The Crow who sits on the back fence is very old, and possibly very wise. In the morning when I smoke my cigarette I see him sunning himself and preening his feathers. Once, the Crow told me a story, and this is what he said.

I knew a Chickadee, who hatched from his shell, came out of his tree, and flew away. One day he flew up to a temple, where a young monk fed him seeds. He stayed for many turnings of the moon, tamed by the monk to sit upon the windowsill and sing his song.

Autumn came, and the Chickadee thought to himself, “I should find the other chickadees and flock together with them.” But the monk fed him seeds, and the temple was warm and dry. The chickadee took to sleeping in a knothole in the rafters of the monk’s room, and after a while his wings were weak and forgot how to fly. The monk still fed him seeds, but the Chickadee grew sad and no longer sang his song.

One day a March wind blew through the windows of the temple, and the Chickadee stirred in his knothole. Out the window of the monk’s room, he saw another chickadee flying by, and soon the other chickadee came and sat on the sill of the window. He sang out to the Chickadee, “Why do you stay in this room? You should fly and sing.”

The Chickadee said to this other bird, “The monk feeds me seeds, and I have forgotten how to fly and sing.” But in his heart, the Chickadee knew that he missed soaring on the wind and singing his song in the sun.

The new bird said, “Come away and fly and sing.” But the Chickadee could not be moved from his knothole. So the new bird flew away, though he was sad to see the Chickadee still and silent in the temple.

The Chickadee knew that he should fly away from the temple, but his heart was heavy with fear. What if he could not make his wings fly? What if he could not remember his song?

When spring finally came, the Chickadee could no longer stay in the temple. He flew tentatively, down to the windowsill. He looked out over the trees and meadows, wondering where his friend the other chickadee had gone. And at last, he took wing and flew out from the temple.

At once he felt the exhilaration of flight, the wind bearing him up over the land. But he flew and flew and looked for his friend, and did not find him. When night came, he found a tree to roost in. When the morning sun warmed his feathers, he flew and looked for the other chickadee.

One day, flying above the trees, he saw his friend the chickadee in the distance, flying and swooping with another bird. They danced on the wind. The Chickadee was sad, because his friend had found another bird to fly and sing with. But the Chickadee watched them from afar, and his heart was glad for their dancing on the wind.

The next morning, when the sun warmed his feathers, the Chickadee sang.

Penelope Trunk writes a blog that is nominally about careers and career advice, but I really love her writing for how honest and personal it is about making choices in life. In a recent post about finding your place in life, she writes:

So the final step of finding out where you should be is looking at everyone’s life with a clear lens. Adult life is really hard. Finding out who we are, and finding someone to share our life with, and having kids and still having a life, and being able to pay for all of that: Impossible, really.

So you look around and see who is doing what part of that well. And you pick the sacrifices that they made. Because no life is perfect, but all lives have some things to offer. Be clear on what you’re choosing and what you’re giving up, and don’t pick anyone’s life if they tell you they have everything: they’re lying.

It’s so true. I don’t have everything in that list — “finding out who we are, and finding someone to share our life with, and having kids and still having a life, and being able to pay for all of that” — but I have enough of those things that I realize I am truly happy with who I am, who I have become, and where I’m going for now. I’ve made choices, I’ve given things up, things have happened to me — but all in all, I like my life, and I’m thankful for the things I have, and don’t hold onto regrets over the choices I’ve made or the things I don’t have.

Sorry for the string of sappy blog posts recently, but I’ve lately been awed and humbled by the gifts the universe has given me…

In the modern world, the phone favorites list tells all about the people we love.

Aside from my parents, there are four people in my list. These are the four people in the world who could call me at 3 a.m. and ask for help moving a body, and I would show up without asking questions. They’re the four people I would make sure got to the secure compound in the countryside after the nuclear holocaust.

They’re all from different parts of my life: high school, college, work, and completely random. We have different things in common. Mostly, they don’t know each other; they’re only connected through me. Only two of the four live in the same city that I do.

But I know this. Stephanie, Nick, Sara, and Chris: I love you, and I am so thankful that each of you is a part of my life.

Originally written September 14, 2003 @ 11:18 p.m.

I was thinking about writing today, and for the first time in my life, I longed for winter — the long, dark quiet of the night. All sounds are muffled, there is no smell but cold, and you can be utterly alone in a wide, wide world.

The summer night is full of sound, crickets chirping, locusts buzzing, traffic flying by even in the small hours. There are the smells of plants and dirt and barbecue and rainstorms. But in the winter night comes early, and with it the eerie silence made by a blanket of snow. Summer is all around you, there are living things everywhere, but in winter, you can look out upon the darkness and feel the world collapse in upon yourself. It is both lonely and freeing. I love the silence and the darkness, being alone with my thoughts that way. I have to answer to no one but the questions and doubts in my own mind. I can have endless conversations with myself, working out my desires and conflicts and the meanings the universe holds within me. It is a time of creation.

That seems odd, that winter should create. Fall heralds the oncoming onslaught of darkness and cold in which I can create within, while without it signals the destruction of the life of summer. Spring melts away the aloneness and freedom of winter and brings out summer’s stifling closeness. This, then, is finally the reason to love the winter, to always look to the north, to orient life toward the snows that are coming. Summer is easy to love, and it gives its love easily away, but winter is less kind and accommodating. You can love it on its own terms, for what it has to give, but its love is not the warm love of summer, and no fires and Christmas carols can make it anything but what it is. Winter is the state of suspension in which the soul is free to seek itself.

I read quite a few books in 2008. Not as many as some years (way back when in junior high when I read so voraciously) and not as few as others (when I was in grad school — only counting books for pleasure, here, not for classes).

Far and away, the best thing I read this year was Little, Big by John Crowley. It’s not new; it was written in 1981 and won a World Fantasy Award in 1982. I don’t recall now how I stumbled across it, but I’m glad I did.

It’s a remarkable story, and really kind of indescribable. It feels something like an E.M. Forster novel with some inexplicable, mysterious magic about it. I could say it’s about fairies, but that doesn’t do it justice, and it’s not really about fairies at all. It’s about people, who are at once ordinary and utterly wondrous. It’s funny, it’s touching, it’s happy, it’s hopeful, it’s sad. I laughed and cried. Reading it feels like listening to a vast symphony of notes that conjures up your emotions and leaves you deliciously spent. I highly recommend it.

“The farther in you go, the bigger it gets.”