In my dream a cockatiel flew onto my finger. The clutch of its clawed feet felt like a circuit had been completed in me. I held my breath hoping it would stay & it jumped to my shoulder. I could see the painted tangerines of its cheeks & its tufted head feathers slicked back. I felt like a chosen one. I was flooded with spontaneous joy.
I woke up remembering my pet cockatiel, Chief. I got him for my birthday when I was 12 or 13. We taught him to say “pretty bird” to wolf-whistle & 1/2 of The Addams Family theme song. I don’t think he ever really liked me. All animals loved my mom, but he was particularly obsessed with my dad & I remember being mildly hurt by that. Everyone wants to be chosen by an animal, especially a bird. It means your soul is pure.
As the years went on, Chief became a sadder and sadder case. This happened in conjunction with my evolution into a teenage moralist. Ownership of a winged thing was a crime that began to loom large in my mind. Plus, he started to get more and more annoying. A furby with the wires crossed, a toy with the button stuck on, “pretty bird pretty birdprettybirdprettybird…” He screeched and went berserk when my dad entered the kitchen.
It was a mixture of genuine pity and an -end of the rope- annoyance that prompted me to set him free one day.
We had been hanging his cage outside on the deck. I walked ardently out & unclasped the swinging door. He beaked his way around the threshold, clinging to the bars and climbed to the top. We had stopped clipping his wings because it seemed entirely pointless. He did a few dancing nods of his head and then he flew. He flew way out over the green gold fields of the Virginia autumn. A tropical anomaly.
On some level I must have known I was setting him free to meet his own end, but I also felt the vicarious thrill of what it would be like to have wings, and finally get to use them.
A stupid number of my songs reference birds, wings, flying, cages, freedom & until this dream of the little grey & golden cockatiel I’ve never connected the content of these songs to watching this caged bird flying free and the ensuing guilt, but also quiet relief, when he never returned. I couldn’t imagine locking him behind the barred door once he had known wind.
But I think his death has weighed on my conscience. I’ve been repenting all these years. And maybe every song I write about flying is a small eulogy for that bright bird.
I woke from the cockatiel dream feeling like I’d finally been forgiven.
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