I pondered this new turn of events as I left the wood and scanned the moonlit plains. The field was pregnant with grain, and I suspected it would be harvested soon. I chose a path through the think grasses and made my way across. My horde, the sum total of all I was, followed with no argument. The white Raven on my shoulder dug it’s claws into my shoulder. The pain was not unbearable just enough to make sure that I did not forget his presence. Like I could anyway. This trip had become very, very strange, but the white Raven was by far the strangest thing that had happened to me tonight. This was supposed to be an uneventful trip, more of a walk really, to clear my head. I was not expecting to come face to face with all that was good and bad about me. But it happened, and here they were, flying all about me, as if they were controlled by the winds more than they rode them. I supposed I was quite the site, coming down from the forest, my generic trench coat blowing in the breeze created by innumerable crows circling me, cawing and crowing in every possible way. I have to admit, I felt quite powerful, in command of my own one-man universe. Everything I thought I could see and think and feel was out in front of me to manipulate and study. Self discovery does seem to be ultimate power. The pain in my shoulder seemed to verify that.
The birds were so thick round me I wondered how I saw where to walk, but somehow I did anyway. The moonlight reflected off of their feathers the same as it would a deep black lake. At night everything is black, white, or some shade of grey. It makes things simpler, to my eyes. I do better with shades of grey than with color anyway. The Raven on my shoulder eyed me like I had stolen something from him. I ignored him and concentrated on seeing through my new eyes. Though they only saw in shades of grey, I saw everything much more clearly, in refined detail; kinda like HDTV. Somehow, with all of my newfound senses, I missed the Coyote directly in front of me. As I noticed him, my horde of crows circled him like a tornado, then swirled back to me and calmly settled around us. Again, there was a black night all around us, flecked with a million pairs of starry black eyes reflecting the moonlight. The Coyote, strangely, was unperturbed by this display. Similarly, I was unperturbed when the Coyote began to speak. “Feed me.” He said, simply. Finally, I was greatly perturbed by the vacuum of perturbability that had formed around us, and decided to be perturbed for everyone present. “I beg your pardon, did you just talk?” The Coyote gave me a sideways glance and responded, “Did you?”
It wasn’t a bad question. “I believe I did. And I believe you did. This would mean that we are having a conversation, you and I.”
“Well I’m glad you’re all caught up to speed there Flash. So what are you going to do about feeding me?”
I was still trying to come to terms with the fact that my consciousness had taken the form of a murder of Crows. I had just come to terms with the idea that all of my sins, fears, and misgivings had coalesced into the form of a large white Crow. And now, I was being confronted by a rather uppity Coyote who was demanding dinner.
“These Crows of yours look mighty tasty.”
I hadn’t considered the tastiness of my inner thoughts. “Um, I suppose so. I uh, guess I could spare one… But I wouldn’t know which one to offer; you see they’re all rather close to me.”
The Coyote’s mouth began to water. Now that I looked directly at him, he was a scrawny, mangy thing; he must not have eaten in days. “Good. I knew you looked like a gracious guy. I’ll take the white one.”
“The white one?”
“The white one. He looks the fattest and juiciest. Yes I’ll take him if you don’t mind.”
Now, I am a firm believer in the phrase beggars can’t be choosers, but in this case I was happy with the beggar’s choice. It meant that I could get rid of this persistent pain in my shoulder, and ass for that matter. “Um ok. Let me just… just…re-move-him from my shoul-der…” As I tore the Crow from my shoulder, he left bloody marks on my flesh. I offered him to the Coyote, who swallowed him down hole… that little bastard glared at me with his blue eyes all the way down the Coyote’s throat.
“Mmm, just as good as he looked. Well, I’ll be off then. You uh, you take care of yourself. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” And with that he trotted off, looking far healthier than when he arrived.
It was a strange occurrence, but at least now I was closer to normal than I was since I left the forest. That damned Crow was off of my shoulder, and I felt far lighter, and far… stronger than I did before. My horde had changed as well. They seemed to swell with… confidence? They seemed livelier, rowdier, more like normal crows. They still did as I commanded, but with a lot more gusto than before. As they took to the air to continue our travels, I felt as if I would take off with them. My swirling mass of thought and action had come alive, and the world would be wise to stay out of our way. Seemingly on cue, a town appeared on the horizon. I would go there, and see what my journey had done to me, and what effects I would have on others. Even though the dawn was approaching, night was just falling on this small village.
Showing posts with label crows song. Show all posts
Showing posts with label crows song. Show all posts
Monday, April 7, 2008
The Crow's Song pt1
I walked alone in the woods one night. It was dark, as it should be at night, and a crisp wind blew, striking me dead in the face. It hurried around me, apologetically, and went about its way; apparently it had business elsewhere. I walked through this wood, and heard the raven’s cry; wait, no, it’s a crow. I wonder why the crow never gets as much respect as the raven. The Raven is always the one people seem to have a hard-on for. It’s like the Raven is the high end bird of choice for pagans and writers, and the Crow is the ghetto-brand bird. I suppose the Raven is thought to be more dramatic because it often flies alone, whereas Crows fly in huge hordes, descending en masse wherever they go. Rather common, people think. Of course, there was the movie, “the Crow” which obviously featured a Crow, but when the character was adopted by the wrestler Sting, he became the Raven.
I was jolted out of this revelry as I looked up and noticed that I was surrounded by what seemed to be thousands of crows. They were everywhere; it being autumn, I could see each and every one of them on the leafless trees of this deserted wood. They most certainly could see me, because each of them had an eye trained on me, relentlessly staring me down. As I pondered this new event, the Crows began to sing. Well, most people call it cawing, but to me it was singing, a million crows singing at once directly into my consciousness everything I had ever done and would do. I know there where one million because I heard each and every song individually, even as they sung at once I processed every note and every note was a symphony unto itself. It overwhelmed me so that I fell to my knees, clutching my head to keep it from exploding from everything that was rushing into me. The song of the horde caused a sort of orgasmic implosion of knowledge into my heretofore empty mind. I had previously thought that I knew things. I thought that I knew quite a bit about the world and the way things work, and why we love and hate and kill just to bring new life into the world. I had thought that I was pretty up to speed with such things, but now I knew that I knew nothing about the most important subject to me. Everything I gleaned from the Symphonic Crows I already knew, but never acknowledged, and so now my mind was truly alive with knowledge of self and other.
I opened my eyes when the singing stopped; whether it was an eternity or a fraction of a second, I cannot tell you. I was physically unharmed, but as I looked around I thought I had gone blind, for everything was black. Then I looked up and saw that the trees were empty. The blackness before me shifted slightly, and thousands of shining eyes trained themselves on me again. The horde was still there, but now they shared the earth with me, so close I could touch them, and spreading for what seemed like miles in every direction. They stared unblinking at me, almost expectantly, as if they were waiting, waiting for me to give a command. I felt different, like the years of "adulthood" had been sandblasted off of me, and something shiny and valuable underneath emerged from that shell of my self. I looked into their shining black eyes, and in their reflection saw that my eyes too were shining Ebony. My own dark pits were reflected at me, and in them I saw the symphony of discord and harmony that my legion had sung to me, the symphony of everything the human soul can contain. It was a beautiful melody.
I did not feel as if the birds were other now; I felt as if I flowed through them, as much as my blood flows through every cell in my body. They were I and I was them, and by extension, the entire forest was contained within me. I was content, as I sat and communed with the crows, singing them little songs to repay them for the songs they sang me. Through the myriad eyes and senses I now possessed, I felt an other that was as altogether familiar a it was foreign. I looked up and saw yet another crow staring at me, this one white as a snow bank, with a similar disposition. The crow’s crystal blue eyes gored me, bringing the cold in with them like an inconsiderate child leaving the front door open on a freezing winter morning. I shivered and rose to my feet. As the shiver ran through me and reached the ground, it rippled through my assembled horde as if they were a pool of ebon water with me at their center. The white crow flew down and hovered before me, daring me to defy it. Then to my horror, it opened its beak and began to sing, sing a song of discord, tragedy and woe. It was a macabre masterpiece of misery, mutilation, and morbidity. It rattled me to my core, because it was horrible, yes, but more so because it was familiar. I knew this feeling as intimately as I knew my own mind, and worst of all, I knew that somehow I had, or would, cause this nightmare to happen. I was the instrument of my own destruction, whether in the present or past I did not know, but it was clear. The white crow’s cacophonous song filled all of the spaces the other crows didn’t, like a mad storm looking for victims. The song roamed the woods, and then settled on me, and into me. I was not aware of myself, but when the song was over, the white crow was on my shoulder. None of the other crows had touched me, but the white one sat on my shoulder, as if he alone were my mascot.
The coldness left me, and I felt as one again. The Black Crows and the White Crow were all me, somehow, and I was all of them now. I began my travels anew. As I took my first step, when my boot hit the ground every bird took to the air as if they were an extension of my own self… every bird, of course for the one that decided that it would be different. The rumble of one million crow’s wings beating the air easily dwarfed the rumble of any helicopter. The white crow kept its perch as steadfastly as if it had been born there. The sum of all of my sins, faults, doubts and transgressions decided that it would stay closest to my heart. In retrospect, I could not think of a better place for my ivory cohort to be. Together we… I… continued on our journey, a cloud of crows moving towards the plains, with my white friend and me at its center.
I was jolted out of this revelry as I looked up and noticed that I was surrounded by what seemed to be thousands of crows. They were everywhere; it being autumn, I could see each and every one of them on the leafless trees of this deserted wood. They most certainly could see me, because each of them had an eye trained on me, relentlessly staring me down. As I pondered this new event, the Crows began to sing. Well, most people call it cawing, but to me it was singing, a million crows singing at once directly into my consciousness everything I had ever done and would do. I know there where one million because I heard each and every song individually, even as they sung at once I processed every note and every note was a symphony unto itself. It overwhelmed me so that I fell to my knees, clutching my head to keep it from exploding from everything that was rushing into me. The song of the horde caused a sort of orgasmic implosion of knowledge into my heretofore empty mind. I had previously thought that I knew things. I thought that I knew quite a bit about the world and the way things work, and why we love and hate and kill just to bring new life into the world. I had thought that I was pretty up to speed with such things, but now I knew that I knew nothing about the most important subject to me. Everything I gleaned from the Symphonic Crows I already knew, but never acknowledged, and so now my mind was truly alive with knowledge of self and other.
I opened my eyes when the singing stopped; whether it was an eternity or a fraction of a second, I cannot tell you. I was physically unharmed, but as I looked around I thought I had gone blind, for everything was black. Then I looked up and saw that the trees were empty. The blackness before me shifted slightly, and thousands of shining eyes trained themselves on me again. The horde was still there, but now they shared the earth with me, so close I could touch them, and spreading for what seemed like miles in every direction. They stared unblinking at me, almost expectantly, as if they were waiting, waiting for me to give a command. I felt different, like the years of "adulthood" had been sandblasted off of me, and something shiny and valuable underneath emerged from that shell of my self. I looked into their shining black eyes, and in their reflection saw that my eyes too were shining Ebony. My own dark pits were reflected at me, and in them I saw the symphony of discord and harmony that my legion had sung to me, the symphony of everything the human soul can contain. It was a beautiful melody.
I did not feel as if the birds were other now; I felt as if I flowed through them, as much as my blood flows through every cell in my body. They were I and I was them, and by extension, the entire forest was contained within me. I was content, as I sat and communed with the crows, singing them little songs to repay them for the songs they sang me. Through the myriad eyes and senses I now possessed, I felt an other that was as altogether familiar a it was foreign. I looked up and saw yet another crow staring at me, this one white as a snow bank, with a similar disposition. The crow’s crystal blue eyes gored me, bringing the cold in with them like an inconsiderate child leaving the front door open on a freezing winter morning. I shivered and rose to my feet. As the shiver ran through me and reached the ground, it rippled through my assembled horde as if they were a pool of ebon water with me at their center. The white crow flew down and hovered before me, daring me to defy it. Then to my horror, it opened its beak and began to sing, sing a song of discord, tragedy and woe. It was a macabre masterpiece of misery, mutilation, and morbidity. It rattled me to my core, because it was horrible, yes, but more so because it was familiar. I knew this feeling as intimately as I knew my own mind, and worst of all, I knew that somehow I had, or would, cause this nightmare to happen. I was the instrument of my own destruction, whether in the present or past I did not know, but it was clear. The white crow’s cacophonous song filled all of the spaces the other crows didn’t, like a mad storm looking for victims. The song roamed the woods, and then settled on me, and into me. I was not aware of myself, but when the song was over, the white crow was on my shoulder. None of the other crows had touched me, but the white one sat on my shoulder, as if he alone were my mascot.
The coldness left me, and I felt as one again. The Black Crows and the White Crow were all me, somehow, and I was all of them now. I began my travels anew. As I took my first step, when my boot hit the ground every bird took to the air as if they were an extension of my own self… every bird, of course for the one that decided that it would be different. The rumble of one million crow’s wings beating the air easily dwarfed the rumble of any helicopter. The white crow kept its perch as steadfastly as if it had been born there. The sum of all of my sins, faults, doubts and transgressions decided that it would stay closest to my heart. In retrospect, I could not think of a better place for my ivory cohort to be. Together we… I… continued on our journey, a cloud of crows moving towards the plains, with my white friend and me at its center.
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