some days have their stories...my yesterday became a parable.
here's what happened:
first of all, this is me david, frank is with his family on the east coast for a moment (love to the lyon). So, I went up to the spot in the Richmond hills yesterday morning before work to keep working on this drawing I've been drawing up there. Pretty chill, whatever. After a few hours of sitting, I got up to take a walk and eat my tuna fish sandwich. I headed down this hill where I hadn't been yet, and as I approached the edge of the woods, down the hill, I noticed a strange light. As I drew closer to the woods edge, I looked through the curtain of eucalyptus and realized that there was some small body of water in the woods, which was a shock as the richmond hills are dry creatures. Or so I thought.
Here's where the symbolism goes crazy. So in my dreamy curiosity, I passed under the barbwire fence that contained the woods, and walked towards the dappled green light reflecting off the water. It was a small pool of water in which 6 Ducks were following each other round in winding course. I watched them with warmth, then looked to my right and realized that over the next little ridge was what appeared to be another clearing. I walked up and saw a SECOND pool of water, also murky, but with bright bright sun soaking over it, and on the far edge of the water, the were 6 gigantic Vultures sunning themselves in a pack (one had its back to me, wings spead in all of their vast dark glory). I was startled seeing such huge mean birds, so I walked a wide loop only to find, get this, a THIRD pool of water, this one murkier and darker than the first two, and in this pool 2 immense Swans (what!) were floating. At this point I needed to sit down. What were swans doing in this nowhere pool of water? I ate my tuna sandwich watching them as they went about their strange routine. One of them stayed in the water, circling from one edge to the other, and then doing these sweeping half flight/half swoop sprints across the length of this 50yd long pool. It was so white but the water was so brown, each low flight I cold see the water stains on its underbelly. The other swan spent this whole time standing on the edge of the water, lifting stick after stick up with its beak and moving each one from left to right, not with any seeming purpose. David Lynch eat your heart out. I finished my sandwich and apple and looked up and realized 3 of the vultures were sitting like huge stones in the trees above. I figured I better complete my visits and go over to the vulture pool. As I approached the pool, the vultures all of a sudden started swooping every which way, leaving behind the body of a massive deer on the sun soaked bank of the pool. I took in just a minute of its grand antlered head and the gaping whole in its belly before the sound of the vultures over head and the sound of flies made me run with my hands over my head away back toward the first pool. When I got back to the first pool, the ducks were gone, and there was just 1 small black swan bird that instantly darted away from me under the cover of the trees on the shaded side of the pool. I sat for a moment in waves of wonder before crawling back under the barb wire fence and starting to walk back because I had to get to work.
As I walked back and my head returned to my neck, 2 things happened. First, I found a small dead bird with grey wings and a bright yellow breast. When I bent to inspect, I realized that it was perfectly intact except that both of its eyes were gouged out. I sometimes collect things like this to study in my amateur naturalist way (above is a humming bird that I have in a jar), but I recently had an incident where I found a baby rattlesnake that was dead with a mouse half-way digested still in its belly, which I thought about leaving or taking or taking or leaving. After some doubt, I decided it was too rad to leave behind, I wanted it. so I took it. Not 20 minutes after I put the snake in a bag and stowed it in my guitar case, I fell about 15ft out of a tree while getting ready to film a song with Frank while Sam was here. The first thing that came to mind as I lay on the ground below the tree was the snake. After I mananaged to get up, I removed it from my guitar case and buried in hopes of doing the right thing. Still feeling the soreness from that fall, I brought the bird off the path and put it in the ground. Second thing that happened. As I got nearly back to the main path, I saw the first people all morning, these highschool lovers who had skipped out on school to come up to the hills (I loved them). They asked me where the path goes, and I said something about how it just keeps going, and then a snake with a yellow stripe on it back darted right between us all! The girl screamed, I gave a mini leap, and the guy started laughing.
That all happened to me yesterday! I was in a parallel parable universe. Any interpretations of these events would be much appreciated, I would love to know what my life means.
3 comments:
wings, by mary oliver
My dog came through the pinewoods dragging a dead fox – ribs and a spine, and a tail with the fur still on it. Where did you find this? I said to her, and she showed me. And there was the skull, there were the leg bones and the shoulder blades.
I took them home. I scrubbed them and put them on a shelf to look at – the pelvis, and the snowy helmet. Sometimes, in the pines, in the starlight, an owl hunches in the dense needles, and coughs up his pellet – the vole or the mouse recently eaten. The pellets fall through the branches, through the hair of the grass. Dark flowers of fur, with a salt of bones and teeth, melting away.
In Washington, inside the building of glass and stone, and down the long aisles, and deep inside the drawers, are the bones of women and children, the bones of old warriors. Whole skeletons and parts of skeletons. They can’t move. They can’t even shiver. Mute, catalogued – they lie in the wide drawers.
So it didn’t take long. I could see how it was, and where I was headed. I took what was left of the fox back to the pinewoods and buried it. I don’t even remember where. I do remember, though, how I felt. If I had wings I would have opened them. I would have risen from the ground.
I like the way the water was shining, and naturally, i love that the swans lift sticks for no reason. An essentially creative use of time.
In alchemy the swan represents a time of realization of the true light of the world. It's often mistaken for the arrival of the final stage of true illumination, but it is just a glimpse of something so incredible that it's overpowering to the soul- a stage which is associated with a blinding white light, and therefore the White Swan, which is rarely seen in flight, instead floating on some body of water.
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