Today. What's today? How do I feel? Don't ask, just change things a little. The bird in the window looks at me again. It doesn't move, doesn't want anything, or I don't think it wants anything. Doesn't a bird usually twitch and chirp? Well, not this bird, this is a special bird; it is a bird with a sky blue hood and cape and a gray, furry looking cummerbund. Its eyes are black stones, like something rare, and with little bitty lights shining in them. Yet it is an indifferent bird. Is it a reflection of some inner state? Does the bird say, "You have an interesting appearance alright but there's nothing much else going on?" "Yeah, who asked you?" I have to say, and draw the blind. It's darker now. I'd rather there were more light, so I stand in the middle of the room without moving. I seem to have forgotten something. I suppose it doesn't matter because soon I find I'm moving on across the floodland of the rug (I watered the rug last night because it was burning). The chair, that's what I want. With the table beside it and a cup of coffee waiting there for me ... well, it's not precisely waiting, I put it there myself some time ago, but I can think that, can't I, that it's waiting for me, wondering where I've been, why'd you put me here, asshole, and run off on adventures with symbolic birds? It's the mind talking now, you see; it says things, words which have been lent meaning for a little while. We learn them in school. That part of the day was called Language, I remember. The teacher made a big thing of it. Later on in life's journey I was presented with the Whorfian Hypothesis, which tells us that our very thinking is conditioned by language, that we couldn't really think at all without it. Something like that. I was convinced by the arguments, anyway, whatever they were. But here's something. As if in response to my very thinking a flyer comes unglued from the ceiling, wafts on down and snaps open there before me. It's from the Association and it's headed: "LANGUAGE CANNOT BE EMPTY." Reading on, I find that these words are attributed to the Associate. I guess he's the leader, the head of the Association. But I'm not going to read any further. I'm going to just leave it like that and whoever I see today, I'll just have to tell them about the wonderful thing the Associate has said. They will probably know but that's alright. When I give them the Whorf business and my take on it and then mix all that in with the words of our Associate something will happen, no doubt preceded by laughter. If I talk to anybody today, that is. Well, I suppose I'll see the neighbor leaving for work. First I'll ask him, "Did you hear about the fire last night?" "Fire?" "Yeah, there was a fire on my rug. I had to hose the thing down. Real bummer. Now I'm going to have wet feet all day." "Bummer," he agrees and goes on. He starts his car and miraculously there is a muffled bass drum which seems to shake the earth and then it gets softer as he pulls away. I suppose I won't have time to give him the Whorfian hypothesis (I'm beginning to think it's not true any more), and he will no doubt have heard what the Associate has said and made nothing of it. I feel alone in this, my project of attributing meaning to what the Associate says. Fun meaning, though. If you leave things out, or add a word. More often than not you can just leave what he says alone and it has the same effect. That's a fun thing to do, too. People say, "Yeah, right, gotta run," and then they run, run, run, it's amazing. Where are they going? "Run?" I say. Well, what they mean is, get in my car and drive with the BOOM BOOM going and race to work or possibly out into deserts of vindication to realize some bloodwish, down to the sea in ships or simply to drown, to die without honor, without meaning. It is not a generous way to go but I don't have the vote, nobody does. I have decided I want to see more of the day. I will yank up the shade and let it go snap and rollarollaroll and either the goddamned bird will be there hating me or it will be off hating somebody else. So, voila! no bird. What will I do for a symbol now? Oh, well, they're laying all over the place, bowls, statues, an elephant bank, fat, laughing Chinese holding the world up, only it's several worlds, one within the other, carved out of ivory. But the day is gloomy with smoke. I suppose the fire last night must have spread to the rugs of my neighbors. They will hate me even more now, or at least begin to hate me. Fact is, I don't think they even know I live here. Only the bird knows. He has told me. "We know where you live," he says. "It will be duly reported. Expect weaponry. At the very least unkind words which will affect your thinking. You will hate yourself in the end, hate yourself even more than your neighbors do, than the birds do. Things could get ugly." And then he flies away. Twitches, really, finally twitches like all the other dirty little birds, and he rushes off into the air as if someone else were waiting.
Brent Powers is a regular guy with a firm handshake which always includes a Twinky.