The Complete Collection. William Wharton

them upside down and shuffle them completely. I take one at random and put it on the bottom of the flight cage, face up, without looking at it. I also put some seed, egg food, and water in the empty cage. This doesn’t make sense because there was always something to eat when the other males were there, even though the cage’d been empty for two weeks and I hadn’t been putting in any food. But now, the dream is caught up and I don’t want to take any chance of starving myself to death. I suspect there’s the possibility I could get caught in the dream for several days, even in one night.

      In my dream that night, I’m alone again. There’s the piece of paper on the floor. I fly down to read it. All five messages are on the one sheet of paper. I go over to eat some egg food and drink a drop of water. I look at the paper again. This time there’s nothing on it.

      I’m beginning to know what I’m doing. I’m at the edge of where you have things happen to you or you make them happen. The dream is mine and it’s as real as anything but it’s mostly a matter of what I want. Usually I don’t know what I want, so it’s hard to control the dream. Also, things that happen outside the dream come into the dream on their own. I can’t make anything happen in the dream without something like it happening in the daytime world. I still don’t understand but I’m not frightened.

      After that, I get so I can talk to the other birds in the breeding cages. I’ve never talked to them from the big aviary flight cage before, or looked at them from there, so I have to wish it on purpose for it to happen. I know the birds, I know where they are and I’ve talked to them before. I put these things together to make it happen.

      I talk to Alfonso first and then to Birdie. It’s good talking to her. I know her so well but we’ve never been able to speak to each other. She’s very excited about her new babies and she’s glad I’m in the dream. She doesn’t call it ‘in the dream’, she says ‘with us’. I talk to almost all the other birds. By looking through the binoculars I know what each cage looks like from the inside and which bird is in which cage. I know who I’m talking to without seeing them. I don’t feel so alone.

      Another way I’m not like a bird is I look at things with both eyes, straight on. I can’t get myself to see the way a bird does. In every way, when I don’t look down at myself, I feel like me, Birdy, the boy.

      In the morning, before I leave for school, I go out to put in new egg food and generally check around. I look at the note on the floor and it’s still there, but just one message. The egg food is untouched. All day long in school, I think about it. I dream the things I know. That’s why I’m Birdie; I know Birdie best. I wonder if I’m a female. Birdie’s a female but I was in the male cage. I’d like to find out which I am. I don’t want to make myself one or the other, I only want to know.

      – Sex, age, races, all that bullshit keeps everybody apart. Competition gets to be the only link we’ve got. But, if you’ve got to ‘beat’ somebody then you’re more alone.

      Games are something we’ve made up to help us forget we’ve forgotten how to play. Playing is doing something for itself; Birdy and I played a lot.

      Birdy really smiled at me there, a true vintage ‘It doesn’t matter’ smile. He could be putting this whole thing on. That’s OK, too.

      I’ll try singing in my dream tonight; that should settle it for me. In Plane Geometry that afternoon, I get into an argument with Mr Shull, the teacher, about parallel lines. I say they have to meet. I’m beginning to think everything comes together somewhere.

      In the dream, I sing. I can never remember singing as a boy, but singing as a bird is completely different from anything I’ve ever known. It isn’t what I expected at all. I sound like a roller canary singing, but the words I’m hearing are in English and sound almost like poetry. I’m hearing myself simultaneously as bird and as boy speaking words. I’m singing the thoughts I’ve had about flying combined with the feeling I’m having as a bird.

      One of the first songs I sing sounds like this: There is nothing of fright when one flies free. There’s only the taste of air and touching nowhere. I see the earth below and it’s down the way the sky is up when you look from the ground. Everything is out or away and the play of gravity is like sand.

      Now, I know I’m not Birdie completely. I can hear Birdie from the breeding cage. She wants me to sing more but the singing is still hard for me. Alfonso starts singing to Birdie. I can understand his whole song for the first time. He sings this: Come fly with me; dry thistles sliding through a crystal sky, you and I. Below, mountains hump and clouds hover while cows slumber seven stomachs deep in clover. We glide together in twisting currents of air, caring for nothing. We are each other and we take wing to find fertile fields and silent beaches.

      I listen and know Alfonso couldn’t sing that song. A bird can know nothing about cows’ stomachs. I’ve just learned about them in biology class. Alfonso has never flown over mountains or clouds; these are my ideas. Alfonso is singing and I’m hearing his song with my mind, in my dream. Can Alfonso really talk, or is it all just me? I can’t believe that. Alfonso’s taught me things about flying I could not know myself. I can’t put this together in my dream. During this night, I know I’m dreaming all during the dream.

      There’s one thing I’m sure of. Singing is like flying. When I sing, I close my eyes and see myself flying through and over trees. I’m sure that’s why canaries sing. They were put in cages because they sang and now they sing because they’re in cages.

      Canaries have been in cages for over four hundred years. A canary generation, the time from birth till breeding, is less than a year. A human generation is about twenty years. Therefore, birds have been in cages for a time that for humans would be eight thousand years. In fact, canaries and humans have been in cages the same number of generations.

      I begin to wonder what men do that’s the same as canary singing. It’s probably thinking. We built this cage, civilization, because we could think and now we have to think because we’re caught in our cage. I’m sure there’s a real world still there if I can only get out of the cage. But, would my canaries sing as much if they could live in the open and fly freely? I don’t know. I hope some day to find out.

      The breeding cages are going at a great rate. I already have birds out of the nest. Soon, I’m going to have some ready to put in the flight cages. I don’t know whether to put them in the cage where I am in my dream or in the other one. I’m still trying to decide this when I start dreaming of Perta.

      When I say dreaming, I don’t mean I’m dreaming of Perta the way I’m dreaming the rest of the dream. I’m dreaming of Perta in my dream. I’m sleeping in my dream on one foot as a bird and I’m dreaming of Perta.

      Perta is smaller than most female canaries. She has a light green head blushing back to a lighter yellow-green on her breast, then darker green on her back. Her wings vary from layer to layer of her feathers. This gives a variegated surface like a blue check pigeon, only in shades of green. She has white bars on the outside of her wings because her last two flight feathers on each wing are white. Her shape is roundish and she flies with small movements, fast flapping but great grace and speed. She has markings over her eyes almost like eyebrows. Her beak and legs aren’t as dark as Alfonso, nor as light pink as Birdie.

      In my dream, I’m sleeping on the top perch of the aviary and dreaming. I’m lonely and tired; I’m sleepy and sleeping in my own dream. I know this much. It’s several nights before I realize I’m dream-dreaming Perta.

      In the dream-dream, I’m alone in the flight cage and look down to see someone at the food dish. I know immediately it’s a female. She either doesn’t know I’m up on the top perch or she’s ignoring me. I stay still, watching her, enjoying her movements. I watch her closely the way I watch the birds with my binoculars as a boy.

      Her flying is not exceptional in terms of power or thrust but she’s very light in the air. I feel she loves flying and flies for pleasure. I watch her practice different landings and banking maneuvers. She integrates the movement of her tail, the tilting of her wings and the shifting of her body as if she’s dancing in the air. I’m falling in love with her in the