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Birds and the Other World

Right now I am experiencing high anxiety.  It's 5:30 am and I'm just about to go to bed.  I'm thinking about birds.  I love birds, but I'm also scared of large ones.  I'm thinking about finding a pelican or a heron in my living room.  That would be frightening and chaotic.  The poor animal would flap around, trying to get out.  The image fills me with fear.  I'm failing to find the courage to leave the bathroom and cross my darkened bedroom to the bed.  Even having the bathroom light on isn't helping.

I don't believe in the supernatural.  Nonetheless, there are things that seem magical to me.  Birds are among those things.  They seem to come from another dimension.  They represent the danger and the wildness of the Other World which I feel so close to sometimes.  Perhaps, like me, they stand between this world and the Other, their spirits split.  Perhaps touching a large bird would bring me closer to that plane of magic, and that could be as perilous as it could be wonderful.

I used to pick up feathers whenever I found them.  I decided to stop because I don't have anywhere to put found feathers.  If I did, I would collect them.  I used to have a bookmark that I made by pressing a vulture's feather between two pieces of transparent packing tape.  I feel like feathers might be charms.  I don't really believe that I came from another world or that birds are magical.  But there's a feeling and it's strong.  The feeling is the way I talk to myself about my isolation.  Birds seem totally alien to me, so I see myself in them because I feel like an alien.  They aren't human, and sometimes I feel like I'm not human either.  Maybe I'm more like a bird than a person.  I don't know why I fear large birds though.  It's not insane; large birds can hurt humans.  But - and here I indulge in romanticism - maybe I see in birds a reflection of the threat I feel of being surrounded by aliens and of belonging to no world.

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