lessons

The bird bit down, tasted flesh and flew away into the afternoon -- smiling a toothless smile, because birds as you know, don�t have any teeth. She flew up and into the evening and the days and weeks stretched before her, like a desert or an ocean. And like some infinite thing, like sand or water, the years went on without her knowing.

Soon the bird grew old and her wings grew tired and she tried to settle once again on the sand. But it was not sand at all, but water instead and she splashed and fell and her feathers were wet in no time.

So she crashed and burned and loved and learned and eventually came to rest in a place where the people talked backward and walked right-side-down and it was all a little too mysterious and soon she fell asleep.

And in the dream she did not fly or fall or breathe but was a stuffed bird instead and sat full and knowing on a shelf in an office in a cycle far beyond this.

Time did not pass quickly for the little bird but instead went at supersonic speeds and the guitar twanged off and out just as the question came down from the sky.

And it was a difficult question -- one without real reason and the responses were varied but the little bird slept on because it was not quite time yet.

And then all at once, it was. And soon enough she was awake again with the answer ringing in her little ears. And she took to the sky and whispered the answers to the clouds who just laughed at her, because they had known this all along.

Somewhere over the rainbow in a life after this one, we will all know the answers. And the music seemed to rise up from the earth like bubbles rising from the page and it brightened, enlightened, turned 360 degrees into tomorrow and fizzled out.

High above the world it became December 24th and someone spoke to the little bird and she rocked and swayed and went smiling as only a bird can smile, and it was the end of the world and the end of the millennium and �Isn�t this a lovely place to be?� Or so she thought.

And in the end it was all apples and cream cheese and porcelain and T.S. Eliot into infinity and the little bird sang a song about Buddy Holly and the cigar smoking fat man with the magic piano fingers.

And all was right with the world because this little bird knew at last that the music came not from the earth, and not from the sky, and not from instruments or shiny silver plates, but from within.

And this (she soon realized) was the only lesson worth learning.