It's a pleasant day, so I thought I would clean out my car. In it I found a notebook that I hadn't touched in a month. In fact, I forgot it even existed. I opened it and found a few pages I had filled up in quite a hurry.
Seeing as how in recent days I've been distracted by another endeavor revolving around The Written Word, I thought I'd convert those pages into 11pt. Calibri and share 'em.
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It was one of the first beautiful mornings of the
season. The idea of neglecting the warm
air by sitting in the same coffee shops I had inhabited all winter felt like a
grand injustice, so the drive thru and a little freeway driving was the name of
the game. By the time I passed Miller Park, the urge to be a deep/mysterious/soulful/pretentious wordsmith overcame
me, so I made for the lakefront.
Down by Bradford Beach, I found a little unmarked parking
lot nestled right up against the water.
It was only nine in the morning and there was already a score of cars
parked with their owners relaxing in the driver’s seat, windows open. I found a space that was relatively secluded
and had a nice view of the harbor to the south.
Opening my notebook and clicking my pen into the ready position, I gazed
through my windshield, foolishly expecting divine inspiration.
It’s really tough to feel deep & soulful when time and
time again, you prove to yourself that you're anything but. The first ten minutes of sitting in front of
a beautiful view was spent trying to pinpoint a seagull that had a different
call than the others. It almost sounded
like he was mocking his friends.
Another car pulled up and parked nearby. The birds must have recognized the car,
because soon after he turned his engine off, they swarmed him like some kind of
Hitchcock knockoff. My suspicions were
confirmed after he opened his windows and began to toss bits of bread onto the
ground – it seemed to me that he was a frequent visitor. Seeing the birds fight over their breakfast
turned into a lesson of dominance in the wild.
The seagull with the sarcastic call swooped in and stood
before the others and their food, raising his wings. The Alpha Bird had made his introduction to the meal and his disciples turned around, defeated. Many flew away to other cars, seeking new means of morning nourishment.
The clouds above us opened up, and the sun transformed the
water from an endless blue-grey cloth flapping in the wind, into a great plane
of crystals, shuffled around by the Moon’s gravitational pull.
The man in that car decided to fancy himself as some kind of
National Geographic documentarian, as he brought out his cellphone and began to
film the two or three birds that decided to set up shop on the hood of his
car. Bit by bit, he lured them closer to
his window to get a better shot for his soon-to-be YouTube failure.
Then it happened.
He accidentally dropped a handful of his stale, torn-up ammunition
into his car and the Alpha Bird seized the opportunity, hopping into the
cabin of the car. What followed was ten
to fifteen seconds of the most amazingly funny commotion I've been lucky enough
to witness in years... four, at least.
The Alpha Bird, not to be trifled with, immediately began
flapping his wings in the face of the one-time documentarian. He tried to return the favor in defense of
himself – without any sort of luck.
Faced (heh heh) with the harsh reality of nature wanting to feed, he found
just enough clarity in the chaos to find the door handle. Opening the door and tumbling out was his
only reaction, out onto the pavement covered in bird shit – thanks to his want
to feed & film birds that people see all the time. With his hands and knees covered in seagull
excrement, he couldn’t think to do anything but watch as the (then) three or
four birds tumbled around and made a mess of his makeshift film studio/stale bread
depository.
Did I lend this man a helping hand? No.
His stupidity deserved a reckoning and I still had some coffee left.
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