Category Archives: Mortality

Two Dead Birds or the Bliss of Living a Wholly Creative Life

cedar waxwing 2I’ve charged my unconscious with changing my life completely in the next nine months, opening doors to outrageous success and the bliss of living a wholly creative life. Waking me doesn’t know what that looks like, and must trust the process, which is why I am out of bed at just after midnight. It may be interesting to note that I have always considered myself a night owl, and that I have long believed I’ve done my best creative work after 2 a.m., but have gradually reformed myself into she-who-goes-to-bed-by-eleven-so-as-not-to-fall-asleep-on-her-morning-commute.

This afternoon, my wife found a matching pair of dead birds on our back patio. They were beautiful and unfamiliar to me, with shiny fawn-colored bodies, wings tipped with brilliant crimson, and a distinct yellow stripe at the end of their tails. I consulted the weathered Field Guide to North American Birds I’ve had for more than half my life, and determined they were cedar waxwings. We had speculated the birds had flown into the rolled-up awning on the roof above our sliding glass door, as there was no indication they had struck the door itself and would not have likely have landed where they did had they done so. According to the book, the birds travel in groups of about 40, and have what sounds to be a very spirited flight pattern. I imagined these two traveling with their flock, darting here and there like daredevils high on adrenaline, or motorcyclists cutting traffic on a busy interstate, risking the final exhale that follows a miscalculated moment of breathtaking exhilaration.

I felt sad when I picked up their lifeless bodies, and now, hours later, my eyes are tearing up as I write this, despite feeling certain the birds did not suffer. I imagine 38 cedar waxwings sharing a wave of grief over this sudden loss. Or perhaps these two slipped away unbeknownst to their flock, their disappearance forever a mystery to the others. It is not for me to say that birds don’t grieve or ponder the unknown. Humans certainly do. And being one of those meaning-seeking creatures—whose species also tends to egocentrism—I am curious about what this event means to me. Ultimately, how I process it will have everything to do with how I frame it.

I can point to the obvious: existential fear of my own mortality. It also occurred to me, after I had used the motorcyclist metaphor, that I lost a dear friend to his love of the open road, nearly seven years ago. And even as his memory brought a few more tears, I remembered, with the same certainty that I felt about the birds’ untimely end, that he had gone out exactly the way he would have wanted.

Finally, I recalled hearing that some believe finding dead birds to be an omen. A cursory Google search revealed that some cultures believe it portends a death in the family, while others believe it signifies life, or that it represents the end of a personal struggle. I also came across an article written by Christopher Moreman, an associate professor at CSU East Bay, On the Relationship between Birds and the Spirits of the Dead, that specifically mentioned the very type of birds we found:

The waxwing…is called strebe-vogel (death bird) by the Swiss due to its association with the arrival of winter and its perceived habit of voraciously gorging itself on berries that might otherwise feed people during the barren months.

As if this weren’t enough synchronicity, my meaning-seeking brain also plucked this out of the article:

The North American Osage describe various spirit worlds, the highest of which is populated by birds embodying human souls.

Because—Hey!—I have Osage roots!

And then there is synchronicity, itself: much of Moreman’s article had to do with the collective unconscious and Jung’s concept of the archetype. I am in the process of writing my final paper, or personal integrative project, for my graduate program in transpersonal counseling psychology, and it appears that Moreman’s work might point me toward some relevant references for that.

It is worth noting that I almost did not include the opening paragraph, as I was not aware it was connected to the blog post I set out to write until I wrote the paragraph that precedes this one. When I scrolled back up to read my reference to my unconscious, I was struck by how it had made the leap from former night owl to the pair of dead birds I didn’t even know I wanted to write about. Even after I noticed that the opening related to the writing that followed, I nearly edited the ambitious, meant-for-my-eyes-only reference to radical transformation. Except that the next sentence said I must trust the process. A little clarification for those who aren’t reading this with my eyes: my wife and I are moving back to my hometown in about nine months, and while that doesn’t sound like much time to make lasting changes, it occurred to me that I grew an entire person in exactly that amount of time. And all I want to do is change a thing or two about my already-existing self.

What about you? What could you do with the time it takes to grow a person?

As for what it means to find two dead birds on the patio—that’s what it means. Or nothing. Or everything.

Image credit: Cedar Waxwing 2 by rctfan2 (CC BY-SA 3.0 US)

If You Must Complain, Blame Drew’s Cancer

bdc_teesOn May 20, 2009, Drew Olanoff was diagnosed with stage 3 Hodgkins lymphoma. 28 years old and embarking on a new job with the mobile startup GOGII, Olanoff thought that his dreams were ending—at least, that’s what he thought for a minute or two. And then he did something first-rate: he decided to let cancer be the victim.

Enlisting the help of software developer Mike Demers, a friend who beat Hodgkins, Olanoff created BlameDrewsCancer, a web site that encourages people to blame anything and everything on his cancer. Fender bender? BlameDrewsCancer. Mullets? BlameDrewsCancer. Poodles? BlameDrewsCancer.

But why blame Drew’s cancer? As Olanoff says in his blog:

“I am trying to stay lighthearted and optimistic that since studies show that Hodgkins Lymphoma is 90% curable…I should do SOMETHING.”

And he has. By making the choice to shout at cancer instead of whisper about it, Olanoff has raised both awareness and funds. As of this writing, he had raised $3,000 for the American Cancer Society, $500 for Make-A-Wish, and $962 for LIVESTRONG, the foundation established by cancer survivor Lance Armstrong, in 1997.

In a guest post on the LIVESTRONG blog, Olanoff says that LIVESTRONG’s support made him feel “alive and protected, and surrounded by heart.” And, thanks to BlameDrewsCancer, Armstrong had something to blame for the broken collarbone he suffered several weeks before the 2009 Tour de France.

bdc_lance

The fame that comes from within reminds us that we have control over our perspective. We choose whether to focus on a 90% success rate or the other 10 percent.

Comedian Steven Wright jokes that he knows when he’s going to die because his birth certificate has an expiration date. The funniest thing about the joke—or the saddest—is that even if someone knew precisely when he was going to die, he’d be just as likely to put off doing the things that truly feed his spirit until he had “just enough” time left to do them.

Doctors sometimes hand out time-stamped diagnoses like they were library book due dates. If you’re not finished with the story by the posted date, you might be able to renew it, but if somebody else is waiting for it, you have to give it up. Those raised to follow doctors’ orders and institutional rules without question will accept this and let the story end right there.

The library imposes fines, but it does not send a militia to retrieve overdue materials. People who wake up famous keep their stories until they are finished, and they read them aloud for the benefit of others who are waiting.

What stories do you need to finish, start over, or rewrite altogether? More importantly, what’s keeping you from doing it? Name it, BlameDrewsCancer for it, and get on with living famously.

The opening image is from Thropic T-Shirts, a company that clearly gets real fame. For each BlameDrewsCancer t-shirt purchased, $8 goes directly to the LIVESTRONG/Lance Armstrong Foundation. You can also support LIVESTRONG by making a donation via Blame Drew’s Cancer Sponsorship Page.

She Wasn’t Famous Long Enough

Last night, I read something on Twitter that made me laugh enough to visit the poster’s profile. Once there, I decided to click through to his web site, where I read the following, dated May 11:

“I regret to write that Jamie Leigh Dyer Dordek, known to many of us as yellowsuitcase and @jamield, passed away on Sunday. Her death appears to be related to a blood clot from her fall in Ireland.”

Having recently seen false “reports” of celebrity deaths on Twitter, I looked for @jamield, half-expecting to find her actively posting. Instead, I felt a knot in my stomach when I saw that her last update was just after noon on May 9:

Driving to Dana Point to spend the day on a boat. I know I just got home, but I really need another vacation.

I clicked on the Web link on Jamie’s page, ORD to LAX, which turned out to be a dialogue between Jamie and her friend, Marc. The most recent post directed readers to a memorial page on Facebook, and also to Marc’s flickr album with pictures from her last weekend. The Facebook page was a group with more than 500 members, and the album included pictures taken on the aforementioned boat.

In the course of a few minutes, I went from laughing at a witty post to crying over pictures of a laughing, vibrant woman ten years my junior, whose life ended the next day. I read more of Jamie’s words and found myself grieving over the loss of a friend I had never met and questioning my own mortality.

The more we embrace the “What are you doing?” mentality of sharing our real-time minutiae with the world, the harder it is to differentiate between immediacy and intimacy. We reach across continents and touch others, sometimes before we even finish our own thoughts, and then we become so accustomed to their daily (or hourly) updates that we are significantly impacted when the channel goes blank.

Jamie’s Twitter page lists nearly 700 followers; she was following 542. After seeing her pictures and reading more of her words, I know that several hundred people are experiencing a real sense of loss. Had I been fortunate enough to have known her, I imagine I would have clicked on her profile several times, still refusing to believe she had nothing more to say.

My heart goes out to Jamie’s family and friends, and to everyone who is dealing with grief and loss.

When I was moving from Twitter to Jamie’s blog and back last night, I read a post by Seth Simonds that resonated with what I was feeling:

Let’s say you’re given 10 secs to call out the top five priorities in your life or die. Could you? Do you know what’s most important to you?

I believe that Jamie could have done it without hesitation.