Saturday, June 18, 2016

It feels like an omen

A friend wrote and said that while sitting outside at home being pensive a hummingbird zipped around his face for a few seconds humming and buzzing zipping back and forth examining his head and his face and all that felt kind of awesome. The Botanic Garden is one block away. That could be it.

The way he described his brief interlude with nature and that being surprise and occurring inside urban sprawl and filling with hope, put me in mind of Carlos Castaneda's humor that is made apparent right off in his Don Juan series. The aspiring anthropologist, a student interested in psychedelic mushrooms, visits an authentic native American shaman and approaching his subject obliquely and academically he describes something odd or coincidental that happened and characterized it to Don Juan as an omen. Don Juan, the shaman said, "No, you dope, that's not an omen that's a sign." Later, through their conversation Don Juan makes clear he really does not want to associate with the young white guy but he understood he was to expect an apprentice. Voicing his hesitancy to Castaneda right then a crow flew by and cawed overhead. Castaneda said, "that's a sign." Don Juan snapped, "That's not a sign, that's an omen!" The dopy student can't even tell the difference between a sign and an omen.

I said, "Those little birds feel like an omen." And when it's just you and your thoughts then those bird really do.
"Wow. Do you think the little bird is sending a message?"
Don't be daft I meant to say, yes, the message is, 'feed me.'

"I don't know."

He's more excited about this bird visitation than usual so I offered a feeder. He'll stop by next week to pick one.

The three from antique bottles are good for low hummingbird traffic, or for experimentation, or for goofy decoration. They don't hold very much. So no big batches of syrup wasted. The other four are commercial blown glass. All four of those are rather heavy.

I like these being placed with people who want them. The first is too impractical and not recommended. What was I thinking? This is boxed and ready to go. Indulge please, if I've shown these before. These are the three remaining from bottles and wire and marbles and stones.



7 comments:

Synova said...

I remember long ago you posted a bunch of these. Your humming birds are lucky. I ought to take better care of mine. :(

chickelit said...

We have two Australian bottle brush trees which have red flowers most of the year. Every time I'm out there watering something, they swoop down to the spray looking for a drink.

Rabel said...

If Bill Gates was standing in front of me I'd beat that pencil-necked mother humper to within an inch of his life. I am under an unrelenting attack from Windows 10. They never give up. They never surrender.

To my shame, I will eventually submit.

ndspinelli said...

Windows 10 is the spawn of Satan.

ndspinelli said...

It hates Firefox.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

I have Windows 7 on this computer. I turned off the automatic downloads and now have the computer ask me if I want to download and install. This stopped all the downloads waiting in the wings, so to speak. Also disabled the "get windows 10" notifications on the hot bar.

I haven't had a Windows 10 interruption, nagging message in months.

The other computers are Windows 8.1 and I hate hate hat it. I figure Windows 10 couldn't possibly be any worse. Plus I only use those for business (no personal stuff, photos etc) and back up my work daily.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

Beautiful feeders. I feel guilty. I haven't filled up my dime store feeders yet this year. I should do that because it is going to start heating up this week and the wild flowers are starting to be past their blooms.

We do enjoy watching the hummingbird wars when we are on the deck. They are pretty hilarious.