unpolished thoughts 2/17/2019
I’m sitting outside, listening.
The place I’m in is almost beautiful, but not quite. I’m sitting on a little log at the edge of a ravine filled with trees.
And trash.
It just happened to be a good place to situate myself for a short time in order to meditate, and to sit and write.
The air is filled with a cornucopia of bird melodies that dance over the steady metallic hum of some kind of generator behind me. The ravine sits on the edge of a parking lot next to several local businesses here in my neighborhood.
My amateur ear supposes that one particularly loud call just above me is a crow, but what do I know. I’m a city boy. Further behind me, on the other side of the stores is a six-lane road. I hear the occasional horn there, but it’s Sunday, so traffic is light.
In the trash-filled ravine below there are many fallen trees amidst the ones that still stand. One of the trunks that lies on the ground is covered with blue graffiti.
The droning generator never stops, providing a stable backdrop for everything else that I experience.
The air above the ravine is in constant motion. Dozens of birds, traveling in groups of two or three criss-cross the space in front of me. They never seem satisfied with any tree branch they find for more than a few moments.
High above me, a beak hammers against wood, drawing my eye until I find a tiny red-headed musician, snaking the length of his spine again and again to drive a point just in front of his eyes into the tree. Again and again. I wonder what it must look like, and feel like for him. I imagine it’s a feeling that’s nothing short of perfection.
The calls and cries continue, from every direction above, below and to both sides.
Far below, a squirrel runs through brown leaves near a dark patch of messy, muddy muck.
The more I listen, the more melodies I hear. There must be hundreds of birds here in this ugly little ravine, many more than I can see.
From where I sit I can see five beer cans, a soda bottle, and a coffee cup.
The drone continues. Cars periodically drive down the road on the opposite side of the ravine, the sound of their tires slowly fading off into the distance. An airplane does a similar thing, miles above.
Several layers of man-made sound and hundreds of birds, making music among the trees and the trash.
I sit here, taking it in.
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