Cracked system

Between the usual daily library hijinks of a bat getting into the library (a Thursday I wasn't here!) and holding up for inspection kids' books about komodo dragons and saying "Isn't it great they've already got biographies for children about Ted Cruz." life mostly plods on at my library. The shelving never stops, always with the shelving. Those Proust books aren't waddling up to their spot in the "P's" by themselves.

And so there I was up in the fiction section with an hour of shelving to take care of. We've been going through a rash of new trainees at my library and samples of their shelving work was all around me. When one is just starting one's career in shelving here at my branch one is instructed to tilt the shelved books spine up as they are placed on the shelf. Then that supervisor guy (I know him!) comes along to make sure they've got the concept down okay. It is not an unreasonable caution. Last week I saw the results of a new hire's work and it was not pretty- about a thirty percent error rate. Nothing curdles my blood in a cold clench of fear quite like a possible rogue shelver being introduced into our library eco system. Fortunately today's new shelved stuff was perfect. Every book was exactly in place just where it should be. But just as I was relaxing into this perfection I noticed a peculiarity. All of the tilted books were duplicates of other, already shelved books.

Was one of our new hires avoiding inspection by merely tilting down surefire, properly shelved books? Had they cracked the system?

Ah well, if they're clever enough to crack the system they should fit in just fine here.

The phlegmatic dog

 




While I'm not above flipping off dogs as I walk my neighborhood I am not unalterably opposed to dogs either. Indeed as hatred fills my heart while some clannish, uncivilized dog barks and gnashes its teeth at me for having the temerity to walk on a sidewalk within a thousand feet of him I try to remember, it is not the dog I so despise, it is the owner. Dogs need to be scrupulously and obsessively trained, and every annoying bark or suggestion of violence on the part of a dog is the responsibility of the dog's dark overlord, er, I mean owner.

If one wants to get a darling, one of the family pet, who one doesn't have to train, get a cat!

That said there are plenty of dogs I am perfectly delighted with. The indications that a dog falls in this category will be largely in the negative. To start with, if the dog is not screaming at me in violent fury and hatred we are off to a good start. Another indication I might like a dog will be that the dog isn't mindlessly barking. It will not be running at me with teeth gnashing and violent rage in its eyes. It is not growling or taking offense at my presence. It is not hyper or shaking or racing madly about. Such a dog will not consider me as an object of extraordinary interest, threat, edibility, or competition. And too it is a dog that is not even that keen on sucking up to me.

Yes, we have eliminated a lot of dogs, possibly even most dogs.

But I have one left for you: a phlegmatic dog. A dog who eyes me with a curiosity both mild and respectful. This is a cordial dog, with the light of humor and intelligence glinting in its eye. A Buddhist dog, a dog who may or may not have forgotten how to bark, but will probably never let us know either way. This is a dog who is vying against the very odds arrayed against it to be dignified and yet appealingly failing in that quest while never ever giving it up. Yes, there is a dog for you. That is a dog for me. I saw one on my walk today. We looked at each other, a fence between us. We said hello. That's all I'm asking.

Cat magic

I hate to quote myself, rather I retain an abiding belief that others should do so for me.

Take that Oscar Wilde.

And yet here I am compelled to bring forth this nugget on my own from out of yesterday's missive:

Of all things in this world, magic is both the most skittish and the most friendly.

Even as I wrote it, and could not at that moment in literature travel down the path of it, I thought, like cats. Just like cats

And perhaps there is why the cat is the common and appropriate familiar of all things magic.

A couple of nights ago my wife and I got out of our car, unaccustomedly parked at the front of our house because our garage was being painted, and we heard an insistent,  plaintive mewling. Honestly it sounded like the fake cries of a cat, too loud, too cat-like. But they were no fake cries. Down the middle of our street, on a gorgeous, windy Spring night, came a fluffy, but short-haired gray cat. He was crying out that he utterly needed us. I crouched down. My wife stood in place. The cat reminded me of Olive, a sleeker gray cat who once roamed our neighborhood, eviscerating bunnies and paying us visits. This cat was well fed and collar-less. He swirled around my wife's ankles. He tucked his head into my open hands, rubbing and bumping his face against them. He made a dozen repeated rounds of us, at my wife's feet and pouring through my hands. I pet him. His tail whacked me with a friendly thwap in my back. I thought "This is our cat now, he will never leave us. What will we do?"

And then after ten minutes of utter communion, he was gone.

Take what you have gathered from

I don't mind bandying about with the gods and making easy use of them. But I am cautious in what I call magic, and am slow to use it, for of all things in this world magic is both the most skittish and the most friendly. 

So let's just prudently call this one an act of coincidence, even if I did find it charming.

In the morning, over a brunch of avocados and cold press, I was talking with my wife about a post I had written a day or two previously concerning new people, and about all the thousands of people I have known at the library, and about how much slower I am to now make full acquaintance with people who are around me regularly at the library. I used as an example one person that has both stood out to me as I wrote the piece (which you can surely find just a couple of days back here on the blog) and stood out as I was telling her about this. I told her about a man who we will call Steve, because that may or may not be his name, and who is somewhere within ten years of 67 years old, has been volunteering at my library for several years. For a year or two I did not exchange a word with him. Then, with a slow incremental increase we began greetings, until now we never fail to greet each other with great warmth. Our conversation remains slight, but our greetings are thorough and full of cordiality.

Two hours later my wife and I are in the area of Grand and Victoria. For those of you not from my cities this refers to the intersection of two streets, Grand, and Victoria. More? That's not enough? Okay, it's an area in the city of St. Paul with a fairly dense variety of shops and restaurants, about half chains, half originals. This is all many miles from my library, and even with the thousands of library patrons and staff I know by sight, it would be rare indeed to see any one of them in these cities of three million people, there or almost anywhere not in or quite close to the library. 

My wife and I are walking along when I hear my name called out in a kindly fashion from a car at an intersection.

It's Steve!

At least, I think that's his name. 




 

Causing problems

A patron was up at the front desk of my library, talking to my co-worker, and I heard her saying she didn't want to do something if it caused any bother for the library. Of course my co-worker assured her it wasn't a problem, whatever she may have actually felt in her heart of hearts about it.

And it wasn't a problem, no matter what the issue was. Because I am here to tell you that, in my experience, if you don't want to cause the library any bother, whatever you're asking for isn't a bother. It's the people who evince not the slightest suspicion that they might be causing an undue inconvenience on the library and those of us who work there who might be causing an unreasonable problem.

This rule only applies to people who express concern about causing a problem once though. If you say you don't want to cause a problem twice, you might be, and three times or more and you are definitely causing a major problem whether anyone will tell you or not.

New people

More new people arrived at the library today. It is the first day of training for two pages destined for other branches. I'm pretty sure they have names, but don't ask me what they are. I have never been one to form fast alliances, but decades of working at this library has only increased the stateliness of my pacing. I have now met thousands of new people. I have a highly expanded sense of time here. If you are around long enough I will eventually get to know you, but in one day?  I'm afraid not.

I sympathize. If you are a new employee at my library, or perhaps training for a sub position or for a position at another branch, or too if you are a new volunteer, your first days will be enormous as an overall proportion of your career at the library. But for me that day, in the scope of the geology of my library life, is a grain of sand on a beach. Do you understand how small that day is? I have got to keep on my feet. I have got to keep my eye on the moment I see my wife again. So I hope you will understand. You are like a polaroid picture resolving in slow motion. Don't worry. I have my eye on you. But it may take weeks, months, or even years for you to appear out of the depths of time, out of the murkiness, out from the vast history of a thousand faces until you become distinctly visible.

At which point I will introduce myself. 

And if we're both lucky, we may even become friends.

I really don't mind

A woman comes to me at the front desk of the library. She has a book club in a bag that she had checked out, which is a collection of ten of the same book, in a sort of a small duffel bag, along with a notebook full of useful information for people having a book club meeting featuring said book. She was missing one of the ten books. There was a long story about how this book had been frantically searched for. All the book club members had been individually grilled. All insisted they had returned their copy of the book.

The theory this woman was now operating with, and hoping was true, was that one of the book club members had returned the book individually to one of our libraries. Unfortunately there was no note on this person's record to indicate such a thing had happened and, when I searched our problem area, this theory fell apart, we did not have the book.

At this point the woman decided she had kept the item over long, and she was extremely unlikely to ever track the missing book down and figured she'd best replace the book. I told  her that she could pay for a replacement copy but not actually buy a copy and replace it. This disappointed her, but she accepted it. I researched costs on the item, explained that once paid for we would not be able to take back the book. All was agreed to and I put a charge for $15.99 on the patron's record. She handed the book club in a bag over to me.

It had all ten books in it.

I cleared the fine from her record, checked the bag in, and sent her on her way.


Eh, I suppose that's library work for you. You put the book on the shelf, someone takes it off the shelf, and you put it on the shelf again . Then someone takes the book off the shelf and you put it back on the shelf in the same place they took it off from. There is no real destination or completion. You don't actually ever get anywhere. It's all about the joy of the journey.

Not bitter at all

I ask the gods:

"Why does time move more swiftly within two feet of my front door, but more slowly anywhere near the front desk of the library I work at, especially whenever anyone says, within hearing distance, 'I just need to get a library card'?",  and the gods get so chatty in their response that it is basically impossible to stop them from talking.

"Time is like a grand buffet, the cheap items that no one wants very much are always plentiful." The gods say. Or "Space is not the same width or weight in all places but comes out even no matter where one averages it."

But then I ask the gods something perfectly simple, like "Why is my blog is not insanely popular and world renowned?" which I don't ask too much these days, but it does occasionally come up, and the gods are all like "Shoot, hang on, I left my hat in The Elysian Fields. I'll be right back!" Only they don't ever come back unless I ask about the meaning of life, or about their favorite painter (John Singer Sargent). Then they talk about John Singer Sargent and Emil Nolde as long as I can stand it, until I ask them what is causing the cramping in my foot, at which point they suddenly have a dentist appointment they are late for.

So what's my point?

I don't know, I'll ask the gods.

Frothing blind

After my comprehensive post on milk frothing you probably were pretty clear on the proper method for frothing milk. Nevertheless some niggling thing oscillated at the back of your brain and you couldn't stop thinking about milk frothing. Finally the question deep in your neo cortex burst forth and you were consumed by the one unanswered question that haunted my blog post:

How does one froth milk if one is blind?

Yes, this is a good question.

The answer is, one froths milk by the sound. If one inserts the steamer wand in the milk and it makes a high, screaming noise, that's okay, but it also indicates that the wand is too deep in the milk. Lower ones pitcher. One is listening for the smooth roar of a distant jet engine. Is it shuddering? Then the wand is too far out. Lower the wand into the milk more. Smoothness is the key here in all things. That smooth and gentle roar will produce a smooth and gentle foam.

Now go and, if not blind, close your eyes as you steam your milk. It's not so hard.

What's that? What does one do if one is both blind and deaf?

One froths by vibration, low and smooth once again. The thrum should be steady and pleasant in ones hands. When the pitcher is hot, but not at all uncomfortably so, one is done.

One can also play pinball using these methods.

Mystery of the glamorous parking spot

I know you come here to have all your questions answered. 

You don't? 

Not even the questions you didn't know you had?

Hmmm. Well that's why I come here. But I guess it makes sense that the two of us might come here for completely different reasons.



But anyway, even though you come here to have all your questions answered, I mean, except for how you don't, there are a variety of things that befuddle me in life, things that I do not have the answers for.

Fortunately I have the gods. As my blog is to you, if you were different, so the gods are to me.

And so here is today's problem:


We not only have a lot of parking spaces at the large suburban library I work at, but they are scattered in a vast variety of distances from the entrances to my library. Not only that, but there are a great many specialty, preference spots at my library, including vanpool and carpool only, handicapped, library use only, and fuel efficient vehicle parking spaces. One of our handicapped spots is by the staff only entrance. It is there, presumably, for the use of disabled employees or disabled volunteers. Its location is convenient to a low key staff/volunteer entrance, but it's location is incredibly far from the front doors of the library. Outside of one or two major events each year there will always be dozens, possibly a hundred available spots closer to the front door of the library than this one, including a few handicapped spaces directly across from the public entrance to the library. And yet every time I glance out the back windows of my library it seems there is some disabled patron parking there or returning, via long, cross parking lot journey, to their parked car there. I have long wondered who these people are that seek out this obscure spot designed for those who have difficulty covering long distance? Who parks in this spot and then treks 200 yards to the entrance of the library? Why do they do so?

I have a few weak theories, but they will not do. So I humbly ask the gods.

The gods are busy roasting a chicken.

Tai Chi Library

 
Welcome to the Tai Chi Library. It is part of our system wide pursuit of multiculturalism. You are very lucky to be here on this day. Tai Chi Library happens just one day every year.


You would like to be directed to the talking book section? I will point the way.


It


is








over














 
there.




I'm glad I could be of assistance.




Hello, welcome to the Tai Chi Library. In our determination to provide a higher level of multiculturalism today we are the Tai Chi Library. What can I help you with today?



 
Ah, you would like a good book to read.



Hmmm.




Let me see.




 

You



















will


















enjoy



















this









 
one.










































Here you are.












That took a long time?





 

Yes, but you will find that the book is 







perfect.

Stair monster

The dark spirit of the library stairs struck again today. In the back room we heard the terrible scream. We rushed out. And there at the foot of our treacherous staircase lay another mangled body. No blood this time. This one went down four stairs hard, more or less feet first, thankfully, but, alas, not straight, and now her foot seemed to be on backwards. That may sound fanciful, but no, that's a fair description. In my minor role I got a good look while conveying some message to the assistant manager, who was tending to the patron. The Paramedics came and removed her shoe. And there it was, a backwards foot, which might not sound like too much until one starts thinking about what it might be like to have such a thing out at the end of one's leg.

I imagined comforting the injured patron. "Don't worry, you're gonna be okay. It's not nearly as bad as the last person who fell down the stairs. So much blood! Then she died! Of course, she seemed okay when she left the library."

Then I might add "You know what? Never mind."

Like most institutions my library can be erratic in its reactions to things. One man smells so bad people are gagging throughout the whole wing of the library he's in. He leaves a wake of unusable, pee-stained chairs behind him, and we consider ourselves helpless in the face of it. But another man has a tendency to remove his shoes over in the chair he likes to sit in and we clamp down hard, insisting that he meet our shoe standard. We might shut down half the library to protect a few minor pieces of technology during some power problems, but drag our feet when the weather sirens go off. And so some minor leak may be cordoned off in a wide, dramatic fashion, whereas the staircase is free to go on maiming people with impunity.

Ah well, fair enough. How do you fix a staircase anyway? Even as it feels oddly dangerous when one walks down it, it's hard to understand exactly why that staircase is dangerous. Perhaps it is all as it should be. Upstairs is the whole of our traditional library collection, all of the fiction and non fiction adult books. So yes, you may be crippled or killed in your pursuit of enlightenment at my library.  But then there is always a risk that must be taken in the pursuit of knowledge.

Unstuck in time

I have a special fondness for time travel stories. They're such wonderful vehicles for talking about fate, free will, and the nature of stories themselves, after all, stories are made out of time itself, and yet they are completely free to travel freely around in it as well. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut has a fine understanding of this. So fine, I suppose, that it is actually where I learned this.

In Slaughterhouse Five, the main character, Billy Pilgrim, is unstuck in time, and moves through different episodes of his life in a non linear manner. I have been thinking about this a lot lately as this is what seems to be happening to me these days at the library. I have worked here for more than two decades. One moment I am downstairs watching the O.J. verdict in a break room that no longer exists and the next I am showing people how to use our programmable paper books which don't yet exist as I write this. For a few minutes I am buried in an endless crush of book returns that I could never hope to get caught up on, and then I am watching our big check in machine toil away for me, taking care of the job handily, as I sip a cappuccino.

Then I am at the front desk with some co-worker. There have been hundreds of them. I turn to this person and ask how long they've worked at the library.

"Almost six months now." They answer. "Why do you ask?"

"I just wanted to know where I am in time." 

 I remember when they'd worked here for eight years.

Long time in library

We get a lot of donations here at the library. There are invariably several carts and shelves and boxes of unsorted donated books sitting in our back work room. While the regular shelving carts and public shelves of my library are more likely places to look if one is browsing for a good book to read, these donations tend to be more interesting, comical, apocryphal, historical, and just plain odd to look through. The donations are at their best for searching through materials without really wanting to read them. They tell the strange history of publishing and culture, they tell of book design, forgotten cultural trends, and in their strange smells, inscriptions, and brittle, stained conditions they even tell the stories of their buyers and owners.

But it was a fairly mundane cart full of donated, not very old, Science Fiction and Fantasy books that illuminated for me just how long I have been living in a library.

I have spent decades now in a library. I am deeply acquainted with a vast array of books and audio visual material. But I am familiar with all of it in a library context. So when I saw a cart full of Sci Fi and Fantasy books, many that I have read, something that you will no doubt understand as completely obvious occurred to me in a peculiar surprise. I looked at all these nice books that someone donated, and I thought:

Oh my god, people actually buy new books!

A brief guide to smart phones

I don't own a smart phone. If I have to make a phone call I put it off for as long as possible. If I still have to make a phone call after all of that then I sit down and write a long, thoughtful letter which I never send.

But that's just me. You might prefer a smart phone. But you may be unclear on what a smart phone is or does, even if you own one. Fortunately I have been making an observational study of them. I think I have them worked out. I used to hold these wee, portable phones in disdain, but now that I understand them I can see their appeal.

Here are the seven things you can do with a smart phone that I have discovered so far:


1. Yell your location at it.

2. Tell it what you're having for dinner.

3. Play hide and seek with it.

4. Have it make harsh, musical noises in quiet places.

5. Put it to the side of your head to initiate its motor vehicle operation mode.

6. Not show someone something on it due to technical problems.

7. Poke it obsessively with your finger.




I do not mean to imply this is a comprehensive list. I understand these are very advanced pieces of technology and so their capabilities grow all the time. There may be as many as nine actual things you can do with a smart phone, and, in the years to come, we will surely see a tenth.

On what's left

It's snowing out. The sky is blue. Walking to work I see spring flowers blooming through the lawns. My ears hurt. The robins shiver. And yet, daffodils!


I am all out of blog posts and so walking along I keep my eye out for new ones, but I find only a tour of old blog posts.

I wrote about that eagle. I wrote about how when people add on to their house around here they make it uglier on the outside and prettier on the inside. I wrote about the "Hippies use the backdoor" sign. I wrote about the dogwalkers joining me on my path. I wrote about the river construction. I wrote about that graffiti there. I wrote about being late and the vicissitudes of time. I wrote about that cat. I wrote about all this stuff, every shrub and house and squirrel and riverboat, every fleeting thought, every dream and complaint and moment of wonder. I have covered this river down to its sandy bottom and I have covered all these people walking around into the last secret pockets of their souls. I have written about every last thing other than having written about every last thing. 

Which I have taken care of now.

Luckily the world changes.

Frothing

I have been waiting for a slow day at clerkmanifesto to present my views on milk frothing.

Why, you ask, a slow day? Why wasn't milk frothing instruction a priority? 

Had I known you were so curious about milk frothing I would have moved it up the priority chain. To be honest I have been assuming all who read clerkmanifesto already have a full understanding of the milk frothing process. I merely thought I'd put out the authoritative statement in case some well meaning barista started wondering why occasional customers, after receiving a cappuccino from them, seemed to be casting a look of bitter disappointment towards them, and so, shaken, decided to search milk frothing on the Internet and were willing to scroll down to page 7,249 in the google search results, which they would be willing to do, if they truly cared. And there they would find this.

I have had two cappuccino like drinks out in the past couple of weeks. One was at a cute American French bistro sort of restaurant, The Harriet Brasserie, that had good food and the proper espresso making equipment. The waitress who made my drink should have known how to do it but didn't. The drink was hot enough to burn. The milk was not creamy, but had ventured into a hard foam. The second drink I had out was at a cafe in a part of town know as the north loop. The cafe seemed to have no name and was marked merely by a small picture of a coffee cup. I had a good feeling about it. I watched the man make my drink. After steaming the milk he poured a small volume out into a sink. The remaining amount was the exact quantity required by the small glass cup. A beautiful feathered decorative pattern adorned the surface of my cortado. The drink was warm, not remotely hot, the milk, of excellent quality, was utterly creamy and smooth, its volume carrying the crema of the espresso into itself in a lush embrace. There was no bitterness, rather a light sweetness of the natural sugars coming through the milk. Smooth hints of chocolate, woodiness, and a touch of flowers rose through the silky milk. It was a lovely drink.

Oh, right. I sort of drifted off there. You wanted to know how to froth milk. Or you didn't particularly, but you started reading this and haven't stopped yet.

So here is how you froth milk:

The steam wand goes in just under the surface of the milk. Ideally the milk should not bubble, rather the surface should bulge and ripple. The volume of the milk will not seem to increase right away but then will quickly do so. Of all things, heat is a reliable indicator. You can feel the heat of the milk through your, ideally, metal pitcher. Your milk will be done when it is somewhere between warm and hot. There is a lot of leeway here. Frothing milk to a decent standard is easy and not fussy. If the milk is not very warm and not much bigger than when you started, keep going. If the milk is uncomfortably hot to hold it's all over. You will have a pitcher full of a very pretty, high, white foam that is sadly not suitable for consuming. Throw it away and start again. You'll get it. And for such a simple thing people will look upon you with admiration, and, maybe, they will even tip you a dollar.

Trolling America

As you know I never talk about politics here, except when I talk about politics, which is most of the time, because everything has politics. Fortunately one doesn't have to always see the politics, sort of like everyone is meat, but we need not really focus in on that aspect, unless maybe there are a lot of cannibals in the area.

Which brings us to today's topic.

Much as I've tried to avoid it people keep asking me to explain the Presidential candidate Donald Trump. Is this because of my diverse international following? Is this because I am so reliable an interpreter of the cultural moment? Is it because I am the last clear voice of a shattered Internet and Trump is a product, strangely, of the Internet and its hunger for round the clock spectacle? Or is it because as writer of this blog I live in a strange fantasy world where everything I say is speculated upon and discussed, and millions of people take their inspiration and clarification from me like I am coffee incarnate?

Probably one of those.

So I will explain Donald Trump.

Out here on the Internet we have Trolls. I think you know all about them, but I'll briefly explain anyway. On nearly every subject and in every public commentary running richly through the Internet you will find Trolls, people who say things primarily for the extreme reactions, emotions, and disturbance they can provoke. There is a burn down everything nihilism to trolldom, yes, but there is a self aggrandizing protest to it too. The troll says that not only don't they like some singer we're all reading about, or listening to, for instance, but they also hate feeling so small, so unable to have a voice, so bitter about being just one voice, when so many other voices seem so big and authoritative out on the Internet. So they troll. Their voice grows in significance as dozens of attentions focus in on them and emotion swirls. It's a nasty mischief, uncaring, but it gets some vote across while remaining immune from argument because every furious argument against it expresses its victory.

So is Donald Trump a troll? Eh, a little, or a lot, sometimes, but that is not the point really. The point is that most of the votes for Donald Trump are troll votes. At this point a large percentage of the Republican Party voters are trolls. Donald Trump is the first great candidate of the trolls. And so easy! You just cast your vote for him and watch the people explode around you. And it's beautiful, if you're a troll, because it's undiscerning. A vote for Trump even trolls Republicans. If you're the kind of person who finds it amusing and exciting to toss an outrageous comment into an Internet discussion imagine how Trump seems: it's like the whole world is some bullshit discussion full of lies and manipulation and false righteousness, and you throw Trump into it and you can watch it all go nuts.

The only real surprise is that there are so many trolls in America. I thought the billy goats kept them under control.

A no good day (with swearing)

Today was a no good day at the library. 

I woke up pasty, sluggish, and headachy from too much wine and cheese, but perhaps more so from too many days worked, and too many days til vacation, and too many things to do in front of me for weeks and weeks. I tore myself away from the loveliness of home and went to work. It was a weekend day, short staffed and busy. Everything fell out wrong for me. The family needing five library cards comes to me. The man on the phone, who I'm afraid may be going insane, calls me to ask what his due dates are so many times that I have memorized not just the dates, but every nuance of his voice and manner, the meaning in all his hesitations, and every detail on his account. I help a woman who has been registered with two library cards and has copious fines on both. I help the young family struck with 75 dollars of fines on their account for a small mistake, their wee, adorable children clutching their precious library finds tremulously as we work it out. Co-workers are bizarrely inconsiderate to me. The machines won't work right. There's something wrong with my milk for my coffee. The rain is coming. My toe hurts.

And then I am putting away some books on the Dalai Lama. There is the Dalai Lama.

The Dalai Lama said:

Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.

And really, that's okay. But just for today, if you will indulge me, and I swear it is only for today, can I simply say:

The Dalai Lama never had to work for a living in a fucking library.

Friend of birds

It was a beautiful spring day today, and don't think the birds didn't know it. The Robins were in particularly good spirits, and the little various Wrens, whose names I do not know, were at great pains to point out to me all the new flowers, kindly, but as if I were a blind person who had never been outside before. We wondered together if we'd ever seen flowers in Minnesota so early, all while it was still March. I said I thought I might have seen some tiny flowers this early during a warm March a few years ago, but the little birds weren't quite so sure. Then again I suspect that very few of these birds would be in a position to remember, so few of them being more than three years old to begin with.

Better by far than any early flowers, and even better than the perfect fifty degree weather, was being so befriended by all those small birds, by these songbirds. They alighted upon me, and, not shying, let me enjoy their company without reservations. I tell you this, dear reader, that when the wild river turkeys make you their student it is wonderful, and it makes you feel wise and shamanic. When the Eagle joins you, and becomes your partner, it makes you feel important and powerful, like some wizard on a quest. But when the songbirds invite you into the bosom of their society, it makes you feel like you are in a beautiful fairytale. And that is the best feeling of them all.