Common Birds 33 - American Redstart II
Tuesday, May 30
I’m contemplating living a forgettable life. Likely, I will live a forgettable life while trying to live a memorable one. I’m interested in dispelling that illusion. And by forgettable, I mean that first and foremost I forget my life. Though if you or others you know want to forget my life, feel free to join me.
Here are two examples of things I tend to remember. On Friday, my walking was interrupted. The parking lot between the stream and the trail was filled with another company’s beginning of summer party. So at three in the afternoon, I finally went on a normal walk, and as I was passing the stream, I almost stepped in the horrible, broken remains of a chipmunk in the road. Even now, I feel literally hot with burning fury. Then, at the pond, used shorts floated next to the shore, and a fish had been caught and left for dead a foot from the water. Left for dead, there was neither daring rescue nor escape, it died. I blazed with anger, disgust, and disappointment, disappointment to be part of those who leave wonton death and destruction. The rage drowned out the sounds of the woods. I went to the bridge, and for a long time, stared out at the water. A living chipmunk came to the bridge and cried and cried. I wished it was mourning, but I knew it saw my hulking form and feared my lurking violence. But I was still, hoping to be peaceable enough to make up for my fellow humans. And eventually, the chipmunk fell silent and resumed its search for seeds. A robin joined. They searched by the water, side by side. Then, a muskrat swam out from under the bridge, passing by me soundlessly, joining its tiny wake with the river. A silent nuthatch made its way past me, looking over every tree.
I remember the fury for needless loss, I remember the sight of those bodies made corpses. I remember my times of shame, loss, anger, and pain. There is a beauty in the times of my life which I forget. I forget when I am content, when life is good, and I am happy. I already forget vast stretches of my life, and I’m glad to look back at that emptiness and know that it was once filled with peace.
But, look, this morning I saw a mother American redstart on her nest. I caught her standing on a branch, just past that gang of Carolina wrens. No one waits for the female warblers to return, it is the males who are fountains of color, but she is beautiful, her olive back, wings, and head offset by luminous patches of yellow on her shoulders and tail. She made her way through the honeysuckle, then settled into a nest of dried grasses. Her long tail hung over the back of the nest and her small head looked over her shoulder to where I stood. Now, how could I ever want to forget that? Or how could I want to forget seeing a sapphire swallow wheel low over the water of the pond? Or the sound of mallards crash landing in the opening to the river? Or that today was the first day that the sun angled just so, revealing the hidden world beneath the surface? Or the vast, vast number of fish who live in the pond? Or the way they swam through towering spires of underwater vegetation, like they swam through the Pillars of Heaven?
Perhaps I’d like my life to be forgotten the way a female American redstart’s life is forgotten. She is happy to be unnoticed because she has the work of sustaining life, the vital task of maintaining the beauty around this small pond. She shares in the work of all creation, which is noticed by almost no one. Maybe I want to be forgettable, not to myself, but to other people, as jarring as that feels. It would be nice to forget my times of pain and shame, fury and frustration, but that’s not worth forgetting the manifold times of love and discovery, happiness and peace. I’d like to live to live, giving achievements the slip to go and look for birds.
