Crows and Other Gifts

On Making Connections in a Hurried World

This is a meditation on gifts and the web of interaction that keeps us all connected in this stressed and hurried world…

We all give to the world, in some way or another. We give time. Thought. Emotional support. Labor. Laughter. Tears. Money. Encouragement.

Some of us give too little. Others of us just may give too much.

I used to ask my clients and students to assess whether a project or relationship overall fed, drained, or ate their energy. Sure, we all get tired sometimes, or things feel like a challenge or a slog. But overall? We need to feel fed. If a project or relationship overall drains or eats our energy? It is neither healthy nor sustainable, and can lead to burnout or resentment.

But what is that exchange? What does being fed feel like? Does it mean a constant tallying of output vs input? Does it mean score keeping of who puts in the most effort and who takes out the most?

Well… sometimes that might be necessary. But not everything in life is transactional. As a matter of fact: the less transactional life becomes, the more liberating life can feel.

Sometimes, we do things because doing them gives us pleasure.

***

Years ago, I worked full time in a San Francisco soup kitchen, for which I received room and board and a tiny stipend. One day a guest asked me why I was there.

“I enjoy it,” I replied.

They huffed. “You aren’t supposed to say that! You are supposed to say you want to help poor people!”

I laughed. “If I didn’t enjoy being here, I wouldn’t do it.”

Perhaps that’s just my pagan attitude, but it is also the truth. I am not a believer in “selfless service.” I always believe that we help one another because we get something from it. Most often what we get? Is the knowledge that someone is slightly better off because we were able to help. Or we’re building toward a world we want to live in.

This is not transactional. I didn’t expect any reward for working in the soup kitchen other than the satisfaction that every day, people got fed, had a shower, got a change of clothing, or got hooked up with medical services or housing.

Eventually, that wasn’t enough for me, so I quit working there full time and switched to a once-a-week volunteer basis. That fed my soul for twenty years.

***

Here’s another story:

I talk to crows. I greet them on my walks. I enjoy watching their conversations, and know what time of day their meetings are, and when they gather to roost.

During cold months, I leave out piles of seeds. I click my tongue, and shake the bag as I walk out to the low retaining wall that borders our front garden, filled with soil from when the basement was dug out more than one hundred years ago. A crow or two always quickly arrive, and set up the call telling the others there is food.

One day, while working in my office nook, my partner called upstairs, sounding alarmed. “How much food did you set out for the crows?”

“Just a couple piles,” I called down.

“They’re stopping traffic!”

I looked out the dormer window, and, sure enough, crows were everywhere and cars were slowing, trying to figure out what the heck was going on.

I laughed. Oops.

A week or so later, I came home from a dictation walk, but wasn’t quite done with the chapter, so paced toward the back yard, where two Douglas firs tower in the back corner. I stood in the winter sun for awhile, talking out loud, narrating the story in my head. I heard a couple of crows in one of the firs, but paid them no mind.

From the corner of my eye, I saw something drop from high up in the tree. I figured it was crow poop, because, crow poop happens.

Once I finished my work, I headed into a wild bit of garden to re-set the solar lights the squirrels are always knocking over. Or maybe it’s the possums or raccoons… At any rate, while placing the lights upright again, I saw it.

Something shone in the cupped petals of a succulent.

It was a white, shimmering orb. A glass ball, pearl like, winking from soft petals of pale green.

I looked up into the tree and said, “Thank you!”

The shimmering white ball now sits on my bedroom altar, as a reminder that one day, a crow said “thanks.”

**

There are people out there feeding others, caring for children and elders, blocking the machinery of injustice, listening to friends in crisis, building tent-safe heaters, making art…

And they do all these things because they’re enacting and shaping the very world they want to live in. They do all these things because they are right to do.

I feed crows—and squirrels, and song birds— to help them get through winter. I set out extra water, often with ice, during the hot summer months when other water sources have dried up. I do this because I appreciate the wildlife that call my city neighborhood home. I enjoy their antics, and appreciate their beauty.

I do it because it is a form of connection with the web of life, and because I want a world filled with crows, chickadees, and squirrels. These animals also remind me that there is life beyond work and screens.

I don’t do it for any other gift than that.

But that white pearl of an orb, dropped from a tree, practically at my feet?

That is a gift I treasure all the same.

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Gifts of Glass

The faeries had been visiting the bungalow again. Sprites, to be exact. These small ones crept up the porch with its big wood supports and – somehow – into the house. The big fae beings? They visited no one. Answered only to themselves.

He could tell the sprites had been around because the trinkets on his dresser looked disarranged. Cufflinks tumbled on the wood instead of resting in their velvet case. His watch had stopped. And… something was missing.

Damn it. His ticket to St. Louis was gone. He was supposed to be heading to a family reunion tomorrow and his ticket was just gone. He didn’t want to go, anyway. Louisa leaving had taken the wind from him, and he didn’t want to face the questions and concerned faces. And the whispers that he’d messed up somehow.

And something was burning. His scrambled eggs!

Jeremy ran into the kitchen, grabbed a dishtowel, and yanked the cast iron pan off the flames. The smell of burning eggs and pan filled the kitchen. He jabbed the button for the fan, starting the roaring noise that indicated fumes would soon be sucked up and outside.

Finding a proper potholder, he scraped the mess into the small green compost bin on the counter. At least it could become soil.

The sprites liked good soil, he imagined, because it grew good plants. Sometimes when he was setting out offerings on dew swept mornings, or under a full moon, he could feel them drawing closer. He could hear them. They chittered like small birds, or insects at the height of summer.

But he’d forgotten about them. The garden was running to seed, and full moon after full moon had come and gone.

Jeremy stopped in the midst of getting rock salt to scrub the burn out from the pan. When was the last time he’d made an offering? It was three full moons ago. Right before she left.

He just hadn’t seen it coming. How could he have not seen it coming? He’d thought Louisa was just going through some changes. Things at work. And maybe that was part of it. But it turned out that mostly it was him.

He was messed up. Too many old wounds. Too many unsaid words. And then there was love. Louisa’s love, to be exact.

Louisa’s love was like a storm over the ocean that lay at the foot of the cliffs five blocks from his home. It was powerful. Sudden. Wild. All encompassing.

The totality of her love had frightened him. It was too much. So he withdrew. Self-preservation, that was the only way he could explain it when people asked. Though what part of himself, exactly, he was trying to preserve, Jeremy couldn’t say.

Mostly, the rare times someone asked he just said, “I don’t know” because he knew what he wanted to say sounded too strange.

Part of him loved love. Loved being in love. Loved the way Louisa made him feel. Loved her laugh, and what it did to the very edges of his skin. Loved the sex that crashed and rolled and shouted.

Until it was too much.

He started to scrub the pan with the course salt, hoping he wouldn’t need to re-season the heavy black layers. The smoke had cleared, so he turned off the fan. He couldn’t really think with it on. He needed to think. Jeremy had a work deadline, but no plans for that evening. He could afford to take some time off from the studio this morning. Out to breakfast it was, then, right after he finished with the pan.

An hour later, he still hadn’t found his car keys. Which meant he hadn’t found his house keys. Which meant, even if he walked to breakfast, he still couldn’t leave the bungalow. He had searched under the rust-colored couch. Looked on the kitchen counters. Under the bed. Checked the pockets on all of his jackets.

“All right, guys! What do you want?” He looked around the living room. A pile of mail spread across the low coffee table in front of the over-stuffed couch. Some of the circulars and bills had already fanned out on the wood floor. Louisa had taken the rug. Something glinted on the floorboards, shining in the light from the mullioned glass living room windows. Jeremy squatted down, muscles complaining. His yoga practice had gone to shit, and at his age? If he didn’t stretch regularly, everything kind of seized up.

He grasped the object between his thumb and middle finger, holding it up to the light.

A pink plastic bead. Where the heck had that come from? It wasn’t her style, or his for that matter, and his niece and nephew hadn’t been over in six months. Something caught his eye to the right. He turned. A blue glass bead. And then a yellow. There was a trail of beads—glass, plastic, and ceramic—spaced around two or three feet apart.

They led back to the bedroom.

Jeremy followed the trail until he heard the flapping of the curtain pulls against the wall. Smelled the ocean. Had he left a window open? The queen size bed was rumpled, moss colored comforter scrunched up near the foot of the bed. He usually made the bed before breakfast but hadn’t bothered this morning.

The window was open. The forest green curtains billowed against the cream wall. He pulled them back. The window was open, and the screen was gone.

A red clay bead rested on the sill. Right next to his keys. He snatched up the jingling keys, and put them in his pants pocket. He left the bead there and ran out the front door. It locked behind him.

Around the side of the house, sneakers squelching on damp grass. The screen rested neatly against the white boards of the house, tucked behind a stand of daffodils.

And in the mouth of one of the flowers was a green bead.

“Where do you want me to go?”

He looked around, saw some twigs arranged in the shape of an arrow.

It was pointing toward Main Street. Well, he’d planned to head that way for breakfast, so why not?

As he walked through the tree lined neighborhood, he didn’t pause to admire the tall elm canopy, or listen to the finches. He barely remembered to raise a hand in greeting to Ms. Rosen, who was digging in her garden beds, as usual.

Instead, he focused on putting one sneaker in front of the other, eyes peeled for more beads.

Every half a block or so, he found one, bent, and placed it in his pockets. By the time he got to Main, his pockets were bulging.

Head swiveling, he took in the tidy street and its bright storefronts, gleaming in the sunshine. Tourists browsed, pausing at windows, or dragging sunburned children along.

There was Sarah’s bookshop, where he had an order in for the new JD Robb. There was the Angie’s bakery and cafe, scents of coffee and cinnamon wafting his way, causing his stomach to growl. And past the weird fossil shop, there was the relatively new Sunshine and Co, his favorite breakfast and lunch spot, and a place he hoped to be sitting, soon.

But first… where were the beads?

Half a block up, he spied something shining, and hurried forward, skirting a few slow walkers. Sure enough, there was a glass orb. A marble, this time. And more sticks, pointing down a quiet side street, just off Main.

“So, this direction?” he asked the air, and swore he heard giggling.

He headed toward what was clearly his destination.

Green Gardens. A large, mirrored ball reflected sunlight, bouncing light into a small water feature. And hanging from the white front porch, past a courtyard teeming with flowers and plants?

Hung six fishing floats. Jeremy looked from the marble, to the mirrored ball, to the floats.

“Seriously? All of this because I’ve been neglecting the garden?”

He heard buzzing. Something tweaked his ear.

“Ouch!”

He whipped his head around. More giggles.

And, next door to Green Gardens? A new sign, stuck into a small, freshly poured cement slab. And the slab was a wild mosaic of glass beads, marbles, and other shining objects, all forming a mesmerizing, swirling pattern.

Jeremy held his breath, then read the sign. Maxwell Copper, Licensed Therapist. I can help. And a website and phone number.

“Really? You think I need therapy? And gardening?”

He patted his pockets laden with faery treasure, then sighed. He pulled his phone from his rear pocket, snapped a photo of the sign.

“You win. I’ll get help. And I’ll get you some new flowers. Any kind you want. But first? I really need breakfast. Okay?”

A slight breeze rustled a wind chime, surrounding him with song.

He took that as a yes. Time to turn his life around.

Time to find out what the heck it was that made him so scared of love.

T. Thorn Coyle January, 2022

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#faery #shortfiction

Stephen King is Wrong

and so are some of my friends

“…when books are run out of school classrooms and even out of school libraries as a result of this idea, I’m never much disturbed not as a citizen, not as a writer, not even as a schoolteacher . . . which I used to be. What I tell kids is, Don’t get mad, get even. Don’t spend time waving signs or carrying petitions around the neighborhood. Instead, run, don’t walk, to the nearest non-school library or to the local bookstore and get whatever it was that they banned. Read whatever they’re trying to keep out of your eyes and your brain, because that’s exactly what you need to know.”

I respect the hell out of Stephen King and have learned a lot from him. But this quote getting passed around right now infuriates me.

Don’t protest in public, King says, because this is all about you, one individual. And surely, you, that individual, have access to books. You have computer access and a credit card. Or where you live has a non-school library or local bookstore. You have the money and a way to get there. Those places with books are curated by people who haven’t bought into the “save our children from these evil, twisted, racist, homo, divisive books” attitude.

And you don’t have parents or guardians who will beat you if they find you with these books.

You’re not a queer or trans kid, getting bullied every day…

You aren’t a Jewish kid in a mostly Christian town…

You aren’t a Black kid, or an Indigenous kid, or an Asian kid, or a kid dumpster diving for dinner, and living in a car…

You aren’t this kid who just might come across a book on a school library shelf that assures you that there’s more than your classes are telling you. That somewhere, there is someone out there who understands. That you aren’t alone.

***

I understand why this quote has captured the imaginations of many people I know—including other writers. For one thing, he’s correct in saying that the books that are getting banned are likely the ones we need to read. Also, he invokes the spirit of rebellion, of, “I won’t do what you tell me.” The quote invokes the heady, romantic spirit of a free thinker, the one with just enough daring to buck the odds.

But not everyone has that daring, or the chance to exercise it. Sometimes other people have ensured that any spark of rebellion is crushed as early on as possible. All too often, the stakes for disobedience and non-conformity are ratcheted up until the extremes are so high, it might just cost a kid their life.

And it has.

Do you know how many bullied kids die from suicide every year?

Do you know how many kids are sent to conversion camps?

Do you know how many kids are brutalized, tortured, neglected, or killed?

And on the other end, do you know how many sanitized books are published, and presented to school boards instead? Books filled with false history, and written not by Black—or queer, or Jewish, or Latine, or Indigenous authors—but by those in positions of relative power? These books to often tell a “truth” seen through a lens of acceptability. These books too often tell us things just aren’t that bad for kids. And that history has mostly, always, been fair and kind.

Those kinds of books also tell us, “You’re on your own. Because no one in the world has ever had it as bad as you… and survived to tell the tale.”

What does that do to a person’s spirit?

We need access to the stories told by the ones who made it through.*

***

So yes, we should protest. We should hound school boards. We should fucking well speak out. We must speak out for each other. We must speak out because there is such a thing as the common good. Everything does not boil down to individual choice and personal power. Thinking it does fails us, time and time again.

United States school boards are a battleground right now. The “critical race theory” bogeyman is part of the fight. So are whitewashed textbooks. And so are banned books.

If you think kids should just take some initiative, and face all this alone?

I beg you to rethink this. Now.

Because on this matter? Stephen King is wrong.

T. Thorn Coyle

Portland, OR

January 30, 2022

*Edited to add: we also need stories about acceptance, joy, taking chances, and thriving, told by as many perspectives as possible. I want kids to have access to those stories, too.