Starling seems like it should be a nickname for someone pretty, delicate maybe. It is a nice sounding word. Starlings, in fact, are bullies. They evict other birds from their nests, steal them for their own. Sometimes they are sneaky enough to watch other birds do all the work of building a nest, and then immediately kick them out of it upon completion. Starlings are aggressive and drive other indigenous birds away from feeders; they overwhelm. Every summer the yard is briefly taken over by starlings. I do nothing to try and deter them although some people consider them pests. I watch them and marvel at their survival skills. When I think of their name applied to me it makes me laugh but only because I am mostly certain he did not know anything about the true nature of starlings.
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Sometimes I think I do not remember things because my memory of people isn't very visual. I cannot remember faces, cannot call them up in my head, though I can always recognize them. I cannot see the past the way I want to. I can remember places though, very clearly, and sometimes I remember myself in places as though seeing a photograph, as though looking at myself from far away. And when I see myself like that I cannot remember the faces I saw, only what I felt when I looked. My clearest memories are mostly like that, feelings. When I struggle to remember people I miss I can not see their faces but I can feel what they made me feel with little change to account for the passage of time. I feel the tracers forever after.
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2 comments:
"I feel the tracers forever after." Oh, yes.
Starling sounds like a combination of "star" and "darling," doesn't it? I admire sea gulls for the same reasons, their survival skills and their inability to be politically correct, to dissemble, and to play nice when they have more important things in mind. They have no conscience and while I am saddled with an oversized, very heavy one, it has occurred to me that I could accomplish so much more, perhaps, without it. Plus, they are beautiful.
I like gulls too, especially the sounds they make. I like how they always do the cliché pose in the dock like they're cartoon birds, or like they know they're being looked at. Definitely a conscienceless bird, but maybe they fly in spite of that rather than because of it.
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