Thoughts on a Midnight Day

This morning I was woken up early by a bright ray of sunshine seeping through the window to caress my sleeping face. I propped myself up onto my elbows and glanced up at the pure, diluted blue skies, and felt the cool breeze wrap itself around me, waking me up fully at once.

Uncertainty... the basis of life? Perhaps it is, and it is why human ingenuity always strives so much to make things as certain as they can be.

Listening to the crows' rasped cries outside... it reminds me of how all the other birds never fail to stay at a distance from them and seeing that makes it too easy to assume that the bird is some sort of black angel of death that shouldn't be approached.

Alone they sit on the grass, oblivious to all the other birds keeping away from them. As they hop along, the others hop back further from them... I once sat on the grass for a very long time merely observing such a scene. That day was the first time I felt sorry for the crow. I wished to have been able to speak its language even for a moment.

"Why are you so sad, Mr Crow?"

"I am not sad, child. You only perceive me as such."

"It is because I see all the other birds avoiding you so much, which leads me to feel sad for you."

"And so it is that what you feel you reflect back on me. How flawed of you, dear."

"Flawed?"

"Yes, dear. Look at these birds standing away from me - what do you see?"

"I see... I see their fear. They stand uneasy at a distance from you as though in the presence of some dark, threatening omen."

"Yes. Most are afraid of me. Some know better than to bother me. My beak seeks mostly the fallen rotting flesh on the ground, but it is strong enough to break a sparrow's neck."

"But you are always so alone, Mr Crow..."

"Solitude is nothing more than refined taste, my dear."

"I don't understand what you mean..."

"Sure you do. You understand. I ask you what you see in the other birds, and you replied "fear". Why should my alienation from them make my solitude in any way bitter?"

"But surely at times you must wish for some to show less fear of you... for some to hop closer to you and see past the fear you evoke in them?..."

"It isn't so, my child. If it were, nature would have made of me a singing sparrow that charms the human heart so easily. Instead, it gave me the dark plummage of shadows and a rasped voice that sends shivers down your spine whenever it echoes in the air."

"That seems quite unfair and uncompromising."

"Fairness is a concept invented by unlucky people - you thought it yourself, did you not?"

"I guess I did... There is no such thing as fairness, is there? Only an intricate symphony of interconnections between all that there is; all that existed, exists and will come to be."

"So it should be that I stand alone while the sparrow charms the crowd. It comes fluttering by your window in the morning, its soft, endearing song filling your heart with quiet joy, until my shadow looms closer from the sky and my rasped call reminds you of how fleeting everything in life is. From joy your heart leaps to worry, fear, perhaps even sadness, but without the sparrow and I, you would have felt nothing."