Headbanger
For two months, a bird’s been attacking my window with gusto. In fact, I now call the bird Gusto because I’ve never encountered a creature with such tenacity and mindless courage.
The first time Gusto slammed into my window, feet, and headfirst, I almost shat myself because I was doing the dishes and the window in question is about two feet from my face. When Gusto hit, I did that thing from Jaws where Brody sees blood in the water and the camera performs a dolly zoom, AKA a Hitchcock shot. That’s when the camera is dollied either forward or backward while the zoom on the lens is pulled in the opposite direction. A bit like life. Easy!
After ten seconds I reached for the bottle of whisky that’s no longer there because I’m a recovering alcoholic with a ghost addiction. I regard these reactions in the same way that amputees claim to still feel a missing limb. I sometimes wake up with a phantom hangover on Saturday mornings.
Apparently, Gusto is a Pee Wee and part of the Magpie family. In the realm of birds, I’ve always regarded the Magpies as the traditional 1920s mobsters and the Indian Myna Birds as the Eastern European gangsters. So, Magpies and their ilk are getting fucked over by the Mynas and that’s why I’m not too bothered by Gusto. The poor fucker’s the last of his kind and I feel a bit like that too.
And why? Because I’m drowning in a sea of miserable absurdity. I understand why Gusto is smashing himself against my kitchen window because he’s done with it all. It’s an existential crisis, poorly disguised as a reflective territorial dispute. We all have territorial disputes in our minds. Think paranoia versus reality, seasoned with good old-fashioned vitriol. But life’s not bad, it’s just problematic. Well, that’s what I tell myself in the dead of night as Gusto continues his attack on my kitchen window. Neither of us knows what’s next. My dreams absorb his attacks.
But we are at one, that concussed bird and me because I get his absurd task, and I hope he never stops, or at least stops before he breaks his neck. Before he does break his neck, I want to invite him in, have a sneaky whisky with him and tell him all my hopes and fears.
Maybe that line of communication will make him realise that all is not lost, it’s just a wee bit out of reach for now.
BTW this is a dolly zoom: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5JBlwlnJX0
the biscuit years
uncle fraser
was bat shit crazy
his wife was a jehovah’s witness
I never
understood
what
she’d seen
but fraser
scared
me
loud, white haired: thief beater
he only
ever
asked
me one question:
‘what’s in the bag?’
and his wife,
the
witness,
made
me sandwiches
with
tomato
sauce
at night the cabin boy hid in the shadows
they told me
that
I
was going to a school for
“bad boys”
where there were
no
chocolate biscuits
or
fizzy drinks,
I
sat on the edge
of single figures
and
thought
about
this,
no chocolate biscuits?
no fizzy drinks?
this was my first deal breaker
so
I
put down the
knife
and
went to bed.
I had captain pugwash wallpaper to look at
hill primary blues
andrew spittal
was
known
as the bad Andrew
he
was
in the other class
with
another
bad person/boy/pestiferous fumarole
I
once
saw him
spit on another boy’s back
and
laugh.
but
he grew up to be
a very
nice
man
with good taste
in
music
