A Bird without Legs
There was a story told long time ago by a wise man. It is a story about hardship and struggle unrivalled by its intensity. Truly a myth worth pondering.
So told there was this bird, *born without legs. It learned how to fly while falling from its nest up high. It was pushed down by its parents. From then on it keeps flying.
It cannot land for fear it cannot take off again. It has neither friends nor mate.
If it is sleepy, it will fly up high and sleep while falling from the sky and wakes up before hitting land. It has no choice but to keep flying to survive.
One day it will land. It is the day when the bird dies.
*note: born not hatched as was originally told.
Miserable and Irritatable
June 29th, 2009 at 10:56 pm
In the movie” the Fugutive Kind” with Marlon Brando and Joanne Woodward Brando talks of a bird with no legs
October 20th, 2011 at 6:15 am
Orpheus Descending” by Tennessee Williams
Act One
Val: You might think there’s many and many kinds of people in this world but, Lady, there’s just two kinds of people, the ones that are bought and the buyers! No! – there’s one other kind…
Lady: What kind’s that?
Val: The kind that’s never been branded.
Lady: You will be, man.
Val: They got to catch me first.
Lady: Well, then, you better not settle down in this country.
Val: You know they’s a kind of bird that don’t have legs so it can’t light on nothing but has to stay all its life on its wings in the sky? That’s true. I seen one once, it had died and fallen to earth and it was light-blue coloured and its body was tiny as your little finger, that the truth, it had a body was tiny as your little finger and so light on the palm of your hand it didn’t weigh more than a feather, but its wings spread out this wide but they were transparent, the colour of the sky and you could see through them. That’s what they call protection colouring. Camouflage, they call it. You can’t tell those birds from the sky and that’s why the hawks don’t catch them, don’t see them up there in the high blue sky near the sun!
Lady: How about in grey weather?
Val: They fly so high in grey weather the goddam hawks would get dizzy. But those little birds, they don’t have no legs at all and they live their whole lives on the wing, and they sleep on the wind, that’s how they sleep at night, they just spread their wings and go to sleep on the wild like other birds fold their wings and go to sleep on a tree… -They sleep on the wind and -never light on this earth but one time when they die.
Lady: -I’d like to be one of those birds.
Val: So’d I like to be one of those birds; they’s lots of people would like to be one of those birds and never be- corrupted!
Lady: If one of those birds ever dies and falls on the ground and you happened to find it, I wish you would show it to me because I think maybe you just imagine there is a bird of that kind of existence. Because I don’t think nothing living has ever been that free, not even nearly. Show me one of them birds and I’ll say. Yes, God’s made one perfect creature!-I sure would give this mercantile store and every bit of stock in it to be that tiny bird the colour of the sky…for one night to sleep on the wind and – float! – around under th’-stars…