The Anxiety of Crows

a study of home in a life of omens.

“Sensitive people they sometimes need…

well,

these [gloves] will help with the cold and the…other thing.” —Olivia Crain; The Haunting of Hill House

I like to shutter into the walls of my apartment much like a crow may nest. Not for sleeping, nor rest, but for thinking. To sit on a thought, or multiple, that need attention or incubation. Looking for the availability of space that is padded and waiting, comfortable for a lengthy endeavor.

Did you know that birds don’t sleep in nests? It seems silly to not know that, but I truly didn’t. Generally, when a bird rests, they’re sort of half awake. Taking dozens, if not hundreds, of tiny spurts of half-rest. Half-naps. Interrupted by weather, predators, etc. It is remarkable that they adequately sleep. But they do; they roost. Their leg muscles stiffen, their feet perch into a locked position around the branch and there you have it. An anxious kind of sleep with one eye open.

I don’t see ghosts but I am haunted by past decisions whose problems have come home to roost. Anxiously, as I said, resting just above the surface. This plane that exists between the rock we are floating on and the mystical reasoning behind existence. The life of it all. The idea of what it means to be living, to exist.

And how that meaning is often translated into looming obstacles of: money, work, money, work, people, people, people on the phone, people wanting money, you not having any, people, people, community obligation, work again. It is exhausting and it is imminent.

And it never stops.

I feel like a tiny bird trying to rest. Needing to move over and over and over again. Readjusting, pivoting, searching for the same thing to pop up in a new Scooby-Doo-style villain that turns out to be explainable, understandable, and logical. Unmasked.

Interlude.

Imagine yourself standing face to face with another person. Both of you have on a mask. Not speaking outright, but having a telepathic conversation. A back and forth about each predator or weather change. Discussing, contemplating, worrying about each interaction. Your mask changes, as theirs does, along the conversation. Melting and morphing into new scenarios, new answers, new questions until it spirals and rips. Ripping through your nerves, scorching your organs, failing each time to unveil what is actually in front of you.

As the crow flies, I find the direct route between my anxiety and suffering through my own intolerance of them. Where roosting becomes a way to run away from it. Flitting from place to place trying to forget it…and rest.

So, what then?

We nest. We settle. We take off our own mask. And we pace through that apartment, talk to ourselves, look things up, take breaks, pad the day with activities that come and go like the wind interrupting a meditation. It isn’t the goal of the day, but it helps make that goal easier to confront.

We are all buried underneath dozens, if not hundreds, of asks, wants, needs, and obligations. I have found, intensely slowly, that the monsters I’ve made up over the years have followed me but they cannot get into my apartment, luckily.

Because in there, I am safe. In here, I can nest. I can produce, I can birth, I can die and become something else as often or as little as I want. I am not the sum of the things I did as a bird that only understood themselves as such. Just trying to do what I was told to do in hopes of the success I imagined in my old room. Surrounded by things that were only somewhat mine. The color of the walls and the bedspread being the deepest burgundy that it took the painting guy five coats of to get right and, my grandmother, ages to find the fabric that I liked.

She didn’t understand why I chose it. But, still, she filled it with the things that made sense to her to match. Classic porcelain dolls, a beautiful antique-style desk with dark espresso wood and gold, floral accents. I love that desk. The drawers of which are still filled with the products of the first internet scams I fell prey to. Diet pills, supplements, silly hair accessories. Things that would profess to transform me into acceptability.

I’ve always learned things slowly.

Today, I learned, that I am not a bird.

Today, I learned, that a bird is not a terrible thing to be for a while…

…when you need it to help with the choices, the problems…

and the…other thing.

Anxiety cannot build. It tricks us into thinking it can, but it only destructs, selfishly so. You cannot see. So that you cannot see what’s in front of you. It’s all right there in front of you. It’s right in front of me.

In encouragement, and contemplative warning:

“Are you to be happy, while I grovel in the intensity of my wretchedness? You can blast my other passions; but revenge remains -- revenge, henceforth dearer than light or food! I may die; but first you, my tyrant and tormentor, shall curse the sun that gazes on your misery. Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.”

— The Monster; Frankenstein

stay tuned and stay diligent, little ghosts.