Mobile, Alabama

One of my most durable memories is when I was in 3^rd grade and we lived in a house a block from the lake in Shorewood, Wisconsin.  As with all lakes, there were lots and lots of seagulls.  At some point right around then a number of things happened:  Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds came out on TV and my parents went out of town leaving us with a babysitter and specific instructions NOT to watch The Birds, or at least the younger kids shouldn’t.  Well, of course we disobeyed their request and decided to watch it.  (Where the hell was the babysitter???)  Anyway, after the scene where they found the bald guy pecked to death behind a door, my older brothers made me take the garbage out.  Terrified I went out to the back yard at the exact same time a flock of seagulls flew over the yard.  My brothers locked the back door and through the window started screaming “The birds!  The birds!”  and I totally freaked out… at least that’s how I remember it.  That memory comes back to me now as we cross over a waterway into Mobile, Alabama.  Despite being terrorized as a child, one of my absolute favorite visuals is when a flock of birds take off.  I love how they’ll take off as a unified object and then break apart into little pieces.  I particularly love the smaller birds who take off in a flurry as if startled by something and then fall into smooth choreography.  Today I’m watching these birds, I have no idea what they are, but they’re all silvery and lazy, like maybe they’re floating on a wind current, only there’s not much wind out there.  They remind me of when a piece of burning paper has just reached the ash stage where it breaks apart and flutters.  It’s really, really beautiful.  Which is good, because Cork has already begun rewriting history in his rationalization of why we have and have not done things on this trip and it’s making me want to pluck my eyeballs out.  He’s trying to reduce everything we haven’t done down to time constraints, but it ain’t so!!!