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May 26, 2003

Memorial Memo

I've talked about how we typically celebrate this day as the beginning of Summer, rather than as a martial requiescat, but this is a different sort of Memorial Day. The Spring has been slow and cool; it hardly feels like May, let alone Summer. And this year we have fresh war dead to memorialize, so the Holiday is not merely nominal. I hope we will remember all those who have died, not just our soldiers, but the journalists, and thousands of "the enemy" as well: soldiers and civilians, most of whom I personally had no argument with. The victors may presume their own virtue, but I will not judge the dead. I will only remember.

Today is a gateway, looking forward and looking back. I fear we will find war and death in either direction, and I wonder if we will ever find the Summer.

It will come, no doubt.
Despite a seemingly interminable string of gray and chilly days, the green tide rises. The trees leaf-out, the grasses wax, and the underbrush grows bosky. The worn and naked surface of the land is finally obscured by verdure. The yearly change is wrought again, but ever so slowly. Last year I saw a flame-bright Blackburnian Warbler (one of our more striking birds) in a blooming Hickory tree on the Great Hill. This year the same, but it was more than two weeks later, and the Hickories are only now flowering, while the birds are nearly spent. Last year's was seen on the first day the Blackburnians arrived; this time I was pleased to find a bright male bird as the migration wanes, trailing off with the later moving female birds, duller in color, but no less in worth.

Summer will come, but what will it bring with it?
For me, this is now the question, for here, in the midst of Spring, I’ve learned that I am to lose my job. I’ve never seen fit to say much here about my work; this page represents a different part of my life. I suppose a more fully achieved life would find a way to better integrate these things, but I’ve been a working stiff since I got out of college. For better or worse, it’s only been one job, at the US Government Printing Office Bookstore. I first got involved with GPO through a summer jobs program while I was in school. I started out in Detroit, then managed to get myself transferred to New York, where I ultimately became the Bookstore Manager, a post I’ve held for the last fifteen years. I’ve never considered it ideal, but it’s supported me in relative comfort, and one does come to identify with one’s job.

Now the Bookstore is to be closed.
This is sad, and problematic for me personally, but I can’t really mount much of an argument at this point. Our business has eroded badly in the last few years. The advent of the internet and other computer technologies has perhaps been the biggest factor. A little irony for me, as these things have also enriched my life, even as they cost me my livelihood. A great deal of governmental information is now available free online, which is perfectly fitting, since it belongs to the public as much as to the government. Free information is an ethos I endorse, but it does change the retail environment for our books. The agency is going through one of its periodic regroupings, and is struggling to adjust to a changing environment for publishing and printing. Of course the usual bureaucratic in-fighting, inter-agency turf wars, and simple incompetence have taken their toll, but to lament such things is a familiar plaint, and as I said, the Arboretum is not the place for such rants. At least if they don’t involve thousands of deaths.
I am not dying.
Although it does feel a little bit like that.

I really don’t quite know what I will do.
I’m thinking back now to those Vultures, and Mayday’s denial of symbolism. I’ve had my chance at May and its abandon. In fact, I’ve enjoyed it, and seen many wonderful things, but for me, this year’s May has not exactly been the Merry Month. If the symbol is obvious, one cannot ignore it. The Vultures that cast a shadow over the Springtide were no illusion, and it may be that a whole way of life I have enjoyed is coming to an end; dying.

As a symbol of death, the Vulture is unmistakable. But it is only a symbol. Like the Death Card in the Tarot deck, it does not signal imminent literal death, but change, realignment, and ultimately, Rebirth.
Or so I trust.
I’m sure I am much in need of rebirth, but as I’ve noted, it has a way of taking one by surprise. And it’s scary.

The promise and the possibility must suffice.
And why not? It beats fear, and I’ve observed at least a little veracity in the symbols I’ve pursued and deployed hereabouts. But we live in a World so rich in meaning that most of it goes unknown. On this Holiday Weekend, I’ll take my binocular to the Park and try to figure out a little bit of it. Then I’ll go home and try to figure out the rest of my Life.
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May 11, 2003

A Real Mother

I know I said no symbols, but I owe you one: a branch of May to honor the old Tradition. We can't really do without symbols, most notably language, but I’m not speaking symbolically, or even metaphorically, when I say that the Earth is our Mother.
It's the literal truth.

Where else do we come from?
The ancient bedrock that underlies the Park is not so old as Life itself, which seems to have emerged fairly soon after the creation of the Earth, at least as far as geologic time measures such things. How inanimate matter came to embody Life is hard to know. Some say it happened spontaneously; some say it’s supernatural; some say it came from outer space. We don’t really know, but we do know that Life was nurtured here, as in a womb. Paternity may be questioned, but Motherhood cannot be hid. Wherefore the male principle ascends to some symbolic heaven, while our Mother remains as real as rock, as true as rushing water. Feeding roots, unfolding leaves, she raises trees towards that guessed-at heaven. Not to reach her mate, but to provide a place for mother birds to make their nests.

A Mother cares for her children.
We may think we’ve grown up, that we can take care of ourselves, but we only subsist upon her assets. We drink her streams, we burn her woods, we mine her lodes of metal. If we foul her body in the process, she seems boundless in her capacity for healing.
Even so, we sense that she has limits.

If we render our planet uninhabitable, through poisonous war, or merely by our rapacious consumption, we may (conceivably) escape by leaving the Earth behind, departing into space like children leaving home, waving good-bye to Mother. Children have a way of breaking a mother’s heart, but we will not call it matricide. We’re just behaving in the way that Life does, exploiting our resources insofar as we can. Let’s not delude ourselves: Mother Earth is just a metaphor, after all.

Just a metaphor.
But we have no better way to speak. And even what we call the Truth is no more than an accepted symbol of the Mystery. The long mythology that runs from the navel of the primitive mind to the postmodern psychology of a post-secular world continues to enshrine Mother as a primary face of the Goddess. If we recognize the same face in the very context of our being we are not deluded; we are witnessing the convergence of the actual and the symbolic. Our gift of conscience compels us to treat them with the same regard. The capacity to make the connection is what we call “Love”.
By taking this day to Love Her, we convene the Truth: in a world of artifice, illusion and deception, Mother is real.
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May 1, 2003

The Vultures of Spring

The first of May, and Spring is in full swing. There is no higher Holiday than May Day on the Arboretum calendar. I've said it is the Holiday of the Moment: a day not for the observation of any anniversary, but for observation as such; for immersion in the ecstatic moment of being. That makes it the ideal holiday for birdwatchers, especially in our area, where the date generally coincides with the beginning of the main flow of returning migrants. For the next three weeks the Park will be virtually overrun with expectant birders, and I trust they will not be disappointed.

Expectation is a big part of the birding game. I bird all year 'round, as a basic aspect of my weekly visit to the Park. I've found there's always something worth seeing, as long as your expectations are realistic. In Winter, that might mean hoping for one unusual duck; in the middle of Summer it might be a glimpse of fledglings fresh out of the nest. There's not a whole lot else going on at those times, and most birders don't bother with the Park outside of the migration periods. It's more productive to travel to our local barrier beaches, or further afield, to areas where expectations may be higher.

For me, the birds are just an index of a deeper engagement, but you can be sure I develop some expectations of my own come Springtime. Migration in April is more fitful than in May, and hopes are often dashed by wintry weather that refuses to depart, or by a simple lack of birds, even when it seems they should be around. Still, anticipation entices and incites, so I'm out there, trying to keep my expectations under control, but hoping for some early sign of vernal promise. An impatient warbler, perhaps? A premature flash of yellow from some southern bird, overshooting its intended destination: a Yellow-throated Warbler; a Kentucky; maybe even a Prothonotary?
Such things are known to happen.
So what did I find, on a splendid morning in waning April? Some beautiful little bird to set my heart a-fluttering with the speed of warbler wings?
No.
I got vultures.

There I was, in the middle of the North Woods, when I found myself staring up the wrong end of a Turkey Vulture. At first I took the big, dark, ungainly shape in the treetop for one of those plastic trash bags that Winter scatters through the branches, but this one had feathers, and a bright red head. When I lowered my binocular I saw that there was a second bird, circling in classic vulture fashion, then descending to a nearby perch, while the first one hissed and hunched and flapped its way to an adjacent tree. This dance went on for a few minutes, until both of the birds departed, only to reappear a couple of times, making larger and higher circles around the north end of the Park, before finally disappearing entirely from my view, if not from my consciousness.

The possibilities for metaphorical interpretation are all too obvious. No friendly Robin, or any warbling songster, this year’s herald of Spring is a dusky carrion bird, arriving on the heels of war. But today, of all days, is no time for metaphors, and on this occasion I've promised myself that, in the words of the old spiritual, I ain't gonna study war no more. So let's study the Vulture instead, and see how it fits into the Springtide.

Despite its dark reputation, the Turkey Vulture is considered a "good" bird, at least in Central Park. They're not seen here often, though they regularly fly over during migration. Only serious birders are apt to spot them, little black specks against the high sky. They can be identified at great distances by their characteristic dihedral wing posture, their rocking motion, and their soaring flight style. That's how they are typically seen hereabouts; it's quite rare for one to actually touch down in the Park, let alone two of them. So I was happy with my sighting, the best looks I've ever had at the species. And yet, I must admit I was somewhat taken aback by their presence.

It's hard to know where the line is drawn between learned and instinctual responses. We've learned that vultures are associated with corpses, and we find them odious for that reason. They’re big, almost eagle-size, and any large wild animal will trigger an instinctive alarm, but I think the gut-level thing that grabbed me was the bird's naked head. This is an adaptation to the diet of carrion: it's hard to keep your cranial feathers clean when you spend a lot of time sticking your head into the recesses of a carcass. Hence, vultures worldwide have naked heads. The head appears small compared to other birds, but that’s only because it has no feathers to exaggerate its size and shape. Laid bare, the underlying structure of any bird’s head is a little like a reptile's. A beak is substituted for toothed jaws, but the basic form confirms the evolutionary heritage. There's nothing odd about a vulture's head except that it upsets our expectation of a bird as an animal entirely covered by feathers. As a result, this bird looks somehow "wrong", and elicits a strange range of emotional responses. There's concern that the poor thing has been plucked, or perhaps damaged in a fight, or maybe it's ill, but this concern conflates with the inadvertent voyeur’s sense of embarrassment over an unexpected confrontation with nudity. Maybe it's just too intimate for us to see the naked flesh of a feathered creature.

But no, there's nothing wrong with a vernal vulture, bald pate and all. It’s just not quite what I expected. But let me point out that while the local Red-tailed Hawks have legions of followers, and are widely admired, vultures might be a better model for us. They don't go around killing things, the way the hawks do. They are of an older, gentler lineage, akin to the storks, which are notably associated with birth. Vultures attend the other end of life, but they’re not violent; their relationship with death is more priestly than prosecutorial. Scavenger is an ancient niche, given less honor than it deserves. Vultures are involved in recycling; their highly evovlved immune systems allow them to act as purifiers of the environment. They do the dirty work on the food chain, and get little credit for it. They serve as a higher taxon reminder of the microscopic forces of decay, which we might prefer to ignore; a reminder of the dialectical intertwining of Life and Death. Beneficent caretakers, Vultures embody "green" values. They should be celebrated; we should be pointing to them as an example for our children; the Green Party should adopt the Vulture as a mascot...

But that would be expecting too much subtlety of a political symbol. Besides, politics will only lead me back to war, and I said I wasn't going to get into that. In fact, at least for today, I'm going to dispense with the symbolic altogether. I'm just going to go out there and give the day free rein to mean whatever it may, in May. I won't try to see anything except what's there, and I will have no expectations, not even of the expected. I will leave the soaring shadows of April behind, and accept the Vulture as one more pretty birdie of the Spring.
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