binkymcqueen

CLOSE ENOUGH
Uno
The news was full of Nobel Prize winners, insurgency, and natural disasters as is always the case on this string rainy, October days. I watch the bluish smoke curl around the aura of my half awake body and remember a late night weekend talk about health and longevity. I can hear the birds chattering in the high pitched squeal of morning and, of course, Betty stands rapt like a palace guard plotting how she might fly 25 feet up into the air and secure her own breakfast instead of relying on the shaky memory of our household. I realized that through birds I have learned exactly three fundamental points about the deeper meanings of life in wide oceans of philosophical checkpoints that somehow prove we have a soul. The first encounter happened in those suburban days of the 70s, 1979 to be exact, and I was 5. My father was cleaning out some stuff in the garage and my mother would always make me go out and help. Helping usually amounted to me (I am guessing) annoying the shit out of my old man while at the same time amusing him now and again with the perspective of a five year old. So I was walking around the front yard shivering and playing with a dead branch (Hey-I did not own the plastic light saber with the whooshing sound yet-I had to improvise) and I came across a wounded sparrow that I believe our Siamese cat had mortally wounded but somehow had been interrupted in his fiendish killing spree. That is a different story altogether and involves an old masseuse with a perm and dye job (Mr. Wormsly) and a very medieval Squirrel trap he had built in his basement. So the young nurturing doctor inside my tiny soul decided to investigate the exact condition of our poor fallen Sparrow. I delicately jabbed the poor creature with my saber anticipating any movement which might be detected thus indicating the vital life nectar which would delay a burial service. Though I had seen a dull flicker in his dark little eyes, I was unmoved by emotion and declared him to be close enough. I immediately sought the wise and wisdom filled council of my father, for he held the key to obtaining a shovel. I explained in a factual, albeit brief, description of the murder investigation underway and proclaimed the victim to be dead or as stated above Close enough. It took my father by surprise, and he relishes telling the story to this day. He proceeded to explain to me that close enough was not the acceptable time to bury something and to leave it alone. I then had to help him move some boxes and decided to (no bullshit) discuss what my inheritance would be consisting of. In retrospect, given todays media saturated world of sickness, I would probably have qualified for a serial killer checklist. However, then I was just an inquisitive young lad trying to figure out the inner-workings of the world. My father had typed out his version of this story (which is quite comical and from a much different point of view). He had sent it to Readers Digest confident they would publish the piece; to my knowledge they never did.




The Magpie Proxy
Duex
When I was around nine years old I had gone with my father to hang out at my grandmothers house for a day. I genuinely loved going there, for it sits on about 5 acres of land even though it is just outside the city of Denver. I loved to roam around the property and play mental games like children who are alone are prone to do. I somehow stumbled across my fathers air pump rifle in the garage and convinced him to let me shoot a few targets to help pass the time. I grew up knowing all about the intricacies of gun safety and that was not an issue. However, my father stressed repeatedly to me that shooting at, around, or anywhere near the many birds hanging about was strictly prohibited and that the wrath of all hell would rain down upon my nine year old frame if even a feather was seen to be amiss. I gave my word as a cub scout, and all around lover of animals. Sadly, my word was about as solid as butter on a hot sidewalk. Do not get me wrong, I was in no way a malicious boy, nor did I ever once feel any overwhelming anger rearing inside me towards these birdsI simply had no concept of what life and death really meant. So as you may have guessed by now, rifle pumped, eye on the target, I dropped the squawky bastard from 40 feet below. What happened next would have made Hitchcock squeal like a school girl. A massive wave of angry birds circled about the area, so many black wings it almost seemed to be blotting out the sunlight. Their chatter grew in steady and more manic proportions, so much so that I began to immediately feel the true gravity of death on my little porcelain boy hands. I will never forget the look on my fathers face. He was angry, yes, but another emotion I had never witnessed steadily filled in beneath the angershame and utter disappointment screamed at me underneath the bird shrieks. I began to get wobbly and felt as though I might even piss myself. The memory has never once left my mind and because of it I never once went on a hunting trip with my fathernot now and not ever.


Prayer beaks
Tres

For obvious reasons I dedicated the latter parts of my adolescence to taking up prayer time at the dinner table by including a long detailed list of animals for which the mighty Lord should be aware of and if at all possible extend his omnipresent grace and protection on said animals. I had come through my youth with a firm grasp of death and absolution for the evil that lurks inside the human heart. When I was four years old, my grandfather died. I remember it being the first time I had ever laid eyes on the Rocky Mountains. I also remember burning my tongue on a warm cup of black coffee which a young woman (who resembled Sandy Denny, yet no one at that wake has ever once been able to confirm such a person was thereshe gave me an ice cube and spice cakekissed my clammy forehead-- told me it was ok). I remember the washed out rainy tone of the day and how funny he looked laying there under the gigantic plaster relief of a dove with a piece of plant in its mouth. I watched as the older people cried, mourned, and swallowed tears and thought to myselfsomething happened here today, I am not sure exactly what but it seems dirty and sullen and I want no part of anything that would make my dad cry. Many years later ( in my late 20s) while sitting in the back of the house my grandparents owned contemplating my life in threes, I happened to look up at a massive tangle of electric wires and notice how the lines intersected like a big urban piece of sheet music. If one were to snap photographs of the birds placements on the wiresone might be able to play the music of God. I still hum that first song to myself when the ugly bits of the world creep into my psyche. I need the dichotomy of the beauty to help me explain all this death around me away.
The news loop starts over. I lay the smoke butt in the ashtrayand await the days learning at the foot of small humble things.