malaise*lithium

While on a walk about ten days ago I saw two bald eagles in the top of a tall tree. I had seen a bald eagle once a long time before, but it had been at a significant distance and it was only for a few moments. This time I was able to stand for several minutes and watch the birds sit aloof and confident. They were huge, and the limbs they perched on swayed slightly with their every movement. There are not so many bald eagles as there once were. The whole continent used to be, well, lousy with them, and though they have been listed as endangered in the past, I understand the population has been on the rise for the past few decades. Although they are still relatively rare, I have never been one to swoon endlessly over such a thing, so I nodded in amazement to the birds and went on my way.

Several days later I was walking along the same path, and in the same stand of trees I saw many more bald eagles. I counted them, tried to count them anyway, and there were at least twenty-seven. Twenty-seven. Bald eagles. In numerals that’s a 2 followed by a 7. 27. Twenty-seven.

I’m just going to let that settle for a moment while I indulge in a short aside. As a dedicated follower of the church of key-tapping, a devotee of the holy chore, if you will, I am convinced that it is important for me to give due attention to experiences like that I just mentioned because I want to be able to reproduce them in a vibrant and, more importantly, truthful way. In doing that, I not only have to create a complete and compelling image, but also try to account for any preexisting notions the reader may have. In light of that I’d like to make it plain that I know what the bald eagle means for most people; even if they haven’t subscribed entirely to the symbol-of-national-pride notion, many people still see the bird as a image of the grandeur of nature, and an animamorphication, if you’ll excuse the neologism, of the very concept of freedom. To be entirely honest, those things were present among my preconceptions as well, so I was as surprised by my reaction to seeing these eagles as I expect you may be in reading about it. Hey, look, we’ve ended up back at the essay. In case you forgot, I had just said that there were twenty-seven bald eagles.

This sight completely freaked me out. I was already well into the grove when, with sort of a creeping eyes-on-my-neck horror-movie panorama, I suddenly realized I was surrounded. It was a downright Hitchcockian sight. The eagles were in a several groups of six to eight, and a few of them were restless and leapt from the trees and circled over my head. There was a dizzy moment of half-comprehension. And once my reason caught up with the cowardly animal part of me (which had already emitted a shriek like a dying rabbit and ran off down the draw), I began to think, what are they doing?

After a few minutes observation, the only word I felt applied was loiter. They quite obviously weren’t doing anything. And considering those formidable-looking hooked beaks, those strangely furrowed avian brows, I felt first let down, and then angry. It was something like discovering that Elvis Costello spends virtually all of his free time on MySpace, or like catching David Mamet skulking out of the periodical stacks at B. Dalton with rolled copies of Super Chevy and Martha Stewart Living tucked under his arm.

I was first reminded of the image that circulated after 9/11 of the bald eagle crying one large perfect tear with the doomed and burning twin towers visible in a ghostly inset. I found the image on the net and have posted it here in the hope that it will illustrate my point but not cause your stomach to spasm the way it does mine. It was something that embarrassed and sickened me at the time, and my feelings about it have become only more intense in the intervening years. Not only was it absurd, it was overly sentimental, patronizing, and surely subverted the very assumptions that apparently drove its distribution—the symbol of power and of freedom was shown broken and captivated. The fact that anyone would see that image and be anything but chagrined and perhaps morbidly amused by it, let alone that so many people evidently lacked the good sense or shame to stop them from passing it on, makes me think perhaps we had better just let the cockroaches have a go at running the world.

I was reminded of what we named the first vessel to land on a extraterrestrial body, namely the moon. The landing of the Eagle was an action representing humankind’s first timid and temporary toe into the waters beyond this island earth. Neil Armstrong even left a 24k gold olive branch in the lunar dust to signify our wishes for peace on our planet and, by the implications of its placement, anywhere else we may find ourselves. Of course, that trinket isn’t all we left behind. Aside from all matter of plaques and mementos with inscriptions blathering blithely about our swell intentions, humankind has left nearly 190 tons of trash on the moon. Spent fuel cells, worn-out moon buggies (what more characteristically American item could there be than a broken-down jalopy?), landing stages, a silicon disc bearing statements from Nixon, Johnson, Eisenhower and seventy-three other blowhards from around the good green globe (a more useless piece of debris I cannot imagine), TV cameras, tools, staffs, containers, rations, cables, a bazillion footprints, a golf club, lunar overshoes, various crashed orbiters, antennas, tripods, blankets, brackets, and yes, friends, even bags of urine and petrified human excrement. All of which will be there for millennia unless someone someday bothers to clean up the mess. Some legacy. Some great intentions. The Eagle landed and took a big hefty shit.

In a letter to his daughter, Ben Franklin had something to say about the bald eagle (incidentally, while it is commonly believed that Ben recommended the turkey over the eagle for the office of symbolic animal, he actually recommended the rattlesnake, saying it was a good match for “the temper and conduct of America,” a statement which perhaps needs less qualification now than it did then. Anyway, onward.).

From Mr. Franklin: “He is a bird of bad moral character. He does not get his living honestly. You may have seen him perched on some dead tree near the river where, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the labor of the fishing hawk; and when that diligent bird has at length taken a fish, and is bearing it to his nest for the support of his mate and young ones, the bald eagle pursues him and takes it from him. With all this injustice, incidentally, he is never in good case [and], like those among men who live by sharping & robbing, he is generally poor and often very lousy. Besides, he is a rank coward…“

All the time I stood and watched, none of the birds left. When I passed by again nearly an hour later, it seemed that all of the birds were still there. Wasting time. “Go do something worthwhile!” I wanted to shout. “Go swoop. Go be amazing.” I jerked my arms at them. I threw a rock into the water. One of them turned and looked at me with one yellow eye. None of them did anything. Maybe they were just indifferent. Maybe I was insignificant. I know that most of the points I have made in this edition of Malaise have not been exactly relevant. I have employed not a few logical fallacies, I admit. I have attempted with simple subterfuge to disguise my lack of research and dearth of feeling. I’ve tried to build an anecdote into a cultural polemic. I made up a word–a seven-syllable word at that. The tail of this intrepid scribbler is appropriately betwixt his legs.

Still, perhaps now it is a bit clearer that I am not simply being a contrarian or a curmudgeon when someone says, “Eagles?” and I scoff and chortle and say, “Buzzards.”
Buzzards.