Learning is for the Birds
David Attenborough's The Life of Birds series moves me near weeping, even on an nth viewing. Sir David's crew filmed a snowy owl fledgling running over arctic tundra and flapping its wings, its baby down ruffling. The young owl's single facial expression is so intent, doesn't change as it bumps itself in the face with its wing. The bird leaps toward the air, but continues to fall back to the ground. Whew! Flight is hard! The owl's efforts are heart-wrenching: adorable.
I wrote to bk, "Failure more instructive than success." No one enjoys watching Tiger Woods roll the long breaking putt into the hole more than I, but part of my enjoyment is being able to visualize the disastrous line my putt would have taken: or yours. The adult owl snatches a green goose gosling from its parents nesting nearby. That's some tricky flying. But we knew the adult could do that. It's watching baby fail, not even having all its feathers yet, that may map for us what's missing in the present equipment and execution.
In another chapter Sir David shows birds adapting to human environments. A crow learns that a nut dropped from a height may break open on pavement. A walnut, dropped repeatedly, remains intact. Ah, the crow drops the stubborn nut into traffic! There, after a time, is the meat, accessible: amid the speeding vehicles. Next Sir David shows a crow in a city in Japan dropping his walnut into the pedestrian crossing. The light is with the vehicles. The crow flies to the curb and waits. The bike misses the nut, the car misses ... Ah, the bus got it. The light changes to Walk. And the crow walks out amid the pedestrians and claims his snack.
At Highlands Hammock I see gray squirrels who used to run zigzags for safety now run in straight lines when crossing pavement: minimize their exposure to traffic. I've also told about a Palm Beach purple gallinule who, having raped on my sneaker but failed to get a potato chip from me, used its stiletto beak to untie my shoe laces. I was impressed enough that he got his potato chip. Then he nearly pierced my Nike's fabric when there were no more.
Learning is Going to the Dogs
I expect always to love that snowy owl fledgling. But it was the urban pedestrian crow that reminded me of my sorely missed German shepherd, Angus. Angus had been growing blind after being maced by a nervous, prevaricating, nitwit cop, Angus's corneas ulcerating, pk & family too ignorant to have known to wash his eyes immediately. I would go running in Riverside Park. Angus would run with me, mixing his running with a lot of canine scent marking and wool gathering. If I lost sight of him, I didn't worry. I trusted the elderly Angus to remain in the park until we found each other. Once when he was dognapped, he howled until the dognaper returned him. Angus would run like a bolt, but knew to stop short at curbs and wait for me. People would thrill on Broadway to see this German shepherd hell bent for the traffic, stop on a dime and sit right at the curb. Sure there was some risk, but pk has never lived without risk. If you're in pk's family, you're at risk too.
Anyway this one time I run to my turning spot, up around the tennis courts by Grant's Tomb, head back, get to the 103rd Street park stairs, and still no Angus. I walk back a ways, calling. Eventually I climb up to the Riverside Drive level, its 24-hour Indy transpiring on the asphalt. I don't see Angus in the upper park either. Finally I cross to my apartment: and there's Angus sitting sentinel on the top step by my building's doorway. Angus was ignoring the elevator man who taking a moment of sunshine next to him. No, poor blind Angus was on the lookout for any movement that looked like an approaching pk.
As I'd crossed the drive I'd felt ready to throttle him; but on seeing him, I was just glad he was in one piece.
It was days later that I learned what had happened. A fellow dog walker, a gal with a doberman*, came up to me and said that she could have sworn she saw Angus the other day, but it couldn't have been Angus because she didn't see me. I told her that we'd been separated during a run: and she climaxed my story for me.
She'd seen Angus running frantically in the upper park. Finally he bolted for the pedestrian crossing at 103rd Street. He sat at the curb. Some kids came, changed the light, crossed. Angus remained. After several such light changes, finally, a family arrived: kids and a baby carriage. They changed the light. Angus crossed with them: in the lea of the baby carriage.
Now: was Angus a smart dog? or what? When he was a pup I didn't see any of my teachings taking hold, but by the time he was an adult he was figuring an awful lot out for himself.
PS: Apropos of my "Failure more instructive than success," bk had responded, "... Why is this concept so difficult to communicate ..." He also said he felt "surrounded by people who think failure is always bad. Feels like something they get from too much schooling. (Artists, on the other hand, tend to know the importance of failure.)"
That is so on the money. Gore Vidal wrote, "art is mostly failure."
pk has failed so much as to get his fiction published: any of it. That's extra delicious if you realize that my first novel was about failed communications!
Realize, as Gregory Bateson would point out (did point out): contexts are ecologies: generally vaster than realized.
Failures are minimally dual. pk failed to get his novel published; the publishing world failed to publish it; the human world failed to receive it ...
I'm not going to rewrite how I have it above, but apropos of the snowy owl fledgling practice for flight: the owl didn't have all his equipment yet, didn't have all his feathers, didn't yet have the strength, or the experience. Yet the owl was learning, learning, learning: while growing. The owl's efforts showed ME how difficult flight is. I suspect the owl already knew it.
more in a minute (when I come back I'll particularly want to address the hubris involved in believing that success is clearly distinguishable from failure! Which was Jesus? Which was VanGogh? Which was Abelard? How about the human species? Isn't it a bit premature to tell?) (Even if we go extinct, deader than a doornail, it may still be too soon to tell!)
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