My Murder
I feel a certain kinship with darker things. I don't know, I suppose I feel as if there is more validity in it than in any pretty social niceties. Darkness is the natural state of things, much like chaos, a default that can only be partially limited by the occurances of light and order. The latter two are imposed, the former simply our primordial origins. But we so do like to delude ourselves that we have some iota of control. The beautiful absurdity of the universe can come visiting whenever it chooses.
Tonight, I opened my front door at 6:15pm, preparing to walk a few blocks to a planned destination. As I put on my coat, I heard what I thought was rainfall, perhaps even hail. It wasn't. Although I had grabbed my umbrella there by the door, I walked out onto my porch to discover the sound I had heard was the beating of wings - hundreds of them. Across the street, in the two mammoth trees, swarms of darkness fluttered, then black waves rolling up through the sky. It was a "Murder" of Crows, the term given to a flock of this type, but more gathered than I had ever seen in one place. Ink spills shifting before the stars, so many of them that I had honestly mistaken their sound for that of a storm. A murder of crows? I looked above and saw a killing spree's worth.
Perhaps others would have felt dread, or at least anxiety. While I was initially astonished, the sensations were more likened to... awe. Inspiration and even joy.
The crows, they did not follow me. I think I would have liked that. I reached my destination and frantically asked others assembled if they had seen such feathered hordes. No one had, and most looked at me a bit incredulously (as per usual). However, when I returned no more than a hour later with my father, he too saw the Xenocide Of Black Aves, heard their mockery of rain. And even a man as well-educated and traveled as my father was struck by experience. At least someone besides myself witnessed this brutal mass-Murder.
Minutes ago, I stepped outside once more... just to see, just to know. Less, but still easily one hundred crows sat silently in the treetops. I clapped only a single time, loud and echoing at 2:30am early on a Monday morning. It sounded like a bag of nails being scattered across a tiled floor, I could almost feel the wind from their wings and weight of them released. Midnight ribbons slashing through the air, only for a moment, then settling back to their perches. Just birds, nature in motion, but we all know how particular events can cause more wild reactions in the prinitive portions of our gestalt consciousness. Reason can be shredded against the might of the deeper human psyche, and many would have found this incident disturbing in some manner.
But I didn't.
I smiled. I smiled and I hope they will remain my neighbors for a while...
