What is a Bird?
by Alina Lupu ︎︎︎11 October at 20:56, Friday
If I was a child, entry level, I could have simply asked her:
“Birds?”
It would have all been in the intonation, the implied punctuation - that hanging question mark -, in the context where we were placed in – online, I’ve seen the birds in pictures on her social media feed, 293 weeks of two parrots in various states of engaging with life, somewhere between snacking, wreaking havoc and cuddling -, into the broader context of our acquaintance - we virtually met after she’d slept with my partner.
He told me once he came back from a work trip. He held me close, was smiling, and just blurted it out. I remember doing tumbles in my mind, layering questions:
“With whom?
Where?
How?
Why?
When?”
... then grinding to a halt, then moaning and screaming and chasing him out of the room and falling into myself trying to answer the questions I asked him. I pieced together the hints he had given me and found her online. I remember then shooting over a question in anger via her LinkedIn, fully aware of the comedy of the situation, in the moment, in retrospect:
“Excuse the bother, but did you just fuck my partner?”.
The request to connect never got a reply. Nor did the question, because the answer was clear from the get go.
Since I wasn’t a child – neither historically nor contextually - I instead asked her, two weeks after I’ve learned that she exists, this time via Instagram:
“What about the birds?”
Even if that’s not what I meant.
She took her time. She built for me a story, flowing, intuiting the meaning.
She
got them around six years ago... It was originally just a little thought in head that I wanted to get a pet I wanted to go to the shelter but then overheard a classmate that they'd be having some struggle with their birds Then I visited them and instantly knew that i couldn't leave them there and brought them Home
She
And now they live with me freely in my room
She
They're called Timmy and Charlie. Timmy originally came to me with his sister but she never lost this constant anxiety they got because of living with Cats that always chased them and sadly passed away…
She
Then i had another bird called Cookie but he fell through the window when i wasn't home and i never found him again I was hanging up posters If someone had seen him and got a call. But they didn’t find Cookie but another bird... And then I took him home because the family who found him had no resources and while i was looking for his owner, my Timmy wouldn't be so alone
She
But I never found his owner and him and Timmy fell in Love instantly So now he's part of the Family too …
As She typed I thought about what was between us.
An online platform;
5h 12m;
480 km;
14 years;
Different mother tongues and one to bridge the gap;
A man;
Lack of physical context;
Shame;
Appeasement;
Discourse;
Mesopotamia;
Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome;
Judaism and Christianity;
The Middle Ages;
Parental investment theory;
Sexual selection theory;
Power relations.
How discourse shapes itself, that which hides under the folds of the words we drape over one another, in dialogue, in twos and threes and mores. How desire motivates the effort of typing out each string of words spurred forth by the underlying question:
“What leads to a woman fucking a man fucking a woman?”
and the intrinsic drive contained in the demand of clarifying yourself in relation.
The nonverbal.
A chirp;
A trill;
A croak;
A buzz;
A warbling;
A honk;
A screech;
A chatter;
A caw;
A coo;
A whistle.