Monday morning warbling

Sometimes I wonder just how much stuff we see in one day, but filter out by necessity. If we registered everything we saw, our heads would blow off. But still, sometimes we see the same things again and again and wonder why we are noticing them. Portents maybe. I like portents. I keep seeing flocks of birds. When I am gazing at the sky (a common occurrence) groups of them swoop past my line of sight.

It feels like a new week. After last week, it's nice sitting here on a common Monday. I am planning a few interesting, fun things this week. The concept of meeting new people feels not only do-able but enjoyable (in a friendship way. The thought of dating is quite uninspiring to me at the moment). I feel like I am settling back down into the folds of the material I know so well in myself. It is a delight to feel once more able to fly, after feeling so long like the pigeon who flew into my house the other day.

This is the second one to do so in as many months. Lester's mouth had a couple of feathers sticking out of it by the end of its torrid experience. I do not know if he bit the pigeon or just pulled out some of the poor thing's feathers. It flew into the bathroom, same as the last one. Flew towards the greatest source of light and came up against the glass.

Like the last one I grabbed it quite easily; it was frozen by fear. I so wanted to convey to it that it was okay, that the danger was now past. Its eye looked at me but I cannot read pigeon. I so want to know how pigeons think. When I took it outside and put it carefully on the roof of the garage, it flung itself up and over the apex to the other side. I do not know if it flew off or if the poor thing just continued rolling down onto the ground. I do hope it recovered its senses.

I know those high anxiety fits. They are simply a part of my life, of most of our lives. This is one of the prices we pay for the technology that swirls its currents through our bodies unnoticed. I do many different meditative things that help me feel tethered in my own body, to feel my feet on the ground. High anxiety makes you feel like you could go spinning off into the stratosphere. Conversely, flying on wind currents is a different thing again, an enjoyable, controlled, grounded sort of flying. This is the type of flying that is coming for me now, not stratospheric pingings.

It is a nice thing to think in this way after my cousin Sharon's funeral. I walked towards the church saying like a mantra, "I don't want to do this, I don't want to do this." But it was a lovely tribute to her. I think of all the cliches that surround deaths. You can feel them threatening to fall out your mouth if you don't keep watch. It is funny to me the guilt those who stay behind are inclined to feel. It is a strange guilt. It is as if we think we have got away with something that the other person hasn't. Just turns out that she has left earlier than some of us.

Me, I think I'd rather leave earlier than later anyway. Nothing like the thought of a nursing home and having your bum wiped to prefer the earlier exit. Anyway, I want to find out what pigeons think. But if I have to be here long time, can I make this exit request? It is that I enter the soil in the way of my great aunt, who died the week before last (there's been a rush of exits lately, hasn't there??) She was 90 years old. Lived in her own house, gardened her own garden, and just died. Or like my grandfather. He was 84 years old. Had ridden his bike that same day, came home, had a bath, collapsed. That's my exit request, if such a thing may be requested :)

But everything is so seemingly random. How can we explain why some people live this way, others go on for way too long, and some leave too early, with husbands and sons behind them? Life surely is many things, but not fair.

In the meantime, with all the dark that accompanies, and the pain and the emotions and all of that stuff, I am looking jollily forward to much more flying before I do make that last exit. A bit more living before I die. It still surprises me, the way I feel a young child would be surprised, at how much pain there is in the world. Where does that strange universal whisper come from, the feeling that it should not be like this?

For all of that, it's still beautiful. I guess it's even more beautiful because of the bad stuff. Still, I bid its depths a fond adieu. Me, I've got a bit of flying to do from now on. My anxiety and depression come along with me, but so does my optimism and joy, and I can fly with all those appendages. Funny how even after your wings have been coated in what feels like masses of ocean oil spillage, they heal. You can fly again. The amazing regeneration of Life. Spills out all the pores. Once you see it, you see it everywhere.