The Tiniest of Tremblings

I was lucky enough to have SSW fall asleep on my shoulder today. I was finishing watching a movie I had started last night, and he perched on my left shoulder as the women on the screen talked about their past relationships. His white eyelids were closed. I leaned my ear to the left to stretch my neck and I heard a very quiet hum, a tiny engine of breath and heart beats. It was as if the small machine of his body was vibrating with electricity. You could almost feel the halo of electrons careening around the sphere of his body.

The Kingdom of the Floor

SSW is peeking his head out from under the rolly dishwasher. Now he's headed over to try to get behind the gas stove. I gently steer him out of there with my foot.

I swear he has a little limp as he walks, then he doesn't. When he tries to run fast enough to keep pace with me from room to room, sometimes he opens his wings a little, flies a few inches. He seems panicked when he's trying to catch up. Jonesy likes to say, You can fly, man, so fly.

He will pace in front of a closed door, poking his beak under the crack and dragging it along the floor. Open the door, and he'll meander around the corner, looking up at you like a friend across the bar: Over here!

Lulu is protective of her food bowl so I get a tad nervous when the bird is strutting about at meal time. I do appreciate how he likes to dip a drink from the big red dog bowl, though. Give SSW a surface with a rim to perch on, and he will perch. Shitty little toes contaminating your water glass, your tea mug, your pasta bowl. He is not too embarrassed to walk through his own poop as he has proven to me over and over. In the wild, he says, da poop falls to the forest floor.

Sometimes I feel stalked by those little pitter patting feet. Sometimes it makes me laugh. I should feel flattered, utterly adored, worshiped. Small green fellow at my feet, keep on ambulating. And maybe, try out those wings, too, ok?

A Quiet Saturday Dusk

Five Times

It's really my fault. It always is. I knew it after I walked out of the room, pissed and hurt, thumb throbbing. SSW bit me five times on my left thumb's knuckle--chomp, chomp, chomp, chomp, chomp. He had been on the floor next to me trying to nail the clean newspapers I was placing around his cage. The big cat walked by and I wanted SSW off the floor; he though, wanted to tell me that this was unacceptable and that yes, he was very riled up and thank you very much for providing your thumb for the proper outlet for his displacement of emotions.


I look at my thumbs and first fingers and they have a small collection of small half-moon wounds in various stages of repair. My coworker asked me yesterday, And why do you have this creature? I smiled and thought of Jonesy.

Jonesy is SSW's right hand parrot-mate. She talks like a pirate to him, which makes him bob his head. They make smoochy noises to each other. He rubs his cheek on her neck. She will type on her laptop with her right hand and let him sit on her left hand, held in the air, like a little prince. They are drinking buddies--he peels the label off her beer bottle and tongues the condensation off the glass. She even has a song for him, which makes him sing along, in his own way, of whistles and shrieks.

But Jonesy works all the time. So SSW is left with she-who-keeps-her-thoughts-to-herself.

So how does the wallflower trait have a corresponding relationship to the frequency of being bitten, you say?

Ach--the math makes perfect sense.

Note to introverts: birds prefer a chatty pal. If you are the silent type, get a cat. This just could be my hurt feelings talking, though. He nuzzles my neck, too, and chortles soft mumbling sometimes. I love to watch him dehusk and eat a snap pea, the large, green pod clasped in his left foot. And you've should've seen him holler in equal volume and excitement at a PJ Harvey cd. As they say, parrots love drama.

He's lucky he's so darn cute.

That Blue in the Periphery

When you wake, the first thing you hear is the wind in the trees. If the wind is down, then the waves, against the red rocks of the shoreline. It is the utter lack of human racket that strikes you, while you are still sleepy, the absence of traffic, voices, car doors, front doors, or dogs (besides your own). You feel yourself unspooling stress after a few days of listening waking slowly, and your posture straightens, your chest broadens, and you sleep more soundly.

And yet, after a few days, after a week, after a month, you must return home. You go back to the landscape of human clatter and few moments of stillness, the remembered lives and work that you have built for yourself.

The lake, the aspens, the blue tongue of the waves all start to evaporate, and you pick up your cell phone, check your email, and turn on the tv. Maybe even your misanthropy rears its head again—there always someone else in front of you, no matter where you go.

When you are not too entrenched in the A to B trajectory, if you sit in your car for one moment longer, hands to the wheel and you look up at the sky, you may come to the conclusion, This is not working out for me.

Yes, there are Thai and Jamaican restaurants near your house, an intricate byway of bike paths, and prairie gardens of native plants in some of your neighbors’ yards. But you can’t stop feeling like you can’t fully inflate your lungs.

You remember, just last week, I saw 10 pileated woodpeckers in three days.

But it is not, as if, your hours away were devoid of all other human-made noises. A car driving down the gravel road, the sound of a hammer far off, voices off the water from a boat, the phone ringing. And at home, there are answers how to push aside the cemented world—you’ve heard about them, tried running, gardening, yoga, meditation, a hike in the woods. No matter, you can find a legion of excuses to prevent you from attending to your core’s quiet refueling. Guilt takes innumerable shapes.

There is just so much talking, so much static caroming around inside your skull, that everything feels tangled, knotted, taut.

But don’t we take our burdens from place to place, that if you are unhappy in one place, won’t you be in another?

So then, how long can you hang onto that smooth stone of tranquility once you return to where you left off?

Vacation without William

Day 1. We get a late start, Jonesy cursing all the pet-made messes. SSW continues to shred paper while we tidy, so when the house cleaning is finished, he has made new flotsam. Circular, endless.

The two dogs vie for who gets to be nearest the front of the car, noses or paws on the armrest. Once we get to the lake, Lulu bursts out of the car, an explosion of barking and leaping. TK smiles and smiles.

Day 2. We drive a half-hour to the grocery store (Ach! we have no coffee!) where Jonsey insists on a chocolate box cake with cream cheese factory frosting. When I make it a few days later, she feels caked-out after a couple of pieces, moaning about how there is so much more to eat. She makes me promise not to let her cajole me into buying another cake to make on vacation.

Lulu rolls on a dead fish and is summoned by Jonesy for a hose-bath outside, which she partakes in humbly, gently, tail-tucked.

Day 3. The dogs are starting to slow down. They stand around sleepy-eyed after breakfast, but then startle alert when you mention the word beach or walk. Anytime we leave the house without the dogs, Lulu shrieks and paces—you can hear her barking move from one side of the house to the other as we get into the car. Her utter belief in abandonment is heartbreaking.

We’ve seen a small village of pileated woodpeckers so far—one bird was stumbling around the tall grass, another above it. This year’s inexperienced broods?

A large porcupine crosses the road in front of our car near the house, a creature in no hurry, so we stop, and I roll down my window to send him salutations as he enters the weeds.

Day 4. Jonesy tried to encourage the dogs to “go enjoy their dogness” out in woods. They prefer to stare at us through the screen door, pleading to be let in.

We go driving without the dogs (since they abhor waiting in the car, preferring to freak out as we walk away), out about the lakeshore, visiting little towns. I stumble around a dusty bookstore of 40,000 titles while Jonesy falls asleep on a wicker couch in the sun. We leave with a Sherman Alexie book,
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.

Day 5. Jonesy finds three grey hairs on my head. I think she is a liar.

Each day, we swim in Lake Superior, a brisk, enlivening experience—quite bracing! as Jonesy likes to say, comparing it to water off England. By now the dogs can barely stay awake at anytime of the day. This is first time I realize TK is old; her legs are unsteady on the lake rocks, she drags her left rear foot sometimes, leaving a nail-trace in the sand.

Day 6. The perfect weather ends—as we start to park the car, it pours. The hatchback had been open to air it out, and before it rained, the dogs sat in the back, looking out, ready to go.

When we get home, it is dark, and our bird-sitter has put SSW to bed. We hear him whispering to himself, and he won’t come out of his cage for me, but immediately runs up Jonesy’s arm. Now it’s clear whom he loves best. And his head bobbing begins.