It had to be a dove, and other stories.

Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world. –Robert Hunter/The Grateful Dead

It’s been an eventful week. I haven’t had the time to write any of it down, so I’m going to try to remember the meaty bits, just because a lot of what happened to me are things I want to be able to look back upon in the near (and distant) future. So let’s back the magical happyfunness wagon up to the begining of the week and let it coast down the hill of joyous funfun gumdrop-giddiness to today.

Monday:

Gizmo and I went on an epic walk. When I say epic, I only mean a 5 mile round trip, but considering that I had cramps so bad that I wanted narcotics, I’ll call it a fair distance. I had been thinking too heavily about the course of human events, specifically about Tim, my boyfriend, and Giz and Rel, my only remaining close friends. Most of the friendships I’ve lost along the way are the kind where the only things we had in common were the drugs we were doing together, so I had just been about to make the breakthrough into being comfortable with the idea of only having a few close bonds remaining, but I really needed the miles and the company to truly feel that this conclusion were true.

It’s been a little rough, only because I don’t get to spend the time with Gizmo anymore. He and I dated for almost two years back in the day, but we’re still very close and know each other quite well. It tends to make my boyfriends’ jealous, especially because the way that relationship ended would cause most women to turn their backs and close the doors completely. His actions were beyond assholery back then, but I should have left him long before he got the chance and I know that, and in the meantime, we’ve both stopped being teenagers, and both of us have matured. It was too painful for the first year after the fact, but since then, I’ve come to terms with the situation and find I can talk to him about things I can’t really talk about with Auriel or Tim.

So after awhile, I had managed to get most of my troubles off of my chest, as had he. Right when the conversation lulled to a peaceful, thoughtful silence, something strange caught my attention from the corner of my eye. In the road next to the bike path we walked along, there was a strange brown something. I asked him if he thought it was a bird, and approached the motionless brown shape. When I got to be ten feet from it, still not quite sure what I was seeing, it spooked. It flailed for a couple of feet, and assured me it was a bird. I was thinking broken wing, and was getting ready to go put the thing out of it’s misery, but when it spooked and flailed the second time, I could see that it wasn’t hurt, only too young to really fly. That’s when I realized it was a dove.

Now, I didn’t know what to do. If it had been injured, It would have been easy, but this dove wasn’t hurt, had merely landed on a road with curbs too high to hop up, and was effectively trapped where it would starve to death if it managed to evade the traffic that long. I managed to talk Giz into catching it for me, because I couldn’t do it myself. He carried it to the grass and trees on the side of the bike trail away from the street, and we broke up some of the granola I had in my bag, since it was the only thing I had that a bird might eat. We told the dove "Learn to fly," and left it there. I know it didn’t have good chances of survival, but there was that slight iota more than if we left it in the road, where it would have done nothing but die.

While we were walking away, both of us thinking of the dove and the way it looked, terrified in Gizmo’s hands, yet not struggling against his restraint, as though knowing somehow that it was going from a hopeless situation to a merely difficult one, the silence between us was potent with shared thoughts. Finally, I had to break it.

"Thank you. I could never have…"

"Actually moved the dove?" Giz finished my thought, and I paused, groping in my swimming brain for the right way to phrase the next thoughts.

"It’s not that I was scared to pick it up. If it were injured, I could have killed it… but it stood a chance. If I had picked it up, and it were too scared. If I had tried to help it, but it had had a heart attack…"  I stammered through the half formed thoughts, but couldn’t finish any of them. "If I had done something to help it, but instead scared the poor thing to death… I mean, If it would have died in my hands…"

"It would have killed you." He said simply.

I didn’t need to tell him he was right.

Wednesday:

I got to see Tim performing stand-up for the first time. He even borrowed one of my shirts for a "Fat people in skinny people clothing." Bit. I was amused, even though you could tell he was rusty, and half of the jokes I’ve heard ad nauseaum. A good time was had by all.

Thursday:

Two words. Mamma Mia. ’nuff said. (Not really, but my ride is here, and I’ll rant about the spandex later.)

…

Time has passed, and now I’m back to finish this bit. Tim wanted to see Mamma Mia! for his birthday. I decided to take him. It was a really good show, but the sound guy seemed to have had an off day. Five counts of feedback, and two of "more on main vox." Otherwise, it was gold. They were collecting donations for [Broadway Cares] [Broadway Cares / Equity Fights AIDS is one of the nation’s leading industry based HIV/AIDS fundraising and grant-making organization. We fund the social service work of The Actors Fund and award grants to AIDS service organizations nationwide. With your help, what we do together will make a difference. (From Broadwaycares.org)] The ensemble members were in the lobby after the show with donation buckets, and a $10 donation got a Mamma Mia! tote bag. Time really wanted the tote, so, he donated the 10. The bag is cerulean blue, with white screen print of the title. It’s G-A-Y-M-C-A gay. When we were leaving, he goes to light two cigarettes at once, and can’t with the bag in hand. I made him wait until no one would see me holding it before I took it for him, just to give him a hard time. ^_^

Later that night, an old aquaintance was hosting an open mic comedy night, and Tim had recieved an invitation to go. He brought a heckler with him, but she fucked it up, (didn’t sound like she was giving him a hard time at all) so it didn’t work out too well. He’s going to be on a podcast that airs monday (I believe.) It was recorded there after the three comics involved had done their sets. I got stuck watching the rest of the amature comedy hour by myself, since the heckler left after Tim and the others went upstairs to record. When they came back down, they were saying that they had recorded for 58 minutes, but I was convinced they had been gone for at least two hours.

…

Gotta run. Maybe I’ll finish later.