Listening to Birds

Are you my Higher Power?

I’m grateful for what feels like the first morning of summer. I’m grateful for figuring things out a piece at a time. I’m grateful for letting the game come to me. I’m grateful for mornings play basketball at the park. I’m grateful for where I am and what I have. I’m grateful to be sober today.

Here we go! I have been on a tear of sorts this week. I’m full of energy and ended up spending a big chunk of time doing some Spring Cleaning (it’s spring until June 21) on the old Substack. They’ve been great at rolling out new features and so we’re trying to put some of those to better use here. Plus, we just like trying to make things look nice. If you enjoy reading our humble newsletter (or any of the other really cool newsletters here on Substack), you should really download the app. It’s free, it’s easy to use, the newsletter will still come to your email and you’ll be able to participate in things like Notes and the Chats and other assorted goodies. Plus, it just looks better.

That didn’t buy me very much time. Okay, we abandoned the thing I had been working on because of some weirdness that just happened here. If you’ve been around here for a bit, you may know that I’m kind of superstitious and perhaps also slightly insane. I’ve come to believe that the Universe communicates with me via the songs that play on the radio or my phone or by dropping pennies in strategic locations and times.

Anyway, I’m sitting here writing this and the door to the balcony is open and suddenly I hear that kind of eerie call that Mourning Doves make. I usually have music going, so I’m not sure I focused so much the first time, but a few minutes later I heard it again, pretty clear and pretty unmistakeable. It immediately launched me backwards in time, suddenly it was 1977 and I was listening to the dove who lived alone in the pine trees outside my room. Some Mourning Doves supposedly mate for life, doves that lose a mate will often remain single afterwards. I already felt so alone and lost at that age. It’s when I started drinking. The dove in the pine trees kind of summed up what I thought life had in store for me.

I always thought “the mate for life” thing was a romantic exaggeration prompted by that lonely call. But it turns out to be true, and if you look, there is even an online debate about whether the sudden appearance of Mourning Doves is a good or bad thing. I heard the call again and the thought occurred to me that there must be a Mourning Dove on the balcony. Coffee in hand, I went to investigate and as I walked into my living room, I heard that full throated, pretty mournful cry:

Oh Wah,
ooo,
ooo,
ooo

That’s how it sounds to me spelled out. And always the three “ooo’s.” There he was, perched on the balcony railing. Okay, you’re reading this and thinking,

“this all you could come up with? The story of a bird landing on your railing?”

Yes. Very occasionally and only if I’m not paying attention, there are two pigeons who occasionally visit. Pigeons are not welcome here.¹ Other than that, there’s not much bird traffic. Part of it is that I live 22 floors up and it’s pretty windy. It’s just not bird landing friendly. I’ve lived here for nearly three years and there has never been a Mourning Dove in the vicinity. At least I’ve never heard one. So, yes, it seemed odd to me that a lone Mourning Dove had alighted on the balcony and started singing his sad, searching song.

The wheels came off for me when I was living in our Nation’s Capital, Washington, D.C. My life was way off the rails. I was getting divorced and trying to get sober. Neither one of those endeavors was going all that well. My self-prophecy that night at Magoo’s in 1980 was showing it to be, well, prophetic. That long ago night, listening to the strains of ELO’s “Strange Magic,” I realized that I was powerless over alcohol. For sure, that’s not the string of words I used to describe it. What I realized was that drinking had already become too essential for me, it was maybe the biggest thing in my life. That night in 1980 I wondered how I would ever stop. I knew the bill would come due one day. How was I ever going to pay it? How would I ever stop?

In 2012, I had accumulated nearly 40 years of experience on the subject and was still unable to answer the questions I had posed to myself. I was living in Logan Circle and my usual drinking haunts were The Commissary, Logan Tavern, Stoney’s and a few other convenient, isolated dark places here and there. I hadn’t lived there very long and was sitting out in the garden in front drinking coffee and heard a Mourning Dove. I had a hedge around the garden and it was where Kayla the Dog and I hung out a lot. There was a single male Mourning Dove who had taken up residence in the hedge. He lived there for about as long as I did.

It was a sad, lost time for me. I definitely took the presence of the Mourning Dove as a signal from the powers that were of just how badly I had f***ed things up and here was the soundtrack for the consequences. I think I got that wrong. Back then, I was many things: chaotic, angry, unpredictable, manipulative, sad, lost, resentful, stuck on thoughts and thinking patterns that were destroying me and everyone who came close. I was a chronically relapsing alcoholic, collecting one-day chips and regret at a pretty horrifying rate.

What I wasn’t, back then, was connected to the Universe around me. I was still trying to right the ship using nothing but willpower and muscle memory. Predictably, the ship remained sunk. I hadn’t yet conceived of a Higher Power that could restore me to sanity, much less made a decision to turn the keys over to said being. I didn’t even know how to go about that. The answer to that question was literally there in the Big Book, written in pretty understandable language, and even conveniently located very near the front:

It was only a matter of being willing to believe in a Power greater than myself. Nothing more was required of me to make my beginning.

Big Book, p. 12

That’s when things changed for Bill and that’s when things changed for me. Nothing about my physical circumstances really changed, it was simply my perspective of my place in the Universe that was altered. I went from a being who believed he deserved worship from the Universe to one who correctly saw the job title ought to be “worshipper.” Part of that change, a big part of that change, was simply listening more. Trying to really understand what others were telling me, trying to understand the very conflicting signals I was sending myself, all of that required more listening and less talking. The more I was quiet and the more I listened, the more I heard. And it wasn’t just the squeaking of the Alcoholic Hamster Wheel.

I started to realize the Universe sent out messages and you kind of needed to pay attention because if you miss one, they just keep coming around until they can no longer be ignored. This is an unpleasant way to live life; there are lots of consequences, lots of lessons being taught over and over and over. The problem is that these communications are a bit enigmatic, come in quick bursts and not always when it’s convenient. The locker room at the gym, for example.

Also, I’d like to emphasize the enigmatic part. A lot of the time, I really have no clue what I’m supposed to do or what is being suggested to me by good old Higher Power. I’ve come to understand that, like all truly busy beings, the best way to accomplish things is to have other people do them. Hence, there is not a lot of definite instruction, there are questions to be answered, prompts to make me think about things in different ways. There’s a lot of stuff that I have to figure out.

Sometimes when I’m feeling particularly lost, pennies show up in pretty funny places. I see them as suggestions that I’m on the right track. Even if I don’t know where the train is headed, I’m at least not the “N” Train on the “Q” Line.² That’s when I find pennies.

Some Recent Finds

I don’t think that dove was sent on a specific mission and I’m really not sure what to make of his appearance. For sure, it seems to connect some odd dots in my life and these days that is the kind of thing I spend time trying to figure out. The thing that’s different about my life these days is that I approach events with curiosity and humility, waiting to see what unfolds. Listening for the prompts and being open to where things lead me and trying to make sure I’m asking the right questions and thinking about the right kind of things.

Maybe the dove was lost, maybe it’s on an Amish WildSpringen or whatever, maybe it will never come back. I’m learning that permanence is not really part of the deal. The Mourning Dove on my balcony reminded me of some sad, lost times. But it also reminds me there has been a pretty consistent presence and message throughout my entire life.

It’s just now I’m listening.

1. And to the people who feed them in the parks of NYC: “Really?”

2. This is a regular MTA ruse designed to trick me into riding the subway to Astoria. It works.