LIKE A BIRD
A predominantly true story:
“Do you know this game that came out some time ago, called 'Spore'?” Sue asks.
Marcus hesitates, adjusting his weathered scarf and his unreasonably well-ironed shirt collar. “Uh, no,” he confesses.
“It's fantastic. It starts out at the microscopic level, where you find yourself a little multi-cellular organism squirming around trying to find food, and, well, not become food yourself. Throughout the game you progress through stages of evolution: from flagellating in a puddle of scum to traversing galaxies--”
“Neat,” Marcus interjects awkwardly.
Sue pauses, frustration spelled out in the contortion of her lips and brow. “Neat,” she retorts before continuing. “I like it. It offers a certain perspective that most people don't normally entertain. And I think that's hugely important, ya know. I mean, particularly for us today, hey?” Sue pauses again, “Hey?” she queries, probing for signs of intelligent life.
“What? Yeah. I'd agree. Definitely. Important.”
“Well, yeah, I mean, I'm really glad to see something like this entering popular culture. I mean, if we are going to evolve as a species then, at the very least, we're going to have to stop looking at the world on such a narrow human scale and frame; we're going to have to widen the lens.”
“Yeah, totally,” Marcus offers, as he checks the time on his phone.
“It's funny that they decided to call it 'Spore', hey? I mean, you don't play as a mushroom or fern. Speaking of spores, was it you who told me about panspermia, the idea that life may have been seeded throughout the universe, dormant within asteroids?”
“Nope.”
“It's a provocative theory, hey?”
“Yup.”
“Which reminds me, I just heard this old recording of a Terrence McKenna rant in which he speculates that the best way to communicate with alien life, or create an trans-species, inter-galactic, multidimensional time capsule would be to construct it out of simple chemistry, like that found in psychedelic mushrooms, and other plants, that can be uploaded into and run on a wide range of complex nervous systems.”
Marcus responds by tilting his head to one side and casting a blank look in Sue's general direction. “I've been having a lot of weird gas lately, but I don't think my diet has changed at all.”
Sue looks down at her feet and then out the window. Alone on a packed bus, agitated and disappointed, she reaches across two elderly passengers seated in the row beside her. Yanking the cord hanging along the window, she calls for the next stop. She buttons her bright yellow coat and shrugs the strap of her bag back up to the crook of her neck. Sh pauses a moment before reaching for her quiver of insults. “What's the definition of disingenuous?” Sue openly queries Marcus and the nameless eavesdroppers. She turns and marches for the front of the bus and then out into the soaking street.
Sue joins a cluster of scraggly pigeons under a heavily mildewed and leaking awning. A gull in the street catches her attention. She daydreams about its unencumbered life. Sue wonders what it would be like to be a bird. She speaks aloud to the pigeons, “gliding, diving, and soaring on up-drafts; winged emancipation, feathered and free: oh, to be a bird.” Sue wondered privately what it would be like to be a poet. Alerted by a speeding van bearing down on the intersection, she's hit with a shock of panic for the gull. It shuffles and flaps in a manner that seems too casual for the circumstance, seemingly confident that it will get out of the way as it has thousands of times before in this exact situation. Realizing that the bird chose the wrong direction, Sue gasps, cringes, and turns away while unconsciously putting her hand to her mouth, blurting "oh my God" into her palm. Unfortunately, none of this elaborate reflex does anything to deflect the sound of a large bird impacting the bumper of a bus moving in the opposite direction to the van and filling the lane with a wall of plastic, metal, and glass, all together too close, too fast, and with too much mass. She can't help but blurt “Holy crap!” as she looks to see if the bird can be saved. She looks to the street and sees the creature flopping aimlessly, limping and with a broken wing and neck. The bird did not cry or call. Sue pleads with it to get out of the street and wants to dash into the road to extract it. But it's dark and rainy and there's a steady stream of traffic. Her heart jumps as the bird stands, glowing brighter in another set of closing headlights. “oh my GOD!” Sue releases. “Jesus Christ!” She can't turn away, and instead watches the bird squarely nailed by a car and then flattened, pulverized into the road, by a more senseless traffic. A series of horrible, hollow, crumpling, crunching, crushing sounds signify the ruination and then rupture of memory from matter. Each over-passing vehicle transforms the bird; rending it, excruciatingly and with a terrible and banal effortlessness, from the living present forever into the past.
Just as swiftly as the bird was struck, the sudden and violent death sears Sue with an ugly, fetid sting. Now shivering in the rain, shocked and horrified, she feels she has to flee the scene.
It's nearly an hour and two dozen blocks before Sue's nerves settle and thoughts of the bird are tempered and shift back to Marcus. “Honestly, I think we just stopped communicating,” she tells the slabs of sidewalk passing beneath her feet. Her walking pace quickens. “But, I mean, I don't want to communicate; I don't want to fix things; our car's engine broke down and I don't want to walk the fifty miles back to town to fix it; I just want to push the fuckin' thing off a cliff and walk away. Is that evil? Am I evil? It's honest at least, right?” Sue says in an attempt to convince herself. In direct response, a conversation with her grandmother comes back to her. In its soft but creaky tone, and a certain slow cadence, she can hear her grandmother say “Trouble today is: people don't want to fix anything. You see, it's a throw-away culture these days. It wasn't always like that. I came of age in the '30s, ya know; and, in those days, when something broke you fixed it: shoes and shirts, teapots and tricycles, radios and relationships. You just don't do that today.” Sue sighed.
“Oh my god, Sue!” exclaimed a voice. “What the hell you doin' out in that?”
The voice was immediately recognizable. It was Marie-Claude: a friend from a past life who'd worked alongside Sue in a fish processing plant. They'd laboured years of their precious youth away in a grimy, sweatshop-like factory that employed mostly kids and new immigrants (folks that didn't complain about wages, hours, or conditions) to bring to the world those nasty 'oven-ready' things. The friendship with Marie-Claude made that time bearable.
Sue remembered Marie-Claude as a shockingly attractive young punk, strong and vibrant, confident and a little bit cocky; and thereafter assumed this to be a safe stereotype of all young French-Canadian women. Sue had always been envious of Marie-Claude, with her long curly hair, the bold features, and of course, her delicious accent. She remembered telling Marcus that, if they hadn't been together, and Ani DiFranco hadn't made being a dyke so hip back in the '90s, she would have been with Marie-Claude instead.
Sue looks up and is immediately confronted. A conversation ensues but the visuals conflict with her memory. Indeed it is her friend, sue realized – wishing that it was the poorly lit street or maybe the weather distorting things. Realizing she has a semi-terrified look on her face she quickly conjures a smile and reaches out for a hug.
They are both excited to have run into one another, and to have done so so randomly too. They share a warm hug punctured by the sweet reek of wet rot. Marie-Claude holds Sue's head in her hands and kisses her tenderly on the cheek.
Secretively Sue inspects her former friend while offering trite pleasantries. Her hands are a mess: filthy and calloused and scarred, and missing some fingernails. Her face is badly scarred as well. High on her cheek snakes what Sue imagines to be a gift from an attacker of some sort. Her eyes, ringed in purple, are hollow but intense as well. Her hair, matted and frayed, is cut in manner suggesting that she'd done it herself and without a mirror.
She turns down Sue's offer to take her for coffee but is eager to share stories, so they remain in the downpour.
“Are you still with that guy?” Sue asks awkwardly, feeling silly but unsure of what to say or ask.
“No. That guy? He left. It was too fucked out here for him so he went back to Montreal. I wanted to stay. What about you? That guy Mark?”
“Marcus. Yeah, I dunno. He's still around, I guess. You know. You know how these things are. Messy.”
Sue doesn't really care to talk about Marcus and offers nothing more. She stands quietly, but with a busy mind. She kneads the damp cuff of her sweater between clammy fingers. Marie-Claude stands in silence too, biting the corner of her lower lip, but with fidgeting eyes.
“Hey, how did we lose touch? Marcus and I moved a bunch, I suppose. And you had no address, right. I guess that'll do it. I remember I tried to reach you through Karl. Remember Karl? But he never got back to me.”
“Putain. Karl, that guy was a dick.
“Yeah, well...”
“Yeah, when Paul left I lose that apartment. I don't find a roommate fast enough and can't pay that rent. So, I had to live on the street and save some fucking cash to find a new place, like that. It was fine. But my fucking boss found out and that fucking guy he fired me. He said I was dirty, that guy. I was cleaner than him. I fucking spat on him. Like that!” she gestured with a grimace. “That fucking prick, he fucked up everything.”
“Yeah, no doubt.”
“Then I start living with that guy. He had an apartment near your old place. That was good.”
“Oh, nice.”
“But then I got pregnant and have to had an abortion. That was bad. That fucking guy. Then I left.”
Marie-Claude explains that she's been on the street since then. Sue learns that some bad luck, poor judgement, and a string of unfortunate events sculpted this new version of her old friend. Despite the openness, Marie-Claude seems oddly shy, like she's not wanting to divulge other details. She starts to ask about Sue. Sue starts to reply when she notices her friend's growing agitation. Sue turns to see a police car settled across the street and a female officer waving Marie-Claude over.
“Fuck. Sorry. I have to go see them. But don't leave. I'll come back no matter what.” Marie-Claude quickly marches past Sue and into traffic with abandon, which gives Sue an intense, full-body cringe as her memory sends crackling seagull death through her. She watches her friend arrive at the waiting car but turns away and tries to watch the unfolding covertly by pretending that the television in shop window has her attention. As time passes Sue becomes more nervous. She wonders if she should take off or if that would make her look suspicious of something. She commits to leave just as Marie-Claude returns.
“Fuck. Sorry. We can't stay there.”
“Oh, okay.”
“Fuck, I want to talk but we have to keep moving, like that.”
“Do you want to go somewhere?”
“Just walk. We have to go.”
The rain picks up as they trudge along without a destination. Marie-Claude looks nervous and embarrassed and wants to explain.
“When I can't make cash cleaning windows I sell.”
“Oh. Well--” Sue responds with empathy in her voice.
“This shit, you know, it's not like you think. I mean, fuck. It's-- it makes you think. It's like the philosopher. That shit makes you understand things.”
“I imagine it must.”
“It makes you see things, you know. You feel more. You feel connected to things. You feel things are connected to you, like. Like you have better perspective. And it makes you free, you know?”
Sue stops walking. “There are plenty of amazing things in the world. Why this? I mean, you can't like living out here: having to watch your back, dealing with the cops and with crazy people.”
“Fuck, man, you don't understand. I don't want to stop that. I like that shit. It's like that. Fuck. I do other things, you know. You don't understand. I know all that shit.”
“Well, what do you want to do?”
“Hey, I'm trying to get fifty dollars for a party, em and my friends. You should come.”
“No. But thanks.”
“Hey, I still have that thing you sent.” Marie-Claude rifles through an inner jacket pocket. Her hand comes out sheltering a tattered photograph. “It's the one you sent me from that place.” It was a photo Sue sent from Malaysia of her holding a praying mantis and sporting a silly grin on her face. “I like that,” Marie-Claude says precisely.
Sue's heart races as she feels an urgency, a panic, creep into her from somewhere.
“I have to go,” Sue blurts. “ I have to be somewhere,” she offers in a hopeful attempt to add weight to her lie.
“Where?”
“Oh, I'm supposed to meet someone,” she says in a fluster, nodding as she turns to toward the intersection and bangs urgently on the crosswalk button. She turns back toward her former friend and announces, “I'm already late.”
Marie-Claude catches up with her and gives her another hug.
“Hey, do you have any money?”
“Uh, nope.” Sue backpedals until she can feel her heel on the edge of the curb.
“But you wanted to go for coffee.”
“Yeah, no, I just have a card.”
“A credit card?”
Sue hears the crosswalk signal chirping, signalling her safe escape. She drops, light as a feather, off the curb and turns away with a wave. As she does her eye catches the bright white pedestrian signal. In that instant her senses are flooded with information. Confusion strikes, followed immediately by a shriek of realization, accompanied by the shrill squeal of rubber on the road, the mad banging of anti-lock breaks, and a clenching. Too close, too fast, and too much mass.
