We arrived at school fifteen minutes early. That’s no small feat in my world where I tend to be disorganized and try to pack too many things in to my mornings. But my nine year old daughter had helped. She got herself packed and ready while I ran around in a mess.
But because of her preparation we got to spend fifteen minutes together before class reading The Wonderling to each other. It’s a magical book about a creature that is part man, part fox and his epic quest to free his people from an evil headmistress bent on stealing all music from the world. She would read a chapter, then I would read a chapter, each of us making funny voices for the characters.
Sitting in the car before school, reading to each other, was a stolen moment of peace in a world of chaos.
We read all the way up to the bell, then said our I love yous, and I drove off to take myself to work.
Down the big hill and out onto the road by the bay. It could be a pretty view, and part of it is, but as you get closer to the city, the bay turns from sailboats and trees into container ships and a massive paper plant with its huge plume of steam constantly pouring into the sky.
I merged onto the freeway. The roads here in many parts are raised off the ground. A hundred feet off the ground, we have roads in the sky. And there, as I turned a broad corner, between the jersey barrier and the yellow stripe stood a seagull.
It wasn’t eating. It wasn’t trying to fly away. It was just standing there, hunched as small as it could make itself, its eyes closed, its head tucked into its body, but both legs fully extended.
As each car whipped past the bird, it shook a little. Wind and dirt pelted the seagull but it just tightened closer, squinting its eyes, with each passing blow.
I spent the rest of the day worried about that seagull. Why didn’t he just fly away? He was already in the sky. There was nothing above him but open sky.
Or if he didn’t want to fly, why didn’t he just jump down and stand under the freeway? It’s dry down there. There is plenty of garbage to eat.
He must have been sick, I surmised. He must have been dying. And his last act was to stand on the freeway and get pelted by passing cars.
When I told Avie about the seagull she reminded me that I had made her read Jonathan Livingston Seagull. I’m sorry about that, I told her, but you have to admit it’s a pretty funny book. Yeah, she said, maybe he was just wishing himself to another dimension. Like Jonathan Livingston Seagull? We both laughed.
Maybe he was more like Charles Bukowski I said. And then I had to explain to her that Bukowski was a drunk that wrote poems about being drunk and living in the gutter. Jonathan Livingston Bukowski, she said.
I should write a poem called Jonathan Livingston Bukowski, I told her. He couldn’t fly away. He was too drunk. And besides, he liked living next to the freeway. One day he’ll realize he can just wish himself away. We both laughed.
When I drove by the next day I looked for the body of the seagull but he was gone.
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