Common knowledge for birds: good news and bad news are of equal value. The messages of each are equivalent in veracity, bioavailability, lunacy. They weigh the same [1]. They take the same amount of time to deliver. They drop at the same rate.

And yet, the patterns of their reception seem utterly disparate. One often lands in unmasked wonder, unintentional laughter, a firm grasp of allegiance, a swoop of purposed action. The other tends to be suspiciously fingered and warily hidden, scattered about in a flighty flail, leashed to some kind of blame, gulped like some kind of poison.

What birds know: the distinction between medicine and poison is much more about dosage and application, much less about substance. Chemicals are chemicals. Cyanide sitting around being cyanide is not inherently poisonous. The act of ingesting it, whether by mouth or skin, that act can bring out its poisonous nature. But then poison is a verb, not a noun. Like most things, actually. Birds know this. Everything in Nature is actually a verb.[2]

With this understanding, colors themselves can be experienced as… experiences. One thing may be “blue” to those whose vision processes the experience of “blue.” But to those without receptors for “blue,” the experience of the very same thing will occur as a variant of something called “grey.” This may be of no consequence to the blue, the eye, or the grey… unless the experience of “blue” is meant to deliver a particular message.

As long as we’re interested in message reception, it’s worth inquiring: does the mind of the receiver have any control over what is perceived, “blue” or “grey” or anything else?

In human cultures, most often if the message is considered “good news,” then the mind’s eye would strive to experience “blue,” even if it did not have the wiring for it. It might even pretend to see blue, committing to a lifelong identity of One Who Sees Blue, come hell or high water. If the message of blue is considered “bad news,” however, the same eye-mind would most often strive to keep “grey” in its awareness, no matter how many descriptions of “blue” it might receive. [3]

This is a good recipe for skewed perception, perception bound & defined by the storytelling of unconscious loyalties. Such loyalties are rife with unprocessed attachments. Attachments are susceptible to surreptitious reproduction of Shadows. None of this a good recipe for proper, stable, unfettered telecommunications, much less a psychosomatic inter-species dialectic regarding the viability of Earthen existence.

Pause. Blink a few times. Wash the soul-windows. There ya go. Now, clear:

It’s not “good” to experience “blue” and it’s not “bad” to experience “grey.” Nor vice versa, nor any combination thereof [4]. It is, however, necessary to engage with an experience once it’s brought to the central nervous system. Birds know this, instinctively. All birds. And, sometimes, we need one another to help tighten up the neural circuitry. All of us.

This is why the Owl’s message got through.

And this is how:

Since the inception of the Pro-Life Pigeon League’s Advanced Evolutionary Applied Epigenetics initiative (PLPL AEAE, in birdly short-hand), liaison birds had been meeting with leaders of other flocks, gathering intel from other species among their avian kin. This particular meeting with this particular liaison brought some new shit to light. Light of the basic visual spectrum, that is.

“You’re blue.”

“What? Excuse me?” Florence was caught off-guard, unsure if they were about to drop into existential self-reflection or emotional navigation. The former, turns out. [5]

“You’re blue! Blue, blue, blue! You’re snowing blue dandruff all over my good bark floor right now!”

Cue instinctive puffing of feathers, if not in somatic reaction to the winter weather reference, then surely in response to the cold sting of being called out. Spotlit ignorance. Unsettling. Unnerving. Ugly. Cue more blue snow. Knowledge that could not be un-known.

Ishmael was not the usual liaison from the local Crow flock; however, since Crows reserve the right to do exactly as they please, there was no “usual liaison” per se. There was “today’s liaison” and sometimes “today’s several liaisons” but the Crow family was uninterested in being predictable. Ishmael, notably, was an albino, and so rather easy to pick out from the rest.

“Look, I was given explicit instructions to tell you straight-up. We’d been cawing about it for weeks, but the Owl interrupted our good time and gave us a direct imperative to inform you. Said you didn’t know, couldn’t see yourselves clearly what with all the fancy advancements y’all are tinkering with.”

Florence couldn’t keep track of which part to ruffle at first, so she twitched oddly and kept her manner calm. “I’m not sure I understand your meaning, Ishmael. Forgive me. You spoke with the Owl?”

“Owl specifically came to us, probably because we were being loud about it.” Ishmael was doing a syncopated strut-peck as he spoke, giving an air of nonchalance to the message, counter-balancing Florence’s obvious concern. “So she sent me to tell you. Specifically. Undercover like.”

While this was an impromptu meeting, several days sooner than their usual bec-à-bec with the Crow folks, Florence had not understood it to be an emergency. Nor undercover. She looked around at the perch, stationed on a high broad arm of a generous Oak. There was little autumn foliage left, and they could see 360◦ around them. Several animals were busy in the surrounding Birches & Pines. Many birds wheeled past as they spoke. Florence couldn’t help but squawk, “But… but.. beg your pardon, you’re white as snow! How exactly are we undercover?”

“Yeah. That’s your situation. Get it? You’re blue, and flaky, and it’s obvious to others but you can’t see it yourself. That’s how the thing is. And that’s why they sent me. Theatre.”

Although Florence was many years devoted to the practice of Honoring the Message, she was also structured with a deeply-ingrained pride which added static to what seemed a very simple bit of information from a trustworthy source. Rather than just looking down at herself, examining the veracity, she tried to apply logic to the conversation. “Why, may I ask, did Owl not bring word to us herself? We have long expressed interest in respectful relations, and we would be honored to receive insight from her venerable perspective.”

Ishmael cackled like a grackle, then sped up the strut-peck dance one notch, for fun. “Oh it’d be venerable insight from the Owl, would it? But it’s suspicious nonsense from ole whitey, yeah? You forgetting your messenger birdcodes, Floseph? Honor the message. Don’t diss the messenger.”

Notably knocked back down a peg, Florence shook her head a good few times and toddled around on the perch a bit to reharmonize with her winged brethren. “My apologies, Ishmael. My mistake, of course.”

Ishmael cawed several times into the air. Then he set his fluorescent red eye upon her. “Save your politesse, Flo. I’m not the Owl’s brand ambassador.” He cackled again and strutted on. “I will tell you why though, if you wanna know: Owls don’t fraternize. Certainly not with day-birds. Crows can get into any club. Always been like that.”

“Ah. Of course.” Florence kept pace with the strut-peck, up and down the branch. She was beginning to feel the actual implications of the message, and they felt like a deep concern for all of Squabland. “So, if I properly receive the message: you’re telling me that we, all of us, are actually turning… well… blue?”

“BLUE.”

“And you think we can’t see this ourselves because…”

“Look, we Crows are in the Know with all the things. We hear your lofty goal-swoops and we grok your evolutionary glory gospel and we see your high-tech UV lightshow upgrades [6]. We also see, under all that, your actual birdskin is turning shades of blue. And the Owl, in her kindness, made us tell you. So here I am.”

“Right. And I understand they sent you, specifically, because…”

“Because I’m obvious. Sometimes you gotta state the obvious. Everything else can be all couched in saturated metaphor, so far in that the whole thing becomes a sponge & you gotta put it out to sea [7]. Not everyone wants to do that much work all the time to wring out meaning.”

“You underestimate the Rockdove work ethic!”

“No, I properly estimate the processing speed of your grey matter, compound that with my somatic sense of the molecular field which is very slowly exchanging between us, contrast that to the amount of time I feel like waiting around for the lightbulbs to flicker on, and I make my choices.” A lightbulb flickered erratically in the Homer. “Exactly. So they sent me, to deliver the hidden message in its most memorably obvious costume. You’re welcome.”

Florence blinked. Then she finally, awkwardly, humbly, bent her beak under one wing and tousled out some feathers so she could see the evidence. And there it was. Her skin, indeed, was rather lazuline.

“Ice-blue stars twinkling on a silent, frosted night, made of your very flesh and yet made even more brilliant to me by the crisp inky void of your ignorance. It’s right there in plain sight, Flomie. You’re blue.”

“Thank you, Ishmael. I see.”

“Yeah. Now you do.”

 

-**

1. Well, as far as Gravity is concerned. Remember there are always variables.
2. Proper homage to teachers & elders. Feel free to put this book down, read this one, then return.
3. Now, this can get real complicated when there is an back-alley deal in which only bad news is deemed Correct, therefore earning value as meta-good news while retaining its outward status as terrible, shitty, awfully bad news. See also: unexamined pessimism, smug cynicism, luxurious complaining, diehard apokalyptos, and the oh-so-popular Fuck Everything t-shirt.
4. In fact, “Toasted Periwinkle Fog” is making a comeback in this season’s catalogs!
5. With a fair smattering of the latter.
6. F’real.
7. …after which the sea sponge can be harvested & used for a natural, bleach-free tampon, where it will learn a lot. Some metaphors go feral once released. Do take note in your quest for meaning; it is found within.