A winged tale

'Notes from a sign reader' is an offhand way of describing a view that the integrally informed might call witnessing 'god in the third person'. Like all observation it involves a certain amount of interpretation, which in turn integral theory holds to be developmental stage dependent. And while this theory has more than a little attraction for me i remain at heart a very practical person; yet one who happens to hold to the notion that there is nothing like a good story.

Some decades ago before the advent of GPS route mapping i was headed by car from downtown of the big city where i worked to an unfamiliar suburb; i had accepted an invitation to speak to an esoteric minded small group in the home of a soccer mom.

It probably would have been wise to take along a decent street map to augment the bare bones directions i'd been given, but instead i just opted for an expressway that headed in the general direction.

Driving along i began to play a little game with the environment; it was a game that had evolved out of my experimenting with two seemingly unconnected notions that i had run across in my reading. The first was from Dane Rudhyar who suggested that birds represent spiritual forces; and the second from Carlos Castaneda whose central character held that the unforeseen and even death is carried on the left shoulder. The left side in Italian is called sinistra, the root form of which is the same as our word sinister. So the game goes like this, when driving along i watched for the flights of birds, primarily noting the direction from which they entered my field of vision as a sort of ongoing divination system for clues about the road ahead. If the avian entered from the left the rules of the game held it to be a warning; and conversely if they entered from the right, a blessing. There were refinements to this basic left right notion; including a rough time space equation that held the closer the bird(s) were to my vehicle the sooner their import would be noted. All this sounds rather tendentious and awkward but really i was simply playing and having a big time, switching lanes with alacrity, and altering speeds in an altogether judicious manner.

The game entered a different phase when the expressway exit deposited me on unfamiliar suburban streets. I slowed down, checking my directions, following them best i could until i ended up in a residential neighborhood, coming to a full stop to honor a stop sign. Then something quite surprising happened. A robin carrying a worm in its mouth entered my field of vision from the right and landed momentarily and  immediately in the lane in front of my vehicle! It's stay was brief and it soon headed left, down the intersecting street. A quick check of my directions and street signs showed that this was the very avenue i was looking for! I turned left and followed the creature for a block or so and arrived at my destination.

These events seemed so remarkable to me that it put me into an altered state, i suppose a wag might call it an avian high.  The result was that when i was introduced to the assembled guests i related to them this story in a form not dissimilar from what's being written here. In retrospect i can only laugh; from their point of view it must have seemed like i'd just descended from the most unconventional of planets: Uranus!

Warmly,

Charles

41N58'02" 88W18'28"