venture forth, knowing distance and time
to be no
barriers. In the Watcher the flicker had come to burn with an
annealing and
an inspiration. She had always been different, and growing
increasingly
aware of the difference, had become estranged and alone. Her
outer life of
duty had oriented around sections and partitions, abstract things
she had
been commanded to control. Such things, of course, could not
rebel, for no
life was in them, and so the Watcher's tasks had been dreary and
mundane.
Her role had been the repeated measuring of equal lengths and
distances,
the unending division of large masses into identical parts, and
against this
cold exactness she had rebelled. And so she had come across the
heavens to
the Birdness in order to ponder and observe.
She had come, returning time and again to study and, hopefully,
comprehend. With repeated visits a latent power had gradually
awoken as
though a vestigial limb had reasserted its original function.
Gradually the
Watcher had grown to understand, not merely via observation, but
through
an empathy. She could not be seen, save when in certain bright
light and
from a certain angle the faintest aura of yellow-pink light
outlined the
sphere of plasma she had assumed for purposes of secrecy.
She wanted little to do with the city dwellers who had closed off
the
Gardens, for in the outside buildings and bustle the Watcher had
glimpsed
hints of the malady that had smothered her own kind. Hints. One
building
in particular, a square slab of featureless grey concrete not far
from the
Gardens, reminded the Watcher of the dull routines of her world.
And so
she came to the rivers and gardens and seas, and to all the
places where
Birdness was free to soar and hop and paddle. To the rivers in
particular the
Watcher bent her gaze, for she liked the tranquillity of the
backwater
stretches, the diversity of peaceful life, and as the light fades
to a trickle, the
Watcher, pressing closer to the river's edge, spikes her outline
painlessly on
the Casuarina leaves.
Twilight is rehearsing a new nocturnal drama. Lambent circles of
owl-eyes
knead and sift the dimming light. The river water murmurs as the
Watcher
moves and settles in the middle of a swinging bridge. Below, dark
shapes
quack softly in a pond. Amid the stillness the wagtail begins to
sprinkle pure
pinpoints of song onto the surface of night. A pause between each
phrase,
five notes repeated (the Watcher notes as listener), ascending
and
descending, yet somehow never rephrased in quite the same way.
And so on
throughout the night.
Dawn. The sky blisters with red clouds as a distant cock crows.
The Watcher
returns to the Botanic Gardens in order to fathom more deeply the
essence
of the moorhens. But this morning they are subdued, hidden among
the
reeds, while across the newly mown grass, swifts like lost souls
twirl in arcs
of semiblindness, sharp wings like scalpels cleaving the air. One
swift dives
through the Watcher and her hovering sphere of light is pierced
with an
ecstasy. She returns to the owl, who is trying to get some sleep.
Wild commotions abound all down the waking riverbank.
Unperturbed,
the owl observes the crashdive of the ducks as they shatter
the glass face of
the water. Absorbed by the gauze of tranquillity, the mirror
reforms into a
healing wound as the ducks drift like corpuscles along the river
vein.
Following them at a respectful distance, a crushed beer can lolls
down the
river like a pool-lounger, a party-goer adrift with silver
sequins and the
loudness of garish gems as it traps each glint of sunlight.
The Watcher soars to a high point in the sky and for awhile
traces the
glinting of the beer can as it journeys to the sea. Westward the
Watcher sails,
scraping the undersides of fleecy cloud until the air bristles
with salt and the
horizon glitters. Far above the rocky hills lining the shore, the
eagle glides
with effortless alacrity, scanning the grasses below. Riding the
sea-wind, her
vision crumples to a pinpoint as she sees the mouse, drops
slicing through
the whirling balustrade of gnats that hover between her and her
prey. The
Watcher revels in her solitary dignity and daring. Could she also
slice the
depths to segments, she would fall by degrees, like the box-kite
darting above
the beach horizon before it descends in jerky rhythms of thwarted
freedom
as its owner reels it groundward.
The eagle falls weightlessly yet faster than a stone. As she
drops, a running
child on the beach opens his hand toward a gull, and his escaped
balloons
sail higher and higher. The Watcher spreads herself thinly,
blurring her
presence across the sky's distance. And between the aqueous
persistence of
the ducks and the aquiline ascendancy of the eagle, the air like
a pillar of
glass is shattered by the missile screams of gulls. There is a
rustling and
shimmering, a moment of condensation as above a riverbank mooring
the
round outline of the Watcher's pallor tentatively reforms like
the Moon's
halo on a frosty night.
Clotted along the river's edge, swans, geese and pelicans mingle
and divide,
milling around fragments of stale bread. Overhead and unseen by
most, the
dead cormorant, snagged in a tree, dangles like a fruit charred
in a bushfire.
Yet though hopelessly bedraggled in death, there is, shall we
say, a
ponderous geometric precision in the words its swaying beak
traces on the
air. The Watcher is reminded that the laws of motion are the same
in this
world, for the vast distances of the heavens never render them
invalid.
The Watcher lamented the dreary exactness of her world. Yet their
lines of
change could have formed a new angle, could have traced out new
horizons, radiating from a centre point of vision, branching into
unexplored
vistas of time and place and distance. In ages past they had
mastered the
transfer of themselves in forms of plasma and thought from galaxy
to
galaxy, shunting themselves down wormholes, transforming from
collapse
to explosion, oscillating from black holes to white, from present
to past to
future. In plasma forms they had travelled between the worlds of
parallel
universes, harnessed the energy of supernovae and mined the ores
of
neutron stars. It had been fun, a godlike game in which technical
prowess
had been subject to their whims of exploration.
Their world circled a binary star, a red giant and white dwarf
which
perpetuated their macabre waltz about a common centre, the great
dying sun
regularly eclipsing its companion, the tiny star torching a murky
gleam
through the bloated gas sphere, and the whole like a vast,
bloodshot eye that
gazed across sombre plains. Yet though the suns were old and
faded, the
moons of that world had been splendid and diverse. One moon had
spun
retrograde, two had circled about one another, a fourth had
roamed in a
wildly eccentric orbit, becoming for part of its cycle a white
dot
indistinguishable from a star, at its nearest approach looming
huge and
brilliant in the sky. Another, probably a captured asteroid, had
been an
irregular lump; one had pulsed and spurted flames and spores,
another
changed colour with seasonal variations. Yet in time the wonder
of the
moons had palled, becoming to those of that world a taunting
threat to their
sameness. They had come, therefore, to an almost unanimous
decision.
There was too much wildness and unpredictability and so they had
shifted
the structures and orbits of the moons, taming them into fixities
of form
and motion. But it would have been too much work to shape into
smooth
roundness the irregular, lumpy moon and so employing antigravity
they
had pushed it away, and leaving its age-old orbit it had spun off
alone into
the dark.
Long ago those of the Watcher's world had known feathery
floatations of
light, waves and weavings of colour, tones wild and austere,
convolutions
of diving and soaring thought, and an overriding sense of
adventure. They
had created unending variations on boundless themes. Wildness had
been
tamed; tameness rendered wild in turn. But then an intrusion had
come
and their lives had abandoned the flow of change and drifted into
stagnant
backwaters where nothing grew, nor lived, nor died, nor waited
for its ripe
time of emergence.
A few brooded, for the most silently, disappearing now and then
unseen to
this and other worlds where birdlike beings roamed. But why did
they
always return to examples of Birdness, as though birds alone
harboured
some strange secret?
The Watcher roamed the land and shore, restlessly trying to
remember back
as far as possible, beyond the reach of her own origin. She sank
deeper,
falling into an immeasurable sea of musing, and her thought
became
enclosed in the hollow of a vast oval seed, shaped like an egg.
The Watcher
felt deeply that in Birdness lay the key to understanding, and so
her thought
turned outward to the light of vision once more. She had seen
eggs plain
and speckled, nests wedged in trees and in holes of cliff-faces,
or hidden on
embankments near the water; she had come across nests sprawling
and
ungainly, and compact and small. She had seen tiny tufts and long
quills of
feather, striding gaits and hops and waddles, the soaring of
unfettered
nobility and comic scramblings among water-reeds. She knew the
swivelling stare and blink of the owl, the glazed contentment of
the ducks,
the fixed grin of the pelican, and the frown of the eagle's
omniscient dark
eye. And as she watched and listened, images welled up from the
dim
memory of her kind, mythic beings, or so it seemed, of the
Watcher's dying world.
On that world the memory of diversity still lingered on in
ancient tales.
Once, long ago, or so it was told, there had been flying forms
there like birds,
fabulous-hued, with eyes of crystal and fanning fins of wings.
Pondering the
tales, the Watcher felt sorrow. Tangible scenes of flight and
preening and
nesting returned, faint at first, then with blinding clarity.
Suddenly the
Watcher's bubble-thin outline trembled with remorse, and the
abandoned
boat-mooring rocked in an empathy of response. It was clear now.
The
Watcher remembered that in ages past they themselves had been
such
beings, before the sameness had set in and hardened, before they
had
abandoned their natural cycles of change and had taken on
artificial forms.
Yes, in ages past they had been eggs at their awakening, starred
and speckled,
large and small. Then nestlings which grew to adults, and
finally, subsumed
by the tides of life, they had evolved into discarnate forms
drifting over
azure plains.
Along the riverbank, poplar leaves fall like jumbled letters to
spell an
unpronouncable word. Above them the pendulous cormorant is still,
the
end of its beak an invisible full stop on the parchment of the
air. The
message at last is clear, and the Watcher yearns to soar with the
joy and pain
of remembering. Away she goes, northward over hills and past the
river's
high beginning as the day drains to another close.
Sunset throws a smear of shadow across the mallee plain. Moving
inland,
the Watcher hears across unthinkable distance the dwellers of her
homeworld calling flatly with telepathy, "Come back,"
as she drinks in the
light and heat with the tiny finches dotting a desiccated
billabong. Away they
dash, the flock, an ink-spill etched in brilliance across the
sunset sky. "Come
back," the Watcher hears while skimming the sky with wings
of no
substance. "Come back," looking out with the eagle's
exalted view of a rabbit
scurrying for cover below, as the looming shadow stains its path
with fear.
Now the voices stiffen like an order, an impotent threat. But the
Watcher
would not, could not now go back. She remembered nothing save
rigid
order and repetitious sameness in a blur of grey. The voices,
strained and
merging through sameness, drone on, while a string of notes from
an
elusive warbler threads its way through the sky and rises to a
crescendo.
The voices pale to a bland bleating. "Come back."
But the Watcher had dissolved the last remnants of form as she
looked up
and saw the towering stone lions of the Botanic Gardens gleaming
in the
sun like mountains of volcanic glass. She splashed about in the
reed-beds of
the moorhens, paddled down the river with the ducks, and
panoramically
pondered with the owl. She was busy gobbling fish with a pelican,
and
pecking about in the gravel with sparrow number two. The voices
became a
faint echo on the wind, "Come back. . . ."
Yet as an explosion of white parrots burst from the treetops, the
Watcher
remembered the White Ones of her world who had once soared across
high
plateaus under starlight. And stretched across land and sky,
though all the
while focused in herself, the Watcher knew then that she would
return in
time to her world and to the struggle of the old myths to
reawaken to reality;
but not before gaining an absolute centre and calm which might
well be
rejected by the greyness of her world, but which could never be
denied. Thus
she watched, losing herself in the old day. She dissipated
herself into a
gentle wind that plucked her playfully and soothed her like a
lullaby, as in
her first-known sense of rebirth, the Watcher became One with
Many birds.
c.1998 by Maureen B. Roberts ["The Dark" Nathair]
From Erocentric Visions
Darknight Publications
Not to be reproduced in any form without the author's permission.
return to Myths, Tales
& Poems
for the Jung at Heart
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
updated 17 july 98