Two or three times a week I drive through town to see. See what? The town. Today was different. Early this morning I saw bright red at the bird feeders. I have just read about the bower birds. This reminder of birds guided what I saw this year, this season.
The miraculous bower birds live in parts of Australia and New Guinea. Activity of the male attracts original attention. Architect, engineer, builder, artist, the male works diligently to build a bower. This is a flattened field with a distinct entry created by a corridor of sticks six or so inches apart, somewhat like the passageway through which football players run to enter their field. The bower’s corridor leads to the field he both builds and decorates.
Sticks, vines, leaves he intertwines to create a flat surface the size of an extra-large pizza: the work of architect, engineer, builder. Then comes the work of the artist. From far and wide in his environment he harvests pieces of color. Bright leaves, berries, wings of dead butterflies, metal, mud, pieces of plastic if humans are near (and where are they not?). These he brings back and begins his art. He arranges and rearranges the colors, sometimes steps back and seems to judge before moving a color two or three times until he’s satisfied. He seems particularly careful with shape as well as color, a de Kooning of the Australian forest.
Eventually he is satisfied. He waits. And waits.
For what does he work and wait? Ah! Cherchez la femme! When the day, the weather, the pull of the moon, the temperature are all just right, the females set out to examine the art studios of the males. From one bower to the next, she brings her critical eye.
At last, the art of one is just what she’s been looking for. She enters the corridor and meets the artist. He dances, sings deep notes, enchants her.
Every story we’ve either read or seen takes us through the next steps. It is she who creates a small rather colorless nest into which she deposits that year’s eggs. He returns to his bower to protect and perfect his art until the next season.
It is easy and necessary to visualize the full color of the bower bird as equal to this December day as I drive through town. The bubbles machine on Spring Street, the geodesic dome outside Rogue’s, movement of people and coffee cups in and out of Brews, colorful clothes outside Granny’s, a violinist outside the New Orleans, cars and people moving slowly up and down the street, the Christmas tree in Basin Park, ribbons, stars, wreaths, lights, and shiny figures.
The town sits as a decorated field put together by busy folk, happy folk, for us to enter through a decorated corridor at the top of Planer Hill.
Fanciful? Perhaps. But it is the time of the year we allow magic and fancy, smiles and laughter, sharing and giving, love and forgiveness. We allow ourselves to be our happier selves during these days, to delight in our community, to know childhood’s joys are still parts of us.
There is serious work that we won’t ignore, but from these decorative moments we gain strength and reason to protect an attacked Republic of, by, and for the people. We are the people. We will play. We will keep our country fascist free.