Birdy

by William Wharton

  I ate seed, watching them eat and imitating. I was like a baby bird learning, and they all helped me. I could feel myself standing on a perch with my feet. I didn’t look down at my feet but they were bird feet, not human feet, and were wrapped around the perch.

  I flew with the other birds! The flying was wonderful. I’d flap my wings and soar from perch to perch. It wasn’t so easy. The other birds flew beside me and taught me what to do. I was learning about flying. Alfonso flew with me to the top of the cage and made me look down at the bottom. I had no fear of flying at all. I felt like a bird. I felt I couldn’t be hurt by falling. Going up was harder, took a little more effort, than going down; that was all.

  I looked through the cage to the outside. I saw the houses and knew what they were. I could see the wall and the gate and knew what they were for and what was behind them. I remembered all the spaces around that I couldn’t see. I knew all kinds of things a bird couldn’t know. I looked out at the trees in the yard and wished I were flying there.

  In my dream, in the cage, I learned to fly the way I’ve always wanted to fly.

  That night, as I’m going to sleep, I force myself not to think of anything but the dream. I go over all the details I can remember. I don’t want to think of anything else between being awake and going to sleep. I go to sleep and dream. When I wake in the morning, I remember everything. I’ve ‘caught hold’ of the dream.

  After breakfast, I go to feed and take care of the birds. It’s a school day so I do everything in a hurry. There are eight new eggs. I take them out of the nests and put eggs into three other nests. There are ten birds now sitting eggs. The first eggs should start hatching in another week. I look into the flight cage where I fly at night. I wish I could be in the dream, flying there, instead of outside, getting ready for school.

  All day I wait to get back to my birds, even more, to get back into the dream. The day at school is more like a dream than the dream. I’m turned upside down. The realest thing is the dream and the next real thing is watching my birds. Going to school, writing English papers, doing geometry, studying Biology or talking to people isn’t real at all. The things that are happening in the days of my life are now the way the dream used to be. I know they’re happening, but I don’t care enough to remember.

  The days and nights go on. Babies begin hatching in the nests. More eggs are laid. Every pair is well on the way. There is an average of better than four eggs per nest. All the birds look healthy.

  Because I talk to them in my dreams, I feel very close to the birds, especially the males; because I’m still flying in the male cage. I wonder what will happen when the dream catches up with the day and I’m left alone in the flight cage. Or maybe I’ll be with a female in one of the breeding cages, except there’re no extra females. I don’t have any control of the dream; I can only wait and see what happens.

  In the day I try talking to the males, the ones I talk to in my dreams, especially Alfonso; but they ignore me. They don’t recognize me at all, except as Birdy, the boy. It makes me feel rejected, alone. I spend my days watching different birds with binoculars because it gets me close, blocks out everything else; the birds fill my whole vision. They’re the way they are in my dreams, real my size. I feel physically close to them and they’re not just little feathered animals. I’m getting to hate taking my eyes from the binoculars and looking at myself and everything around me. My hands, my feet, are grotesque. I’m becoming a stranger in myself, in my own cages, with my own birds.

  I stop doing the flying exercise. If I can fly in my dreams, I don’t need to fly in the real world. I’m ready to accept the fact that there’s most likely no way I can actually get myself off the ground, anyway. I could probably manage an extended glide, but I wouldn’t fly. I’m also finding it isn’t so much the flying I want, not as a boy flapping heavy wings; I want to be a bird. In my dreams I am a bird and that’s all that matters.

  I’m making egg food three times a day. I’m using almost a dozen eggs a day now. There are young in all the nests. It isn’t nearly as much fun having so many birds. When you get too far away from anything and there’s too much of it, the outside is all you see and it becomes work like anything else. It’s also hard for me to handle the birds. I feel like an awkward giant; the bird is only a bit of feathers beating and struggling in my hand. It takes the wonderful part away.

  Then, I have something new happen in the dream. I’m in the flight cage as usual; the other males are still with me. I’m flying up and over a perch without landing on it. It’s a trick Alfonso has been teaching me. Alfonso watches for a while, then suggests we go down and have a few seeds. I fly down with him and land on the perch by the seed cup. It’s late afternoon and there’s sun on the new aviary floor. I look out of the cage into the part of the aviary with the breeding cages.

  I see myself sitting on a chair with the binoculars! I can’t see my face, only my jacket and my legs with the pants I’d been wearing that day. I fly over to the wire and look carefully. I peep to myself but I don’t turn around. I can look at myself all I want. It’s me. I’m even wearing my red woolen cap. I can see my own hand over the edge of the chair steadying the binoculars. It’s like looking at myself dead. Me, out there, doesn’t seem to know about me in the cage, hanging on the wire. I’m afraid to look down to see if I have a bird body; I’m afraid I’ll end the dream. How can I see myself in two places at once? That’s too much even for a dream.

  If I’m out there, gigantic, looking through binoculars, then where am I really, what am I? I don’t look down. I fly over to Alfonso.

  ‘Al, who’s that outside the cage?’

  Alfonso casually looks through the wire of the flight cage. He cracks another seed and swallows it.

  ‘He’s the one who keeps us here, he feeds us, he moves us. He brought me here once. He brought Birdie here, too. Everybody knows about him.’

  ‘Yes, but what is he?’

  I want to find out what Alfonso knows. I want to know how much Alfonso is only me in the dream.

  ‘I don’t know. It’s better not to ask. He’s just there. Without him there would be nothing.’

  I fly up again to the perch. In my dream, Alfonso doesn’t know, only I know. I’m confused and this time I’m not sure I’m dreaming. The dream is changing. It’s the first time I’m two separate beings. Time is catching up with the dream, too.

  When I wake up, I stay in bed a long time; it’s Saturday. I have to clean all the breeding cages. I have to put in new feed, clean water troughs, make egg food, wash out all the egg cups. Do the birds ever think about where the food comes from? None of these seeds would grow within hundreds of miles of here. It’s all so artificial, make-believe. Their lives go on because I want them to.

  Probably our world is the same. At breakfast I put butter on my toast. I don’t know how to make either butter or bread. I don’t know how to raise a cow or milk it. I don’t know how to plant wheat, harvest it, remove the grain, mill it, bake it. The Little Red Hen has it all over me.

  – Who wins? What’s winning? The sure way to lose is to have to win.

  One thing I know. You sure as hell can’t pin life.

  I’m getting so the dream holds together. It stops for the days but I can’t remember that it stops. Another thing is I can’t remember the beginning of what I’m calling the dream no matter how hard I try. In my dream, I’m convinced I’ve always been there, and the dream has no beginning.

  When I go out to the aviary, I do not feel strange. I know I exist as me in this aviary in the dream. I know I have my things to do and the birds expect me to do them. I’m Birdy, the boy, who makes it all possible. Without me there would be nothing. I belong here; I’m part.

  I sit watching the birds and thinking. One side of me wants to know and another side wants to let it all just happen. I get a pencil and a piece of paper. I write myself a message and put it on the floor of the aviary. How much of what happens in the daytime has anything to do with the dream? Can I
reach myself this way?

  That night I’m alone in the aviary. It is as empty as it is in the day. The dream has caught up. I can hear the males in the breeding cages just as they are in the real world. I go down to eat some of the egg food and some dandelion leaves. The paper with the note is on the floor.

  ‘Birdy is a bird is a Birdie.’

  That’s what I’d written. I fly to a top perch. I feel terribly cut off; I’m even cut off from the other birds. I peep and call out to them but they do not answer. I call for Alfonso. Nothing! I’m alone but I can fly.

  I practice flying and trying to feel exactly what it’s like. I had the wrong idea when I built my models. Flying isn’t like swimming. It isn’t all pushing down, catching air under the wings and pushing against it. There’s a feeling of being lifted from the top, of moving up into an emptiness. Also, my flight feathers twist and pull on the air, pulling back, so I go forward. There was nothing in my models to keep me going forward. Reaching ahead with the wings and pulling back isn’t enough. The flight feathers work like the propeller of an airplane.

  I get the courage to look down. I am a bird. I look exactly like a canary. I look like Birdie. I fly all over the cage; I try to watch myself fly. It’s a marvelous feeling, more wonderful than I could possibly have expected. I look outside and wish again I could fly free. There are so many places I’d like to fly. It’s so natural to fly and so unnatural not having anyplace to fly to.

  The next day, I think more about my message. It actually didn’t prove anything because I already knew what was written. I went into the dream with it in my head and so I was seeing something I already knew.

  When I finish feeding and checking nests, I take five pieces of paper and write five different messages. I turn them upside down and shuffle them completely. I take one at random and put it on the bottom of the flight cage, face up, without looking at it. I also put some seed, egg food, and water in the empty cage. This doesn’t make sense because there was always something to eat when the other males were there, even though the cage’d been empty for two weeks and I hadn’t been putting in any food. But now, the dream is caught up and I don’t want to take any chance of starving myself to death. I suspect there’s the possibility I could get caught in the dream for several days, even in one night.

  In my dream that night, I’m alone again. There’s the piece of paper on the floor. I fly down to read it. All five messages are on the one sheet of paper. I go over to eat some egg food and drink a drop of water. I look at the paper again. This time there’s nothing on it.

  I’m beginning to know what I’m doing. I’m at the edge of where you have things happen to you or you make them happen. The dream is mine and it’s as real as anything but it’s mostly a matter of what I want. Usually I don’t know what I want, so it’s hard to control the dream. Also, things that happen outside the dream come into the dream on their own. I can’t make anything happen in the dream without something like it happening in the daytime world. I still don’t understand but I’m not frightened.

  After that, I get so I can talk to the other birds in the breeding cages. I’ve never talked to them from the big aviary flight cage before, or looked at them from there, so I have to wish it on purpose for it to happen. I know the birds, I know where they are and I’ve talked to them before. I put these things together to make it happen.

  I talk to Alfonso first and then to Birdie. It’s good talking to her. I know her so well but we’ve never been able to speak to each other. She’s very excited about her new babies and she’s glad I’m in the dream. She doesn’t call it ‘in the dream’, she says ‘with us’. I talk to almost all the other birds. By looking through the binoculars I know what each cage looks like from the inside and which bird is in which cage. I know who I’m talking to without seeing them. I don’t feel so alone.

  Another way I’m not like a bird is I look at things with both eyes, straight on. I can’t get myself to see the way a bird does. In every way, when I don’t look down at myself, I feel like me, Birdy, the boy.

  In the morning, before I leave for school, I go out to put in new egg food and generally check around. I look at the note on the floor and it’s still there, but just one message. The egg food is untouched. All day long in school, I think about it. I dream the things I know. That’s why I’m Birdie; I know Birdie best. I wonder if I’m a female. Birdie’s a female but I was in the male cage. I’d like to find out which I am. I don’t want to make myself one or the other, I only want to know.

  – Sex, age, races, all that bullshit keeps everybody apart. Competition gets to be the only link we’ve got. But, if you’ve got to ‘beat’ somebody then you’re more alone.

  Games are something we’ve made up to help us forget we’ve forgotten how to play. Playing is doing something for itself; Birdy and I played a lot.

  Birdy really smiled at me there, a true vintage ‘It doesn’t matter’ smile. He could be putting this whole thing on. That’s OK, too.

  I’ll try singing in my dream tonight; that should settle it for me. In Plane Geometry that afternoon, I get into an argument with Mr Shull, the teacher, about parallel lines. I say they have to meet. I’m beginning to think everything comes together somewhere.

  In the dream, I sing. I can never remember singing as a boy, but singing as a bird is completely different from anything I’ve ever known. It isn’t what I expected at all. I sound like a roller canary singing, but the words I’m hearing are in English and sound almost like poetry. I’m hearing myself simultaneously as bird and as boy speaking words. I’m singing the thoughts I’ve had about flying combined with the feeling I’m having as a bird.

  One of the first songs I sing sounds like this: There is nothing of fright when one flies free. There’s only the taste of air and touching nowhere. I see the earth below and it’s down the way the sky is up when you look from the ground. Everything is out or away and the play of gravity is like sand.

  Now, I know I’m not Birdie completely. I can hear Birdie from the breeding cage. She wants me to sing more but the singing is still hard for me. Alfonso starts singing to Birdie. I can understand his whole song for the first time. He sings this: Come fly with me; dry thistles sliding through a crystal sky, you and I. Below, mountains hump and clouds hover while cows slumber seven stomachs deep in clover. We glide together in twisting currents of air, caring for nothing. We are each other and we take wing to find fertile fields and silent beaches.

  I listen and know Alfonso couldn’t sing that song. A bird can know nothing about cows’ stomachs. I’ve just learned about them in biology class. Alfonso has never flown over mountains or clouds; these are my ideas. Alfonso is singing and I’m hearing his song with my mind, in my dream. Can Alfonso really talk, or is it all just me? I can’t believe that. Alfonso’s taught me things about flying I could not know myself. I can’t put this together in my dream. During this night, I know I’m dreaming all during the dream.

  There’s one thing I’m sure of. Singing is like flying. When I sing, I close my eyes and see myself flying through and over trees. I’m sure that’s why canaries sing. They were put in cages because they sang and now they sing because they’re in cages.

  Canaries have been in cages for over four hundred years. A canary generation, the time from birth till breeding, is less than a year. A human generation is about twenty years. Therefore, birds have been in cages for a time that for humans would be eight thousand years. In fact, canaries and humans have been in cages the same number of generations.

  I begin to wonder what men do that’s the same as canary singing. It’s probably thinking. We built this cage, civilization, because we could think and now we have to think because we’re caught in our cage. I’m sure there’s a real world still there if I can only get out of the cage. But, would my canaries sing as much if they could live in the open and fly freely? I don’t know. I hope some day to find out.

  The breeding cages are going at a great rate. I already have birds out of the nest.
Soon, I’m going to have some ready to put in the flight cages. I don’t know whether to put them in the cage where I am in my dream or in the other one. I’m still trying to decide this when I start dreaming of Perta.

  When I say dreaming, I don’t mean I’m dreaming of Perta the way I’m dreaming the rest of the dream. I’m dreaming of Perta in my dream. I’m sleeping in my dream on one foot as a bird and I’m dreaming of Perta.

  Perta is smaller than most female canaries. She has a light green head blushing back to a lighter yellow-green on her breast, then darker green on her back. Her wings vary from layer to layer of her feathers. This gives a variegated surface like a blue check pigeon, only in shades of green. She has white bars on the outside of her wings because her last two flight feathers on each wing are white. Her shape is roundish and she flies with small movements, fast flapping but great grace and speed. She has markings over her eyes almost like eyebrows. Her beak and legs aren’t as dark as Alfonso, nor as light pink as Birdie.

  In my dream, I’m sleeping on the top perch of the aviary and dreaming. I’m lonely and tired; I’m sleepy and sleeping in my own dream. I know this much. It’s several nights before I realize I’m dream-dreaming Perta.

  In the dream-dream, I’m alone in the flight cage and look down to see someone at the food dish. I know immediately it’s a female. She either doesn’t know I’m up on the top perch or she’s ignoring me. I stay still, watching her, enjoying her movements. I watch her closely the way I watch the birds with my binoculars as a boy.

  Her flying is not exceptional in terms of power or thrust but she’s very light in the air. I feel she loves flying and flies for pleasure. I watch her practice different landings and banking maneuvers. She integrates the movement of her tail, the tilting of her wings and the shifting of her body as if she’s dancing in the air. I’m falling in love with her in the dream the way I fell in love with Birdie, but it’s so much more real.