Conversation with an Owl

Our backyard butts up against a small copse of trees. I’ve marveled at the many forms of wildlife which, from time to time, can be spotted and heard in our backyard. I have seen two deer so far, plus a brown fox, a beaver, a snake, and a rather large, repugnant toad which, I suspect, makes his home under my deck, behind the marigolds.

The most common visitor was a hoary owl that liked to perch in the tree next to the window in my study. I would hear him a lot in bed when I was trying to write. His hooting wasn’t irksome, although sometimes it was a bit insistent, by which I mean endless. He was hoping to say something to someone, of that much I was certain. I just never dreamed that someone would be me.

One summer night I was in my study, writing. I had the windows open and some music on low. After a while, I heard his familiar hoot. I turned the music off and listened to him chatting out there on the tree branch, wondering what he was saying. Then, for whatever absurd reason, I suddenly felt the owl was aware of me. A foolish thought, I know, but I never said I’m not a dreamer. I got up from my desk and went over to the window. I could sense where the hooting was coming from, but I couldn’t see the owl. As I tried to find him in the darkness, his hoots got louder.

Eventually, I went outside.

I brought my chair over to the edge of my deck and sat down, facing the direction of the tree outside my study. I was worried that maybe my presence had chased the owl away, but after a few moments I heard him hoot. I still couldn’t see him, but he was still there, and just as in my study, I sensed he was aware of me.

A few minutes of silence passed. There was a soft summer wind… scarcely perceptible… just strong enough to make some of the leaves murmur above. Not many stars were out, though the few I could see were bright and something about the night sky and the sound of the trees wobbling in the breeze made me feel very much at peace with my surroundings.

Then, an absurd impulse overtook me. I sensed a rabbit hole of the Lewis Carroll kind, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to fall into it. “Do it,” something inside me said. Scoffing at myself, willingly stepping into the rabbit hole, I cleared my throat and… hooted.

The owl hooted back.

“Incredible,” I thought. “Contact has been established!”

After that, there was a brief exchange of continued hoots. I answered him, he answered me, and so on. And I felt myself overwhelmed by the most preposterous notion: that I was suddenly at the center of a pseudo-Socratic situation. Carried away by this absurd fantasy that I was a pupil and the owl was my teacher, I decided his name was Archimedes. This sounds sufficiently Greek. I imagined also that Archimedes wore the black-rimmed glasses befitting a scholar of his lofty rank.

Now that the proper setting had been recognized, I drew in through my pipe and puffed smoke into the balmy night air with great expectation. “What,” I wondered, “would the owl impart to me?”

(The reader must understand something now, and that’s the quite evident fact that I’m manifestly insane. I know this well. I know that the ensuing conversation took place only in my mind, and that the owl never actually said any of this. I know it. I mean, I mostly know it. I think I know it. It could be that the conversation happened only in my mind. Yes, I guess that could be possible. The owl never actually spoke. No. I am quite sure of that. Aren’t I?)

Archimedes cleared his throat and said, “What is it you want to know, exactly?”

I considered this. “What does it all mean?” I replied.

“By ‘all,’ I assume you refer to existence itself?”

“Yeah, existence. Life. Reality. The Universe. Everything.”

“Which answer would comfort you more: if I said it means nothing, or it means whatever you want it to mean?”

“The truth would comfort me, whatever it is,” I said.

“You lie to yourself.”

“Pardon?”

“You say you want the truth, but you don’t. What you really want is to be comforted, so I’ll ask you again, which answer would comfort you more?”

“Those are my only two options? Either, A, it all means nothing, or B, it means whatever I want it to mean?”

“Correct.”

“Why just those two options?”

“Because they are the only two possibilities.”

I sighed. “I don’t like my life,” I said. “I’m not who I want to be.”

“Then change,” Archimedes advised.

“Is it that easy?”

“It’s the easiest thing in the world. You’re like a computer. Your function is to perform whatever’s programmed into you. Who’s the programmer if not you?”

“Aren’t I the product of all that has happened to me, and what the world has done to me? I mean, I thought reality itself was the programmer.”

“Nonsense. That’s just one of your many miscalculations.”

“So I have complete control over who I am and what I become?”

“If not you, then who?” When he said “who,” it was rather hoot-like.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I need to give it some thought.”

“Let me ask you this,” said he. “You said you’re not what you want to be. What do you want to be?”

The answer to this question came scurrying forth from the ethereal depths and escaped my lips of its own accord. “I want to be free.”

“Free?” Archimedes said. “And what does that mean to you, ‘free?’”

“I want the ability to be the person I want to be, the ability to eradicate those parts of myself that are undesirable. I want to overcome what has happened to me. I want to evolve, to graduate into a complete, finished version. I want to be happy freely, without reservation, without apprehension, without asking myself whether I’ve earned it.”

“You’ve heard that it’s about the journey and not the destination, right?”

“Yeah. It’s a nice cliché. I mostly agree with it. But I also feel that concept sort of equates our experience in life to a long road trip in which the destination is always over the next bend, remaining constantly out of reach. Road trips are fun, but they can also be exhausting. Sometimes we need to arrive. Sometimes the destination is just as important as the journey. There’s rest in arrival.”

“So you want to rest?”

I nodded.

“I see,” Archimedes said. “What if life isn’t about resting? What if life is about doing?”

“So we only get to rest in death?”

“Perhaps.”

“No offense, Archimedes, but that’s shitty.”

Archimedes stiffened. “How like your kind,” he griped. “So entitled. Show me where in the Cosmos the rule is written that existence is guaranteed to be something other than shitty.”

“I knew you’d say that.”

Archimedes flapped his wings and said, “Your cat is in the window.”

I looked to see that my cat was indeed in the window. “He can’t get you,” I assured him.

“I’m a bird,” Archimedes barked. “I could never fully trust someone who keeps cats.”

“My apologies.”

“Okay, let me get this straight. What you want is to be free. And to rest. Yes?”

“You make it sound like resting is a bad thing.”

“What exactly is it that you need rest from?”

“Well… the weight of life can sometimes be too heavy. The daily trudge through reality on this planet can be too much. We don’t even really have to be doing anything. Sometimes, just being here, being awake, can take everything out of you. It’s hard to be a human.”

“Try being an owl sometime.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I said nothing.

Archimedes went on, “Let’s get back to what you said before. You said you cannot rest because you’re not free.”

“Yes. Not free to rest.”

“What if you really are free to rest? What if this inhibition exists only in your mind?”

“Well, you exist only in my mind, too.”

“Be serious. What if you can rest, but you just won’t?”

“Then I’m to be pitied, I suppose.”

“Tell me about this perceived inhibition. And note my use of the word ‘perceived,’ because I believe this inhibition exists only in your imagination.”

“Whether it’s real or not makes little difference, I think. It amounts to the same thing. Where is my life lived if not in my mind? All my experiences, my reality, everything that I feel and think and perceive and discover and contemplate—it all takes place in my mind.”

“Are you saying that reality is unique to you, and someone else’s reality is unique to them? So, in your mind, reality isn’t a fixed schema but rather only what one particular individual interprets it to be?”

“I’m not sure. How can reality be defined without first leaving it to see it as it is from the outside?”

“But even if you could leave reality, don’t you take it with you the instant you set foot elsewhere?”

“That’s just what I’m trying to ascertain. Does reality apply wherever I am… no matter what? Or does it have borders that can be crossed?”

“I personally don’t think so. I think reality applies wherever anything exists.”

“Then what does it matter if I only perceive certain things to be real? Either they’re real, or they’re not.”

“It does matter. Sometimes what seems to be real in your mind is actually false outside the limit of your physical brain.”

“Like you, you mean? You’re only in my mind, after all.”

“Son, I am your mind. Haven’t you figured that out yet?”

“We’re getting off track,” I said. “Your assertion is that my inhibitions are only real in my mind. Fine. I’ll ask again: where do I live out my life if not within my mind?”

“Think of it this way. If a man is shot and the bullet stays lodged in the flesh, we could say that there is some malignant foreign material residing in his body, yes?”

“Okay.”

“The bullet is now inside the body. Ergo, one could make a case that the bullet is now part of the body. But that bullet is, nevertheless, foreign material. It doesn’t belong there. If it is left there, it will cause the body harm. Imagine your inhibitions are like a bullet in your mind. They seem like part of the landscape, but in actuality they don’t belong there. They’re foreign material causing the mind harm.”

“It can’t be that simple,” I said.

“Ah, but what if it is? Perhaps you need to do to that ‘inhibiting voice’ in your mind what a doctor would do to a bullet in someone’s chest.”

“Remove it?”

“Yes.”

“That’s easier said than done.”

“I said it was simple, not easy.”

Just then the conversation was interrupted by a jet flying overhead, something that happens frequently due to our house being close to Lambert Airport. Somehow the noise of the jet shook me out of this mental fantasy and restored me to the real world. My pipe was spent, and I felt sleepy.

I hooted to see if the owl was still there. I was greeted only by silence. He was gone. I felt sad for some reason. For all I knew, he’d flown off long before now, but I was so immersed in my pretend dialogue that I might’ve missed it. It didn’t matter. The moment had passed.

I went inside and eventually slid into bed, but I didn’t fall asleep for some time. I laid awake for a while, musing over all Archimedes had said.