Two crows come to feed in the yard where my wife scatters food. They sometimes seem to be living metaphors or myths, so black, as they sit on a limb, they’re a hole in the canvas of the sky.
Instead of getting domesticated and rushing to the area when she feeds them, the crows come to the yard at unpredictable times, remain independent and constantly alert to us, not quite trusting. Even from inside the house, taking a photo of them is impossible. They know where we are. They are too smart to drop their guard for a payoff of a few seeds.
Maybe they don’t want us to observe them too closely, or they refuse to be captured even in a photographic image. Maybe they are just shy. Or maybe they know exactly the dual nature of human beings, how compassionate and yet dangerous we can be.
When they spot us inside the house with a camera, they quickly fly off, a mocking tone in their voice, “Not this time.”
These crows reflect back to us different shapes of ourselves, show us who is doing the watching as well as what is being observed. Anything can do this service for us, be a crow in this regard. The rain, the wind, thoughts and memories⎼ all crows and mirrors. Maybe we are the black hole. And if we recognize this, we can more easily step through the mirror, Alice Through the Looking Glass, not into Wonderland, but into what’s real in our perceptions. If we know how we dig holes in the world, maybe we won’t fall in so often.
In 1970 I was living in New York City. But despite having, at times, three jobs, I had no idea how to make a living. Every job threatened to demolish whatever understanding I had of myself.
One day, I was standing towards the front of the old Eighth Street Bookstore in the Village, in the psychology section. In the back were two older people, a man and a woman, dressed in clothes elegantly dark with age and possibly homelessness. The woman seemed almost regal, certainly dignified, the man more like a retired professor, his clothes not as rich and old as hers but equally distinctive. They were holding books in their hands while talking spiritedly. I moved closer, wanting to hear what they were saying. They were in the philosophy section discussing the French existentialist, Jean-Paul Sartre. Their accents were Germanic.
Over the next few months, I ran into one or both members of this friendship at least three times. I don’t know if I should use the word ‘couple.’ One day, on 7th Avenue, she was alone, with a bowl in her hand, asking people for money. I was surprised to see her. If anyone tried to pretend she wasn’t there, or anyone obviously rich, she’d follow and berate them about how capitalism turns people blind. The third time I saw one or both of them was uptown at a lecture on Thoreau.
The two dissonant images, of them talking philosophy in the bookstore or attending a lecture on Thoreau, yet begging dramatically for money, warred with each other inside of me. Maybe it is more difficult for humans than crows to escape our projections⎼ or escape easy answers that do nothing but stop our questioning. I shivered with the realization that any one of us could become homeless, left out on the streets by our society.
Today, in 2021 the memories make me shiver even more. A report by the Economic Roundtable predicts that if there isn’t significant government action now, the pandemic, which had been exacerbated by the policies of the DJT administration, could lead to over 600,000 more people becoming homeless over the next three years. We need significant pandemic relief.
It turns out the two were refugees ⎼ he a Jewish professor from Germany, and she from some rich or noble family in Austria, both having fled Hitler during the War. I can’t remember if someone at the lecture told me that, or I overheard something in the bookstore. Or my mind just turned reality into a good story, one that shaped the world in a way I liked, that turned the homeless into princes and princesses, everyone into someone.
I had to learn back then how to mirror myself into the world in a way I could like⎼ and how to embrace and grow from realities that defied my expectations.
I am still learning this lesson.
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This post is republished on Medium.
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