‘Dead Bird Falling from the Sky’
This dream suggests that there is something important in your waking life that you are failing to notice. The dead bird represents a significant aspect that requires your attention.
I was flying down the road when I hit a bird. It wasn’t far from my house/ up on the main road, cutting down the valley, ripping to the east. I was music-less, as I am most of the time now/ my car stereo having died years ago. I was listening to the wind and the wheels and then I saw this pickup coming the opposite way and very quickly a bird was flying from a field on my right. This was ahead of me, closer to the truck’s advance. Instantly, the bird seemed dazed by the truck coming at it so it did a literal u-turn as my car was rushing forward.
Everything happened in a flash.
I clocked the bird spinning from the pickup mid-flight and as I was doing that I watched it bounce off my windshield. It felt like I was tapped by an empty McDonalds’s cup with maybe a tiny bit of ice. I could feel it in my body somehow. I could sense the weak fragility of the bird/ his itsy hollow bone cage/ his short soft breath of a soul. This bird hitting my windshield was some little kid knocking on the front door in a storm. It was hard to hear, but there was something there. Something massive maybe even.
In my rearview I watched to see if I could spot the birds body sailing back towards the Earth. I’ve seen that before because I’ve done this before. I’ve hit birds before. I just never talked about it. But each time I have hit them, I always look for the floating soaring dropping dead blip in my rearview. No dice here though. I never saw him again. He might still be rocketing upwards/ soaring through space/ his tiny dead eyes fixed on my face beyond the glass forever.
What should I do when I’m not at my best?
The world is a-hum with fakery and sorcery, the kind that makes everything goofy and disposable seem important and vital. I have no keen eye for what’s real either so don’t think I’m suggesting it. People I know, they don’t know me and I don’t know them. That’s the truth no matter how we cut it, I guess, but for me it feels truer because I feel crushed now. Land-slided under things I can’t see or hear or fathom at all.
Hear me out. Maybe you can relate but maybe you cannot. Thing is, lately I get to feeling that I am utterly useless. This fosters feelings of being very, very alone. Neither thing is technically true, I know. But it’s really easy in this nasty era of human internet-ing to scoff at a person saying such a thing. He’s just writing that shit to get people to sweet talk him.
Hmm.
Yeah.
Well, you now, maybe there is some truth in that, I don’t know.
But even if there is, who cares?
Why wouldn’t people who are feeling indescribably lost want other people to say nice things to them?
Ponder this for a sec. How many people who ever took their own lives appeared needy or weak to so many when they were still breathing? God, think about it. So many people that kill themselves aren’t people who were on the receiving end of any kind of real friendship or true connection. And that sucks camel nut. But also, what can you do? Is it the fault of the people who talked shit on them to themselves back when the poor fucker was still alive? No, it’s really not. And therein lies the dilemma, if you ask me.
Because I’m starting to think that there’s really no way out.
Blues is blues.
Meds/ hobbies/ money/ respectable jobs/ lasting relationships/ good looks/ toys/ your kids all doing so goddamn great and now you get to show photo after photo of their accomplishments on Facebook so everyone can see how fucking awesome you have done for yourself, as they have done for themselves. Don’t tell me you know what works to fix a person either. With all due respect, I know you think you do, but I don’t really believe it any more.
Christ. Allah. Gummies. Exercise. Change, change, change. Be present. 401K. Health insurance! Life insurance! Car Insurance! Raising chickens in the yard! What is this? Who are we?
Who am I?
And what did I do, man, to deserve this constant struggling?
Aimee Mann has some songs on the Magnolia movie soundtrack that have been talking to me this week. I’d never listened to that album before but I love her song Save Me, and that’s where that song lives full-time, so I decided to check it out. It’s pretty stunning stuff, actually. People rarely get the chance to write an original batch of songs to be the actual soundtrack to a major motion picture, so I’m guessing that Mann must have been pissing herself with luck and fear at the same time when she got the offer. She lives in LA so she probably knows people, which helps.
But here’s the other thing. Her songs, the best of them anyways, are fucking stunningly personal in a way that I find extremely rare. Her voice is believable, and I mean that literally. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s just me and my dumb opinion and WTF do I know, right? But I hear Aimee Mann start singing and I am right away like…okay/ here we go. I can’t say that about many others. It’s as if she is singing about me/ singing for me/ trying to show me that I can have these conversations about love and loss and sadness with myself and that it’s okay.
Do I sound insane? I don’t care. I am insane. But I also have impeccable taste in music. So pay the fuck attention for once! (I’m smiling when I say that, but I mean it too).
I have so much to offer the world.
Can’t you understand that?
I didn’t write this one particular song called Build That Wall, Aimee Mann did. But I heard it for the first time this week and I really fell down into it when I think I must have needed to. What else could explain my rambling here? Listen to what I’m saying. I saw myself in there, inside the cave, hiding in the shadows, like a goddamn ax murderer on the run or something. But I felt so sad for me. I wanted to help me out. But then I realized I am stuck inside this fat suit and none of that matters because the song is just a song and it’s not a cave and I’m not back in there holed up from the cops.
So I’m telling you about the song, at least.
I’m not telling you to go listen to it, I’m just telling you that I was overcome and now I am on the other side of that and music is often nothing at all, but sometimes it is everything there is.
I don’t give a teacher’s tit if you go listen to it or not after this.
I mean, we both know you will.
But whatever.
Why should I try to overwork it?
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Serge Bielanko lives in small-town Pennsylvania with an amazing wife who’s out of his league and a passel of exceptional kids who still love him even when he’s a lot. Every week, he shares his thoughts on life, relationships, parenting, baseball, music, mental health, the Civil War and whatever else is rattling around his noggin.
