Tessi, our bird, is named for the Swahili expression, “Belongs to all of us.” I would hazard a guess that she is twelve years old, and like the Quaker Parrots of Green-Wood Cemetery, she is likely to outlive us all. Or so any reasonable person would deduce, considering that the first decade of her/his (we’ve never had the gender determined; and given her/his one-way excretion method it isn’t discernible to the naked eye) life she hasn’t once been to the vet, why worry if his/her health is good, which it is, both physical and mental, so much so that he/she calls out “ESPO!” only when our beloved housekeeper Esperanza is at home for her weekly visit, and “Goodbye!” only when Espo, M, K, and I leave, “I love you!” and “Hello!” at surprisingly aware times, and although as yet she/he cannot talk as well as fellow African Grey Parrot, Alex, of The Economist obituary http://econ.st/fOHV4U and the final words to her minder, “You’ll be in tomorrow?”, (sure, I’m more partial to the reputed final words of Oscar Wilde, “Either this wallpaper goes, or I do”) but Tessi did – very early on – scare the living shit out of our moody and now deceased Maine Coon cat, Callie, when we allowed the cat and the bird a patch of solitude at which time Tessi bellowed in a voice I’ve not heard before or since, a manner that can only be described as that of a Great Ape in Darkest Africa.
Tessi, then, is low maintenance: buy mail-order bird seed because she (in service of space and rhythm I will heretofore refer to Tessi as a female in the third bird, as most of her 12+ years she’s been in a two-female, one-male household, in which girls win. Aside: No offense, but can we agree on Girl-hattan and Butch-lyn?) will spit and wing-sweep supermarket seed to the floor, and change the bird-cage lining every day if we are to keep the mice at bay.
The narrow trim size of The New York Times is a near-perfect fit for Tess’s cage. I was thinking about her cage bottom the other day, wrapping the latest liner of peanut shells, feather specks, bird shit, shreds of clementines, apples and whatnot, and stuffing it in the trash. First I go for the auto section, which I don’t fancy, or weddings and metro, never, the front section or Week in Review, or Business Day, or especially, at pain of considerable marital discord, The New York Times Crossword, but what about ten years from now, or twenty, or thirty? If Tessi lives to seventy, say, to 2069, there will be no print newspapers outside of museums, certainly none to spare to line her cage at night, which now gives me such comfort, particularly when I can’t sleep and I pad around the kitchen, sorting out whether it’s a glass of water or a sip of whisky that will calm me down, ready me for slumber, when I pause before the cage and its lining, the product of my chosen profession since I could read my first daily, The Owen Sound Sun Times, a half-century ago, a star in the night sky of newspaper history, the first published in 1605, and oh so many millions upon millions of bird cages later, the words lying in space in every home with a bird and this weekend I’m thinking I’ll start to stockpile weekly auto sections, weddings and metro, keep them dry in the basement rafters and build inventory so that when M and I, and perhaps but God forbid, even K, are gone our descendants will be able to line Tessi’s cage with print.
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Do we really need to spy on the likes of Charlie Sheen and Lindsay Lohan? Is there some limit to the Schadenfraude of peering into the lives of the lost and depraved? Trust Rolling Stone – Revolutions in the Arab World, Financial Meltdown II – the original muckracker knows which side its bread is buttered: On the newsstands now, Snooki!
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Memo to Prospect Park Police: Observed at the northeast corner of the southern Long Meadow ballfields two apparent Canada Geese mates today (March 3) at appox. 10.56 a.m. http://nyp.st/hy1XfY
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Finally losing track. Mentally that is. Hitting the zone in my training. New shoes this weekend to blunt The Four Foot (see RFYL: Week Two), and on pace to put in a real training week: Rest Sunday, but 3.5 miles, 8 miles, 7 miles, 4 miles so far until today (Thursday), and the haunting hamstring pull so yesterday, no pain to speak of, only the supersize left leg that comes on me as soon as I’m out the door, but that’s been the case since my first blood clot in the mid-70s, going on forty years, I don’t know anything else but lugging the pegleg up The Slope here in Brooklyn pretty much every other day since moving here in 1990, more years running here now than any other place, although I’ve been running across the globe: Tahiti, Auckland, Christchurch (once-beautiful town, such a terrible tragedy), Hobart, Tokyo, Nagoya, Hiroshima, Paris, Ireland, Paris, Ontario. So many places, and so many yet to come, but now I’ve my sights set on Boston, the marathon’s just over six training weeks away, and I’ve run in Boston, a weekend when K was representing her high school in debate at Harvard, loping along the Charles River, and next month I’ll be thinking about “The Goal,” Boston Garden, Bobby Orr soaring through the air because by April 18 marathon day, I’d be surprised if my team, the injury-depleted Penguins will be seen to be in the hunt for the Cup, which they were in 2010 when I ran in Pittsburgh Pittsburgh, home of my first complete marathon in 23 years last May, a surprise, 3:47:42, why it is that I am still at it, marathon running at 55 years old, Boston my third in a year, and probably my last one in awhile, which is why I keep this blog. For you and me. Something to remember this by. See you on the road!
Next: Running for Your Life: Week Three
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