If I were a poet (which I’m not) I’d write a poem about how wonderful it is that libraries exist and that on any given day (or almost) you can walk inside and find a book sitting on a shelf and think, hmm, maybe. And you can walk out of the library, book in hand, without paying a cent. You can take the book home and sit next to the window, clear spring light, and read about a man on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco who makes friends with a flock of wild parrots.
Sometimes a book can just offer a surprising lightness—a sweetness—and perhaps that has something to do with how reading offers healing.
The book: The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill by Mark Bittner.
Perhaps you have to like birds to appreciate it. But maybe not.
Here’s a paragraph from Bittner’s book, p. 59, describing the first summer in which he began feeding a flock of wild parrots:
I remember that summer as idyllic. The experience was still fresh, and my days were bright and relaxed. Even when the parrots weren’t around, I’d hang out on the fire escape waiting for them. I was well above any obstructing buildings, and the view was superb. I felt like I had a box seat at the opera. I could see for miles and miles across the expanse of the bay to the rolling brown hills on the distant northern horizon. I learned to spot the parrots from the moment that they were just specks over Fisherman’s Wharf, a half-mile away. I could detect their squawking when it was just the faintest element in the great background of urban clamor. As the days passed, the parrots and I became increasingly casual with one another. I remember one time when Marlon had his back to me and was staring down at something in the garden. It was his turn for a seed, so I tapped him lightly on the wing—something I’d never done. Marlon turned around, took the seed, and then looked away again. A moment like that would satisfy me for days.
I like it that he gives this kind of attention to a single moment.
I like it that he gives the parrots names. Marlon. Connor. Catherine. Several he names after poets. Blake. Ginsberg. Snyder. Pushkin. In all, he names over fifty parrots. There's Picasso. Mandela. Tupelo, named for the Van Morrison song, Tupelo Honey. Also Dogen, named for a Japanese Zen Master.
I like it that the parrots, and his relationship with the parrots, become a kind of turning point for him. Earlier in his story, p.25, he's trying to get his life on track and nothing is working out for him:
I had no clear path to any of my goals, but I believed that inner struggle in and of itself would bring me what I wanted. . . Months passed, and there wasn't a single development toward any of the things I wanted. I responded by increasing the time I spent meditating. I was very disciplined and utterly humorless. More weeks went by and still nothing changed. I started feeling frustrated, and then angry. Except for going out to do an occasional odd job, I was always alone inside the house. I started breaking down into tears almost every day--huge, hot drops like I'd never felt before.
Not long after those huge, hot drops he reads something by Gary Snyder, the poet. Something about learning the intimate details of the landscape in which one lives.
Bittner begins to pay attention to the birds in his neighborhood. He puts out bird seed. And then a wild parrot comes to the bowl of seed. And then a whole flock of wild parrots. And then he begins to name the parrots. He develops a relationship with them. And things begin to change------
