AYJW

Parrot Trick Training

Poicephalus

Parrot Forum

things were never started that way. a pen was always a pen and nothing could tell him otherwise. but his way was never the right way. night after night with blotter in hand when the rest of the world took to computers and disks--but he could not see. in technology he could not read his spirit, the trembling in his handwriting, the way his breath kept ink warm. things were not the way he believed them, but they happened anyway and this was how. all because of an extra line of dialogue, a half-hearted response, "i will be there" and a whole afternoon of flailing excuses and life slipping down a drain which did not let anything else through. everything is spilling out, everything but my heart, and there is no way to awaken it but with writing. and a quill, so familiar, so much like a small dagger, was smooth and light and comforting. it was life when life had already dried. it was life and laughter when everything was quiet and grey.

"i will, i promise."
but promises never last. everyone is surprised when they are born. they pose in stillness, in defiance and somehow they last for an instant before crumbling. they will never promise to live, so why should they do more than deceive, ponder in the half-light? they are the stagnant bits of life not yet corroded or swept by tide.

life has drowned, and with it the last belief. the last of faith and interest. never love, for it was not life but dream. and that he did, dream unleashed, with open eyes and upturned palms and loneliness like a well, an endless tune of quietness everyone could sigh along to. such was the life he created for himself and in writing. and it worked out, somehow. while hollow, life was still life and it pretended to go on unchanged. even if all that was left was its empty carcass, a yellowed envelope, a hackneyed answer, a lost verse--it worked, it worked. and before nightfall his desk would swim in endless paper, notes and sketches and reminders of life and what it would be like, if only life were a writer as well.