Excerpt from Aldek’s Bestiary: Frigate Bird

Marta and I are on entirely different wavelengths. She’s down-to-earth, I’m a tosh-thinker. You don’t know the word “tosh?” It’s British, and I think it’s close in meaning to Polish word “banialuki” (our word for ‘fudge’) and English word “nonsense.” 

So I am such a person that my thoughts jump from nonsense to fudge to rubbish and each thought has no practical use. What would happen to me, left without direction? Thank god Marta, who doesn’t see clouds, can spot a speck of dirt on the floor. Since she and I share the same space, I wonder sometimes, if the two of us sat quietly in a room together, doing nothing but think, will the two thought-waves meet? 

I hope it’s not possible. If she reads my thoughts, her circuits will overload and I’ll be in deep trouble. 

Thus the best place for me - a lazy husband - is a Caribbean beach. There, Marta will read inspirational paperbacks, drink margaritas (no sugar, please!), and nap in the sun. There, she won’t bark housekeeping commands at me. And nobody thinks deeply at the beach. What better distraction than to get on a plane and, after a four-hour flight, enjoy the beach and the warm blue sea? 

So here I am. Twenty kilometers from Cancun, Mexico.

Marta is under a huge umbrella sipping a margarita. I’m under another umbrella sipping local rum. My eyes follow a huge bird majestically soar up into the sky. It’s a frigate with black plumage and a long, deeply forked tail. I notice Marta is immersed in her book and her margarita, unlikely to discover my thoughts by connecting her wavelength to my wavelength. I am safe. I can imagine anything! She won’t ask me to repair a faucet, rake leaves, drive to the grocery store, and do other chores requiring immediate attention. At last, time to think!

I relax. On the beach in Puerto Morelos, with the Mexican staff to follow Marta’s orders, I am as free as a bird. Slowly, without intent, I muse on the turquoise ocean and two puffy white clouds, feeling in love with the moment. This evening, I will love eating fish and tropical fruits, and perhaps a smiling waitress will complement my broken Spanish. 

* * *

Two frigates float motionless above. How I love to watch them hang in the air so effortlessly. It’s almost as if they’re asleep on waves of warm air rising over the ocean; warm air offering loving support to great soaring birds. 

I sink into a reverie of useless facts stuck to my brain; not serious facts I could use in my life. But then, following the birds in the sky, I am glad that I know many useless facts about this amazing gift of creation. I am proud to be a naturalist, even though that was forty years ago, and in another country. In any case, I can tell you the Frigate magnificens lives in Florida, the Caribbean and the Galapagos Islands. Its wingspan is over two meters. 

They say frigates are relatives of pelicans, but I find that hard to believe. Compare the clumsy flight of a pelican flapping its wings like a sick crow to the smooth glide of a frigate, light and at ease between the clouds and the sea. A frigate expends little effort in the air. In concert with the wind, she plays with hidden ripples and invisible currents. It’s almost as big as an eagle, the frigate bird, but it would take three of them to weigh as much as one single eagle. 

Their lightness of being is bearable though; it allows them to float in the heavens. Their black tapered sword-wings slice the sky smoothly. The seven- or eight-foot wingspan, in proportion to a frigate’s body length, is unequaled. Even an albatross cannot boast such perfect dimensions. No wonder the frigate can float for a week without landing. It swings about, playing with the wind, first slowly forward, then a high-speed sideways turn. At times it flies so high it is barely visible in the sky, then it will swoop low again, close enough to see a red spot on the neck and the long beak ending in a curve. What a beautiful bird!

* * *

Lazy thoughts slide into old memories. Many years ago in Zakopane I taught biology at a high school for adults. My students were shop managers, policemen, nuns, party activists - all kinds of people. My job was to teach them evolution. I explained every detail twice to the militia police, I did not mock the nuns who believed “God created everything, Amen,” and I allowed tired workers to sleep during my lessons. I passed on what the curriculum required, but at the end of each lesson I usually added a few sentences. For instance, “It’s a fact the Church does not deny evolution, but accepts it as following God’s direction, so, dear nuns, it is not a sin to listen to the teacher.” Or, another favorite, when attempting to move militia cops or party apparatchiks toward spirituality, was this: “Can you see the beautiful simplicity of evolution? We can only stand in awe and wonder at creation, its majestic grandeur, its microscopic granularity.” It sounded profound to me, and who knows? Maybe they became more humane? 

I taught others, but how could I myself know what to believe? Should I wait for a “burning bush” to show me the path? Or simply stroll down the road from Jerusalem to Damascus until a moment of enlightenment radically converts my belief system? Surely I can look to science for truth. Scientists decipher the mechanism of protein synthesis. With the electron microscope they look inside the cell, indeed, inside the atom, so how could I not believe in all the scientific discoveries? Is there any reason to posit a Creator of evolution, now that we have science? 

Yet I was skeptical of the boasts of over-confident Soviet scientists as they claimed discovery after amazing discovery. “Skepticism” turned out to be the right response. The Soviet announcement they could make live protein in a test tubes was indeed nonsense. Soviets were not the only scientists to be deceptive, or at least to deceive themselves. Most American scientists’ “discoveries” about cold fusion were simply lies or distortions.

Not finding my beliefs to align with either pure religion or pure science (at least as practiced by over-ambitious researchers promoted by the government), I developed my own theory. The “curtain theory” goes like this: we experience existence as if we sit in the opera before a heavy curtain. You can't see anything through it, but you can hear the orchestra tuning instruments, the faint sound of people talking. We think “Oh, if they raise that curtain we’ll see the whole scene!” Then the curtain rises! Unfortunately, behind the first curtain is a second. At least it’s not so thick, we note. The sound is not so muffled. Is that someone walking on the other side, billowing the material? No matter how much we see or hear, the view is still from Plato's cave. So we ask, "Please, please, unveil the rest ...".

Another curtain rises, and again things are not as we expect. This time the one behind is more transparent, you can clearly see the play of lights on the stage and the moving figures through it.

By now we are almost sure if they finally raise one more curtain, everything will be revealed!

Curtains behind curtains. We still don't know what's really going on.

Self-confident, pompous science, that’s pretending curtains don’t exist, that everything is crystal clear and squared away. But how could anyone ever be fully knowledgeable of anything? Like Achilles in pursuit of the tortoise, we get nearer each step, but we never arrive. A tiny rift left for God.

Steven Hawking says he no longer needs God. I am not as wise as he, I cannot visualize neutrinos, so I’d rather return my thoughts to the sky and soaring frigates. My inspiration. How beautiful they are! How perfect!

For me, this bird suspended in the blue sky is an avatar of unspoken truths we may never know. Emily Dickinson may not have been the first to point this out but few rival her lapidary wit. 

I hope you love birds too. 

It is economical. 

It saves going to heaven.

Kant opined, less succinctly, “The more often and steadily we reflect upon them, these things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe: starry heavens above and moral law within me.” 

Through my imagination, I know the starry heavens. Now, where’s that moral law Kant mentions? I’m up in the clouds… is a cirrus crime in progress? …Did I mention my mind wanders? … Lonely as a cloud? 

* * *

OK, OK, enough vagabonding… ‘On with the story!’ you demand. No problem. I’m down with that, as my American-born son would put it. He’s an ER physician, by the way. 

Now where am I?

Oh yes. We’re at the beach, and no thought occupies my mind. I’m one with the moment. I fly, a bird aloft. I feel soft touches of Gulf Coast breezes. From time to time I doze to the murmur of surf on sand… But Marta's voice interrupts a stolen moment of bliss:

"Look, instead of lying here, you'd better walk to Puerto Morales. There are interesting shops there. You could buy presents.”

“And they have nothing at the hotel? No gift shop?” I mutter reluctantly.

“Nothing at all. And expensive! Their prices are crazy! No, you need to go into town to the silversmith shops. Get a thin silver choke necklace for Katia, and silver cufflinks for your boss. He’ll love that! And maybe a little surprise for little me? Well, what’re you waiting for? Are you gonna walk along the beach to town, or what?”

Hmmmm. Didn't really feel like it ... 

On the other hand it would be good for me to walk. For my health, my weight—she’s probably right. 

"But it's five kilometers one way.” I was not convinced I should follow her suggestions.

“Exactly! It will do your heart good! Just put on your hat! Smear your neck with 50+ SPF sunscreen! And take money! Find the most interesting silver jewelry, look for it! And don't buy just anything! Be careful with our money! No! Jezu Zmiłuj się! Not that! Put on the T-shirt! And not inside out!”

As you can see, my wife has a gift. She can convince a person to follow her “recommendations.”

* * *

I walk the seashore. Puerto Morales lies to the south, in the direction of Cancun. The sun is warm. From my left, flooding waves tickle my feet again and again. On my right, hotel guests sprawl on deckchairs under umbrellas, staring at me because I must be crazy to walk in this afternoon heat. Above me frigates roam the sky, still refusing to flap their wings.

On and on I go. Boring. I lift my iPhone out of my pack and search for a book to listen to. I find Wayne Dyer and Deepak Chopra’s Creating Your World. At the beginning, both gentlemen introduce themselves as scientists, they say how many books each has published, and what successes they achieved ... I get bored and angry as I listen, because they remind me that today, no one reads my books anymore, few people like my blog, and even faint praise is a rarity. 

I skip a few chapters. Now Dr. Dyer is telling me how he met an old native on an exotic island who knew how to summon clouds, or chase them away. When the drought comes the villagers go to the cloud-maker, he looks at the sky, whispers something to the clouds, then the rains come and water the village fields. Too much water? No problem. The natives go to the old cloud gatherer, he talks to the clouds, and immediately the sun pops into the sky. That's exactly what Dr. Dyer says. I wait for Deepak Chopra interrupt and blow the idiot away: “What are you telling me, Wayne? You’re so childish! You actually believe this nonsense?”

But no. Deepak paid careful attention to the whole story, without comment, then said to us poor innocents hearing the tape:

“Now I will tell you something interesting that may not surprise you, because, if you are listening to this recording, your eyes are already open to the wonders of the world. Well, imagine an English scientist researching whales. One whale this scientist has never seen, and wants very much to see. Unfortunately, the whale hardly ever appears and when it does, only off the coast of Bali. It is a rare whale, almost extinct. The scientist goes to Bali.

“He walks Bali beaches for a month, two, three, and … nothing. He becomes so sad the natives notice it. They approach him and ask, “Why are you so sad?” 

“Oh, because I've wanted to see a whale for three months and the sea has been empty.”

“What whale?" The natives ask. 

“The rarest whale!” he replies. 

“Aha! You want to see our whale?” They rejoice, because the Balinese secretly despise the Australians who support their economy. But a scientist to study their rare whale, that would help bring a higher level of tourism: scientists, naturalists and tree-huggers, instead of blokes. 

“We will ask our little girl and she will call our whale for you.” Deepak takes a theatrical pause.

“This is exciting, don’t stop!” Dr. Dyer demands. “Tell me what happens next!”

“Well,” Deepak continues with an insider's tone, “a twelve-year-old girl comes to the beach, speaks to the waves in her native tongue, then tells the English scientist the whale will arrive at nine the next morning. Next morning the whale appears as promised. It’s now the scientist’s turn to rejoice. How great! The rarest of rare whales in view! 

“But that’s not all. The whale draws very near to shore, then launches himself up onto the sand, as if he wants to shake the scientist’s hand with his fin to welcome the eminent Englishman to his habitat. The distinguished scientist examines him and takes a few skin scrapings for DNA samples, then the whole village gathers around the whale to push him back into the water.”

Deepak finishes his story. I wait for Dr. Dyer, a psychologist who has listened to many crazy people, to respond appropriatly to what was clearly a deranged fantasy. “Deepak,” he’d say, “whatcha been drinking today brother? Wow! More than a couple Stolis I bet. Do you need an intervention?”

But no! Dr Dyer praises the story. It proves, he concludes, more things are in heaven and earth than are dreamt of. The two doctors, exchanging smarmy compliments, then move on to the next chapter.

I’m angry ... Why? The entire world buys this BS, nobody protests, everyone takes this crap at face value ... Is it allowed to publish BS in the guise of self-help? Well, I guess so, because that’s how they sell millions of copies.

* * *

I walk. On the left, waves break onto the sand, on the right, beach-goers repose under umbrellas. I muse that ripe young women haven’t noticed me for decades. I pass by as if in stealth mode, producing no signal on their male-female radar. So, to register with them, I joyfully trot over to retrieve a ball, or I pick up a crying daughter from the sand. Look, young mommy, what a gentleman this old man is!

The view on the right becomes less attractive. Stray dogs eating dead fish can’t compete with tanned girls under umbrellas. The hotels have ended. Only a homeless dog looks at me, staring from the shade under a bunch of dune grass. “What’s that looney tune doing walking in afternoon heat, wandering off to no one knows where,” he thinks as I pass.

Discarded melon rinds, torn plastic bags, crumpled newspapers, and rusted cans litter the dunes on my right. As I proceed, I see stray mutts prowl the shoreline discards. Mexican dogs, I discover, unlike young women, do notice me. They regard me stonily. My subconscious fear one of them will sneak up behind and chew off a big hunk of my behind soon transforms into real fear.

Stay alert, I think. I look more closely along the beach. Maybe a stick or stone to protect myself?

The dogs make no move. They don’t care about me, or maybe they’re just too smart to exert themselves in the blazing afternoon heat. To the southwest I see thunderheads darkening the horizon. I no longer need be on guard to my right. Looking left I notice two rows of dark pilings sticking out above the waves, probably the remains of a long-collapsed pier. On them are an assortment of seabirds: a pair of clean white gulls, three pelicans and three big ugly birds.

Pelicans are freaks, but cute. Gulls amuse us with their bold thievery. But these three black birds? What are they? What are they doing? They are notably larger than the gulls and slightly smaller than the pelicans. They sit dark and hunched over like the witches in Macbeth. Their beaks are long with a cruelly curved tip, their feathers black, and ... 

Oh, what a nasty peck! No fair! What’s going on? Two of the black, misshapen, skulking birds gang up on a poor gull. One pecks the gull’s head with his long, sharp beak, while the other goes low, trying to bite off a leg. 

He succeeds. The gull loses balance and falls into the waves. The three dark fates resume their vigil on now vacant pilings. The gulls and pelicans have all fled the bullying mayhem I just witnessed. The wind picks up and froths the waves.

Suddenly I notice the red spot on the neck of one of the nasty birds. That stops me short. Could they be frigates? My frigates? My soaring avatars of freedom, truth and beauty? Give me a break! Impossible!

I observe the birds on the piles for maybe an hour. As I watch the realization creeps up on me that once again life has tricked me: one day I find divine inspiration in frigates, the next day scales fall from my eyes when I see the same birds, sitting on piling, pecking and harassing their neighbors.

It's the same with people! You watch someone dance or sing, you see someone as a symbol of sex and health and beauty, and you imagine this person’s other attributes, that he or she is wise, noble, creative and God knows what else. You think your ideal is before you. Then comes the wondrous day when your dream object sits beside you, and… a tragedy! A screechy voice, bad breath, oversized head, lisping speech, even lopsided teeth.

* * *

I return to the hotel at dinner time feeling exhausted yet triumphant. I’ve walked ten K, no mean feat by itself, and I found everything Marta wanted, even a silver iguana for her surprise. She praises me for a wonderful shopping experience. I am proud to be a great shopper. And it really was not too far. Not at all.

 Back in our room, I open my laptop. The illuminated apple offers me another bite of knowledge. I Google “frigate birds.”

Alas, I am right to believe what I saw with my own eyes this afternoon. Frigates are murderers and thieves! The can't swim. Frigate feathers soak up water and if they submerge, they drown. They can't walk, so they conspire for days on how to break eggs, eat chicks, smash a turtle with its beak or steal a goldfish. Such an attitude to life even has a name, I found: “klepto-parasitism," a combination of a thief and a parasite. 

A witch disguised as Botticelli’s Venus, that’s a frigate aloft. On the ground it’s merely a witch.

Oh well, as old as I am, I’ve survived disappointment before. I have Marta at my side. I’d love to soar freely high into the sky, but Marta is consistent, practical, and a great cook besides! Maybe for a while I’ll plant my feet firmly on the ground and keep my nose to the grindstone. That will make Marta happy.

© 2023 Romuald Roman