Birds
A Fable for our Times. I woke up the other day with image of a
cartoon in my head. A cartoon I saw exactly once in Key West many years
ago. This was when I was still in the Navy while on barracks
maintenance duty. I remember I saw this in mid-day. It involved birds
living in a tree; it was no animal farm, but there were a variety of
birds on hand. It was a broadcast apparently from Cuba and seen on the
base's proto-cable system (broadcast channels captured by a industrial
central antenna and delivered on closed circuit coaxial). With it back
in mind now, I couldn't
tell if I had been dreaming about it or whether it just popped into my
thoughts as I woke up. I didn't remember it any clearer than the last
time
I thought about it, but that was a while back.
It was Russian, the birds spoke spanish, but with cyrillic
characters seen at points, and I think I recall the credits referred to
Moscow. A Marxist message fable about a independent little bird who is
ostracized, gets into difficulty, but is taken back under the folding
wing of community. Learning, that only in the collective can one thrive,
or survive. I suppose this is not entirely different from the parable
of the prodigal son, but on the other hand I heard on NPR recently that
we are down to our last kibbutzim. The main thrust of the meaning was
not hard to gather, it was not subtle and it was not a merry melodie,
though there was singing. Outside of that I have no idea what it was
about.
I can only imagine that this means something. Dreams
are the mind's way of disentangling recent experience, understanding
and categorizing it. "In dreams begin responsibilities." I may
have been semi-consciously examining my own capacity for conformity. As
long as lumpen prole remains a viable conforming type, then I remain
indistinguishable on the lot, and from the lot of mankind. Maybe this
dreamcast recollection was spun from thoughts on living under a regime
that lays such considerable emphasis on its doctrinal purity and
ideological focus. And does it with such effluence. Perhaps more
directly it is an effect of reading Lipset's book; tracing the failure
of a radical labor egalitarian movement to catch on in this country.
Failure marked by impatience with the middle class exhibited by the old
left left, baffled by the successful and enterprising little birds
around them. Who paid no heed to their lecturing and paid no cost for
their individualism.
This has now colored my thoughts to the extent that I will be
examining these potentials by turns over next month or so in various
posts, whether they're strictly on topic or not.
11:22:06 PM  ;;
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