Swallow
Ten years ago on the deck of a whale watch boat somewhere far off the coast of Maine, nestled in the ominous hollow calm between hurricane systems, the color fled from the storm. The ocean was grey. The sky was grey. The whales were grey. The day was sliced into shards of steel monochromaticism with no foundation but fluid, only guardrails to keep from toppling.
The few people in Maine crazy enough to take a trip on a chartered boat in the middle of a hurricane were there with me, inflicted with the same tourist blindness that grants unknown levels of trust to perfect strangers piloting tiny crafts into the heart of nowhere. My closest companion was a young, fair-haired, German man named Helmut who had feet made of concrete. He would plant them on the deck as the boat would turn upside down, split in two, rise up in the air and violently buck. And yet, he never moved an inch, tilted a single degree, or lost his balance. He’d just stare out over the railing with his pinpoint blue eyes and shout “Six o’clock” when he saw a whale.
I was enamored of him, the way he moved, the way he held himself in such confident solidity against the soapy-rinse-cycle sky and the gun-metal horizon. No, Helmut would not be affected by Ragnarok itself. He’d simple wave his hand dismissively in Fenrir’s direction as if swatting a gnat, say “nice doggie”, and then return to his singularly focused hunt for flumes amidst the static snow of whitecaps.
Naturally, I began to emulate him. Through my observations I learned how he was adjusting his center of gravity and how he was focusing his eyesight. I too planted my feet and blocked my chin, put my hands on my hips and stared unblinking over the railing like some foppish fancy lad playing at sea captain. I remember well that moment when he looked back at me as the boat lurched over a wave, noticed my good posture, grinned and gave me a thumbs up. I felt a thrill. I had become Helmut’s sidekick, a pale shadow of him, his toadie.
We sailed on through the foothills of the storm, dutifully pointing out the low, grey bodies of cetaceans to a thankful passenger list. Between Helmut and I, we were infallible, the Dynamic Duo of whale spotting, sentinels upon the roiling northern seas.
And so it came to pass that one of the few children the gods had seen fit to put on the boat walked to the upper deck and stood at my feet. I looked down and softened my expression. I smiled and the child, a little boy, smiled as well. And then he spoke to me, only one sentence, the one sentence of admiration that had caused him to make his long, shaky journey from the galley downstairs to the very tip top of the boat itself.
“You’re fat,” he said.
On the bad side, much of the rest of my vacation was ruined. On the good side, it’s amazing what the fish in the waters far off the coast of Maine will eat if you drop it to them.
Down the street a few blocks from where I live, right, and then down a few blocks more, there is this very small copse of trees, two or three at most. They sit at the grass-edge of old crumbling curbs, sprawling over poppy-filled meadow yards reclaimed by nature from the strict ordinance of hedge lines and zoning commissions.
At the right time of day, during the right time of the year, in the right conditions, the broad leaf boughs dapple the aged asphalt, enclosing it within a shifting slow strobe of light and shadow. Companions on either side of the street stretch out higher and join leaftips, barely touching serrated digits with that erotically tense, tantalizing, almost-stroke. The half-block area is cupped off. There are a few moments of silence.
And then the swallows come.
Their tiny, feathered bodies instantly manifest from airborne seed pods and the dust of decaying vertebrae. Scissored wings pass through the razor-width of breeze channels in a constant zip of dips and dives, of bent gyroscopic reversals and flaunted spiral updrafts. They emerge from nothingness, from behind a cloudbank of sight and notice as if they have always flown and been flying and have only been hidden behind the lazy drift of our perception.
Upon a windshield at even a slow speed, they are motion and shade and the wind is unheard, the leaves silent. Metal and plastic and rubber rush by, the thump of radios and the constant conversation, noise, noise, noise. On foot, however, there is just one step that takes you into the vortex, into the shhhhhhh of wind and the groan of long limbs.
When I have done this, only twice in my time in Seattle, I’ve stood with my arms out and my head back while dozens of swallows darted across my hands and around my waist, their wingtips lightly brushing my check or my ribcage. Silky pirouettes flood into a river made of arrowed birds, apricot-bellies and cerulean backs, wind spirits whose beaks snap shut over invisible insects, whose speed is greater than eyesight, who can only be inferred by effect. And the energy swirls, the city fades away, the soft-petal hurricane of their quick feathers hushes and soothes, the shimmer sizzle of the treetops sound like the hiss of retreating tides over smooth black stones.
This is when I am truly happy, completely fulfilled, when I am a part of the world and it is rushing at me. I’m on fire when I travel, when I write about traveling, whether it is a three-hour adventure down the street or something larger. I’m limitless when I make music. I’m fearless when I am groundless.
And this comes to me as a surprise.
We spend so much of our time hoping to be other people, trying desperately to change, believing ourselves to be either the things we love the most or the things we hate the most, that we miss it. We miss ourselves almost completely. What a tremendous gift would be that simplicity, the allowance to just be who we are without guilt or excuse, without yearning and desire for something other than what is already inside. What truth it would be to understand that what we are, what ignites us, what inspires us, what involves us is much greater than anything we could hope for.
I’m learning that my assumptions about myself are most often for the worse, that my knowledge of my ability is most often less than actual, that my sense of who I am is as flawed a vision as peering at dandelion puffs through a fishbowl. As the Shiftless Tour swings now into its climax and crucible, I find in packing that there are certain things too heavy to keep carrying around from place to place, certain things I’m tired of looking at when I take inventory.
Perhaps that’s really what getting older means, being so weary of your own baggage that you just cut it loose. And underneath, skin you hadn’t realized was bearing the weight.
