I've been thinking about birds lately, or at least one in particular.  There's a woodpecker outside my window nearly every day now. I'm confused as to what type, because they all seem to have similar markings and similar names.  I have more confidence it's a male because of his red tuft. Admittedly I have little reference for comparison, but I'm surprised at how highly successful he seems to be.  His method of hunting - repeatedly banging one's head against a hard wooden object with incredible speed and force, until the quarry is retrieved - seems incredibly difficult, even by nature's consistently harsh standards. What I find more amazing is that his (super) natural abilities apparently are not diminished by my presence, or my kin. Let's face it: We humans are insufferably noisy creatures. We announce our arrival with a clang and a clamor, stomp about with our self-important machinations and then depart with a huge auditory wash and wake behind us. Even the quietest city streets are a cacophony of sights and sounds that impose upon the natural background; noisy footprints in the snow-falling-upon-snow softness of nature. And yet somehow, this little woodpecker serenely goes about his work, his survival, completely unperturbed by the whole course of human affairs.

To make his living means to be attuned to the most ethereal subtleties. The hawk on the fence post, whose skills are impressive enough, seems to have an easier time of it from my perspective.  I can't promise I could spot a small furry rodent from many yards away, but I can at least grasp the concept.  The woodpecker's skills inhabit the same region as life-after-death and the interior of stars:  Not just unknown, but unknowable, at least for me in the normal course of things. How much noise, without amplification, does a grub make in the process of turning wood into wormwood? Less than an eyelash closing? More than a flower opening?  My friend here can detect not just the grub's motions, but his location, his orientation within the tree and his size.  Who knows what else?  Can he tell the tasty ones from the run-of-the-mill?  Can woodpeckers gauge how well a grub fared the winter, feeling a rush of anticipatory excitement when they detect an especially plump one? 

His hunting method is a balance of extremes; a cyclical display of dichotomous behaviors.  First, a staccato burst with his jackhammer beak. Nothing subtle about that. He fiercely announces his presence, attacking the tree with a fury, like barbarians at the castle door, terrorizing the poor townfolk inside. Then.....listening....listening....listening intently to the far away gossamer whispers of bug scratch.  Perhaps a hop here, a headcock there, that thing that seems a signature of birds. Then another furious, staccato burst.  The echoes reverberate off surrounding objects like an african drum, but with a difference:  Unlike skinned percussion instruments, the individual notes don't blur together. His strikes are incredibly fast. Faster than the fastest drum roll, yet each machine-gun stroke remains an individual note, coupled with its echo. Then more listening, fixing his eyes like lasers on a single focal point. I imagine him holding his breath, although that's probably not right. And all the while, he remains nonplussed by the air conditioner's noisy fan.  The cars on the street seem to have no ill effect.  Nor does the next street over, which I find more annoying, with its constant bustle of transient traffic.  Are these at different frequencies? The racket of the a/c unit sounds like the perfect white noise machine, meaning it's producing lots of undifferentiated noise in all ranges of the spectrum (or at least the spectrum available to my senses).  Does he tune them out, not hear them at all, or simply muscle through with his supersonic skills?

Are his concentration skills, his ability to focus, honed by the fact that his life depends on being successful at this?  As a mid-life human, I sometimes forget that every non-domesticated creature on this planet is focused, to the exclusion of everything else, on its continued survival.  Unlike us, the next meal for them is not a trivial matter. Come to think of it, neither is the risk of being something else's next meal. What capacities could we tap and skills could we hone if we lived the same way? Is there a way to do so without the obvious downside of living on the edge of survival? I doubt it. There doesn't seem to be any way to fake the intensity of living each moment like it may be one's last. We're at our best when acting with adrenaline or in serene contemplation. Goethe: Talent develops in quiet places, character in the full current of human life. We vow to do so and yet easily slip back into the coma, lulled by the sedatives of daily life.  Who creates the sedatives? We do. We work hard, individually and collectively, to make our lives more comfortable, more convenient.

So perhaps my woodchopping, ultrasonic friend can serve as inspiration for me, so that in some small way I can learn to live each moment rounded to its fullest; more alive, more aware, and in doing so extend life's boundaries beyond its current limits.  As we age, we suffer sclerosis to our vision, to our creativity, to our capacities. We must struggle every day to be more desirous to live, and in doing so, live more fully. Our nemesis, that which preys upon us, is pernicious. It is the lure of comfort and the tyranny of custom, among other things.  Unless we struggle daily against it, we resemble more the cows grazing for the slaughter than the wild, sleek things in the forest.

Explorer, ultra-distance cyclist and National Geographic writer Dan Buettner is on a quest to find commonalities amongst those of us that live the longest, healthiest lives. There are places on this planet where the people routinely live past the age of 100. What do they eat, how do they spend their day, how often do they share a laugh with a family member? One thing that he discovered in his studies, without exception: They have purpose.  Of the first group Buettner studied, he said the following: "Okinawans do not even have a word for retirement. They have one word that imbues their entire adult life, and that's ikigai, which means, 'Why do I wake up in the morning?'

In the end, it always comes back to that.  "Why do I wake up in the morning?" Do I have the ability to listen intently, so to hear those gossamer whispers when they slide by?  The Divine doesn't roll down to us in thunderous tones from mountaintops; it rustles quietly and lies patiently, hidden in the opaque murk from which we construct our lives.  Can I hone my skills to razor sharpness, learn to focus like a laser on my purpose, or on finding my purpose?  And can I then, with fierce abandon, tear with a staccato burst of my beak into the heart of the matter and the full current of human endeavor?  I must try.  I must try.

Pulling my easy time from the moments of the day, I sit now lightly on the step of the stair. Shall I walk to the thicket where wild things play, or leave them alone to ferret out their day?
 
I can't now intrude on another's wonder, elucidated either from the everpresent now or each other; even those instances where it is enjoined or contrived (and who am I to judge?), it was acquired in a universe of infinite possibilities that did not include me; and so it is theirs solely to consume or enjoy, as they find it now. No. I shall find my own. Still. Where can one go these days for sustenance?

To the fair Laundromat or the bookstore cornered? Shall I again fill my day with the centuries of heavy, musty pages or simply light out upon my way, letting the buzz of afternoon heat leaven the air in front? How shall I be changed at the end of the day, depending on the course I choose? Which makes me smarter? More importantly, which makes me happier, by lights and measures, and happier still when those things are put asunder?

Let us go then, you and I. So that's it, Prufrock revisited and a stroll down cavernous city streets.  I'll stroll to the pub that serves Belgian beers and never takes checks (and, of the many artifacts that adorn the brown-café walls, has my favorite directly behind the bar: The white coffee cup, WWII-vintage American GI on the side, looking a little smug in his netted helmet, strap undone, his ruddy cheeks and gee-whiz grin purposely incongruous with the embossed caption: How about a big ol' cup of shut the fuck up?).

That's the destination; it's almost always the destination when I choose this path, but I never arrive. Well sometimes, but only if I struck out for someplace else.  That's the way it is. A turning of the screw and the gentle sashay of fate, Lorenz's butterfly never flaps the same way twice, and we arrive, while never arriving.  Something pulls at our cape, but we don't know what it is. I'll tell it a story if I can find the time. I'll throw it in an urn and keep it on the shelf, if it will ever stop its ceaseless shifting and hiding. Ayn Rand reminded us that men have for centuries struck out down roads, armed with nothing but their own vision, but those were headier times. I've barely begun to crawl, how now shall I walk?

Chimay Dubbel, als' u blieft.  I'm driven lightly by the more secular thought of a beer, or not, and the metallic taste of summer city air upon the tongue. Tell me now, did I comb my hair, did I say grace to the day and good-bye to the dog, or did I simply float through the morning? I'll see him again soon; the rest will have to wait. I'm locked under the sky like a dome and proceed apace to its edge. I've learned to not be seduced by what the wind whispers, at times like these; it knows not when to stop nor come up for air. One false move and I'll be in Idaho, when I finally awake. 

So I navigate tenuously along the planar surfaces of  Cambridge brick walls, the city streets and the muscular summer air. Bracketed this way, I can arrive unassisted at the tail of the thread without encountering the edge of the world.

Should I indulge my habit of looking casually but intently into the eyes of strangers passing by?  This is an unnerving but useful trait for seeing their self, the tired child behind the mask of complicit pain. I don't just look deeply; I do this to allow mine to reach out to theirs; a clumsy attempt at an embrace perhaps; an acknowledgement of their fragility, and hence mine; their innocence, long since heaped upon by the harsh schoolmaster of their lives; their pain and its false power. The amount of sadness hidden there is staggering. Good sunglasses help, protecting all concerned from an unwanted intrusion, while still allowing some type of naked communication between their inner child and mine, filtered through a bronze, polarized pane.

Pulling their genuine selves next to mine, just for a moment, is terrifying but often invigorating. It lets us connect for a brief and glorious instant.  A blessing gently pushed their way and we're off again, like boats shoved from shore pilings or the undocking of craft from space stations.

Lack of sleep intensifies the effect, or low blood sugar, and the best lens by far for engaging in this exercise is a robustly acquired hangover - so far the only beneficial byproduct I have found.  This is for some reason particularly effective at stripping away the layers that exist in between each and any one of us as we slide by each other in the cramped confines of our day, sometimes too much so; it has an edginess that can be overwhelming in the intensity of the experience.  The best cure for that? Well, a drink or two seems to have the perfect polishing effect. So. You can quickly see the downside of this strategy.
 
Why do these things make a difference?  Are the filters by which we see the world simply biochemistry? (It would appear so.  Aldous Huxley wrote an entire book affirming this point.) We, with our carefully constructed webbing of delicate synapses, like spider's silk and similarly disturbed by the slightest of breezes.

Can I make a difference this way? Do I make matters worse? No la puerta? No se nada. It's not a light question, nor an answer that can be settled upon with any reasonable assurance. Who am I to ask of intimacy from others, especially without their consent? What is it that we fear losing when we share our authentic selves? Why do we consider it such an affront to be genuinely honest with each other? We've trained ourselves to avoid it smoothly. The day's moments are forged in metal casts, tumbled upon anvils and then tumbled further unto the city's masonry floor.  There we struggle to find the softness in the clanging ingots scattered before us. Or we've longed stopped trying, and simply struggle onward, pulling the hairshirt on with the morning news.

It's cruel, and it's self-inflicted. Entropy assails us; Time rolls on and we fail or succeed in varying degrees, pulled by time and the promise of something unseen.  Can we awaken from this dream?  I wonder. Now W.H. Auden: "All the conventions conspire to make this fort assume the furniture of home; lest we should see where we are, lost in a haunted wood, children afraid of the night who have never been happy or good."  

Lovingkindness sometimes finds a door, or a crack to grow, and there works to transform certain energies, leavening crystals in a pot of clay; liquid and alive it feeds the world. But it's difficult, incredibly difficult, for this to occur when we're simply peering out of our deadlights looking for another, as Beckett knew.  Still, the whole process moves forward, confirming that we've somehow managed to stay sufficiently connected - I imagine only just barely - and by a whisker have kept worlds from disintegration and somehow averted the expiration of our collective consciousness.
 
These factors combine to result in what is the obvious: We eek out our days completely absorbed in the private interiority of things, surrounded by the stone monuments to our own surrender. It is still possible, and refreshingly not so uncommon, to acquire the fleeting, hopeful glance from those impossibly optimistic souls still not quite consumed by the glare of suffering and the ravages of time, death's handmaiden.  And then much rarer still are the encounters with the sentinels.

This exchange usually results in a mildly humorous and moderately terrifying moment of instant warmth, and in the instantaneous docking I in turn am blessed by their calm abiding.  May I help you? I'm fine, thanks for asking. By your furtive trembling, you look as if you could use a little help of your own, however. May you find as much reward in the journey as the treasure you seek, and peace to you.  I'm released just as quickly, and they're gone, creasing the fabric of the throng behind.

Auden knew this reflexively, composing his own prayer to the aspiring struggle:

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

This place we at any moment in space and time call home gives up her secrets only when pressed and plied, in between the sinew and bone. I stand, neither impeded from in front nor expunged from behind, on the threshold of some great mountain pass.  Something far off beckons. I must move now, quick as light, shielded from the sigh of self-pity, seeking this new plane.  The minstrel's lyre tinkels, pianissimo, somewhere just ahead and off to the right, beckoning like a siren. I slip my hands in my pockets, giving  a long glance backwards, over the right shoulder, and ease off the curb.

I'm drifting westward across the wide street, my blood turning comfortably bohemian by degrees and desires.  Somewhere not too far off, the metro buses are making little rocks out of big ones. The currents continue their run in the streets, thick as blood and granular with decay. The canyon walls ripple, banlieues in the making. The city's expeller pulls the humanity forward, this way and that, with the capillary action of a candle wick. The gears grind and catch, the great sliding iron straining to perform its beast-of-burden work. 

Approaching a corner, I turn right once more, and step onto a long, narrow street. Its arc mimics the spine of a swaybacked horse, its dimpled blackness glistening, and I fix my eyes on the farthest slope, rising gently towards the afternoon sun.