Seasons in Progress

People used to wonder at the sign outside his cubicle that read “Seasons in Progress.” It was actually supposed to read “Session in Progress” but he’d typoed the first word and didn’t notice the auto-correct incorrectly corrected it to read Seasons. In reality, with his days spent infomancing with the new Dynamatronic Computation Engine, ‘seasons’ and ‘sessions’ were pretty much interchangeable in their incongruity. He’d printed the incorrect auto-corrected version and put it up without really noticing the error.

Puzzled, his secretary asked about it after returning from lunch.

“It’s a pun.” he told her, “The DCE uses sessions to keep users logged in. Since I’m always logged in, I’m in session.” He smiled. She didn’t.

“It says ‘Seasons.’”

“…so it does,” he marveled, and forty-three of them went by.

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring found him in a monastery that floated on a lake in a forest. The brook had melted and murmured and glid beneath the Ume blossoms, and he sat silently not thinking, but fishing. Old Man Trout surfaced then, avoiding the hook as usual.

“You’re still here,” the Trout said.

“I am.”

“It’s spring.”

The man nodded.

“You told me last Autumn you were leaving to fish the Aethers.”

“I was angry then. I’m not anymore.” he told the trout, who sank and reemerge moments later, turning one unblinking black eye up to look at the man.

“I wondered if you’d be here when I awoke. I had a dream.” the trout said.

The man listened and re-cast his line.

Old Man Trout flicked his tail, “I dreamt the world had no tilt and there were no seasons. There was no death or rebirth. Like before the moon came and created the tides.” He rolled in the water, “There was a red maple at twilight, and it never lost it’s leaves. You were in the dream, but you were always the same, always as you were and never changing.”

“Everything changes.”

“But only because of the tilt. If it wasn’t for the tilt, it would be like in my dream.”

The man considered this, “It was just a dream.”

“Nothing is just anything.” countered the fish, and flicked water at the man, who shrugged, neither agreeing nor disagreeing, and wiped off his cheek.

“What of the Aethers then? You’ll just do nothing?”

“I’m not interested any longer. There’s nothing to find.”

“The why fish at all?”

“Because to human doesn’t make sense,” the man chuckled. Then and later, “…it’s different now. I’m not looking for anything anymore. I’m no longer angry. I have no questions. I no longer read except for enjoyment and wonder at everything but ponder not at all. I just cast the line and see what comes, like how you may let a current take you.”

“I see.”

The man grinned, “Good.”

Eventually, the man’s seasons came to an end as seasons do, and his body was placed upon a raft and cast out into a lake alight with floating candles. He was escorted by an old trout that swam slowly in and out of the craft’s wake.

My dog became a bird…

Just before my dog became a bird and flew away I was doing laundry. It’d been raining steadily for over nine years and I’d grown quite accustomed to the pattering tinsel sound of it hitting the aluminum shed outside my home - a sound heard from any room in the small house. When it stopped I waited, cataloging and reevaluating my new and quieter, environment. I noticed for the first time that the windows were sadly in need of cleaning.

Looking out, I watched a conference of small birds saturate themselves with dust from under the carport (obviously well watered already, and now working to maintain their optimum wing oils) speaking to one another in that arcane language of birds. Avian bathing practices are varied: Chickadees, yellowthroats, wrens, buntings, and waterthrushes tend to dart in and out of water, immersing and rolling, before returning to shore flicking wings and vibrating feathers; The Wrentit, usually found in habitats where pools of water are scarce, wets its plumage with dew from vegetation, while birds with weak feet, such as swifts and swallows (who spend most of their time flying), dip into the water during flight, getting their baths “on the wing” so to speak; Those with stubby, weak legs, like most woodpeckers and nuthatches, simply expose their feathers when it’s drizzling. On that day, I was watching a host of House Sparrows and thus the dust bath made perfect sense following the constant rains. Feathers, you see, are marvelous and intricate devices, but keeping them functional requires constant care. As unfeathered animals, it’s easy to forget this, and it would do us well to consider such things on occasion.

Once, our ancestors could speak to birds in the whistle languages (remnants of which can still be heard in some isolated parts of the world), but I believe the total untrustworthiness of the bird race eventually resulted in us simply not valuing anything they said, until finally, through disuse, we lost the ability to understand them altogether. For myself however, when I was a young man searching for answers (as young men are oft to do before they grow wiser) happenstance found me one day resting beneath an ancient Yew in a small churchyard, north of the north end of Loch Tay, in Scotland. Over many visits (it was an isolated and quiet place, and I valued those things even in my youth) the tree grew to trust me, and on a certain morning in March, two days before the new moon, when Mercury was nearing its inferior conjunction with the Sun, and the bitter winds of Cailleach Bheur, the blue-faced hag of winter, howled through the Shire as they had howled since All Hallows Eve, it shared with me it’s memories, not least of which was the memory of birds.

So I watched them, those Sparrows, and listened with an ear toward syntax: something about a Peregrine, and a cliff pockmarked with caverns above a far away sea. Then a warning that a terrible storm approached. Had it been any other species, the thought of a storm approaching might have given me pause, but birds, as I’d learned over time, are as prone to lie and brag to one another as they are to other races, so one can never be sure about anything they say. Though it was interesting nonetheless.

I folded a white, flannel shirt that had belonged to my eldest son when he was a toddler. I’d been cleaning out closets and came across it. I held it for a long time that morning, feeling many things, and for no particular reason placed it in the laundry basket. I recalled a time several years before when birds had watched as Kwan Yin’s head was removed from her body and cast into the ferns beneath a Japanese maple beside my home. “There is no repairing that,” I’d heard one speak to the collective, “they may be able to reattach it, but it will never be fixed.” “Yes,” affirmed the collective, “there will always be a scar, even after it fades.” Being birds, they clearly didn’t understand the complexity of the situation, but there was a truth in that too… I suppose there’s truth in everything somewhere, but I digress.

Before my dog flew away, he was like any other Labrador Retriever, a family pet (I didn’t hunt) who enjoyed our company and loved the children. I was totally unaware he had ambitions beyond eating, thinking about eating, and barking at the potential threats only he could see or hear. But I saw him that day the rain had stopped, sitting on the wet grass, a small Wren perched atop his head leaning down and whispering as one of the House Sparrows (newly dusted I might add) held his ear aloft with a furious flapping of wings. It was curious. A dog’s language is actually very close to that of the birds, though at a far lower pitch of course, and their hearing is far superior. I wondered if the Wren was just not educated in the ways of dogs, or if it was concerned with being overheard. I don’t know much about the rules of avian society, but I believe teaching wingless animals to fly is frowned upon (the lack of wingless flying animals in the skies seems to support this assumption), which would explain why in the end my dog turned into a bird rather than just flying away in his canine form. In any case, the Sparrow was straining to keep the ear aloft and before long grew tired, and the ear flopped back into it’s usual place beside my dog’s head. The Wren gave the Sparrow a look that might have been an exasperated “huff” if it was human and spoke louder, indicating that my first assumption may have been right.

In reality, there was no reason for the Wren to speak any louder. Just about any dog could have heard it perfectly clear from several feet away, and this of course begged the question, why was the Wren talking to the dog at all? Clearly they didn’t know each other well, and birds rarely conversed with other races anymore. It soon became clear.

I listened. I was intriqued. It was such a simple thing really.

And then? My dog turned into a bird and flew away.

I felt happy for him. Turned out he’d always wanted to fly, and though he was content with the eating, the thinking about eating, and protecting the home from potential threats, he wasn’t thriving, he didn’t feel alive. He was just content. Most dogs (and people I might add) are perfectly content with being content, and they maintain safe, low expectations of themselves embracing the non-extrodinary, the doable and the average. But sometimes one is born without wings and despite this they want to fly. My dog was like this. You’d have never known it of course, he played the part of a content animal very well. But it wasn’t enough and he flew away.

When I sit alone considering things in ways I hadn’t considered before, I try an understand what his life must have been like. He must have had to hide his secret desire to fly, keeping it safe within his reach, but far from others, with their propensity to set reachable and doable goals, their need to equate completeness and accomplishment with self-worth, and their tendency to define themselves though those things they do. It must have been hard for one that has no wings, yet wants to fly.

I still wonder what arrangement was made between my dog and the Wren, especially on days when the rains stop. I would like for him to fly to me and tell me his tales as a bird, whether or not his heart is truly free now. Later tonight, I’ll fly to the top of the tallest thing I can find and watch for a break in the clouds, a glimpse of the stars that were so numerous, so seemingly infinite in number, that I so loved in my childhood, in those early days before the rains came. I remain eternally grateful for the conversation between my dog and a Wren I was lucky enough to overhear. It’s a simple thing really, to fly. Strange that so many are content not to.

Incidentally, no storm ever came; It was just a bird bragging, trying to make itself seem important.