“Entangled in the Campus Trees”; by Glitter Pigeon; October 2024

*Trigger Warning: suicide mention*

It is January. The winter has been long, and it will be longer. This is no time for the migratory warblers, for the spring-time thrushes. Not now, not here, in a Canadian January with disconcertingly little snow and a square of bare trees, fractalling against the grey sky behind the concrete and glass buildings. I walk circles beneath them, the morning after trying to hang myself, feeling more nauseous than I ever have before in my life. I am two hours early for my classes, as that was the only time I could convince someone to drive me to school (because I didn’t trust myself to cross the bridge by myself). I walk in circles around those trees. I look up, I see the juncos.

A suicide attempt is not a memento mori, but a memento vivere. A reminder of living, not of dying. Sitting on your bedroom floor, realizing what just happened. Feeling the whole of your life stretched out in front of you and it is just so long, and you have to live it all. Watching the dark-eyed juncos forage under the bare trees, the little flash of white on their tails, the tilt of their black heads on small brown bodies.

A dark eyed junco is not an answer or a question or a demand, it is a species of medium-sized new world sparrow with a round head, dark body, and a notably long tail. (Cornell Lab of Ornithology) The website All About Birds describes them as “neat, even flashy”. (Cornell Lab of Ornithology) Their appearance varies greatly by region, but where I live, they wear beautiful brown feathers with black heads, perfectly camouflaged for our dense forests.

While dark-eyed juncos in most places migrate from the south to the north to breed, where I live, they stay all year. (Cornell Lab of Ornithology)  I first read about them in a bird ID book I was given as a child. I always had a special interest in birds but I didn’t pay much mind to them, these small, dull sparrows. I always mixed the sparrows up with each other anyways. But slowly, as I got older, something started to change. I saw something in those tiny wings and glittery eyes.

As a pigeon, in a way I feel a connection to all birds. I can relate to the twist of feathers, the arrowed wings, the exaltation of flight. Much like I’d assume mammals relate to plush fur and sharp claws, to curling up in a warm den. But the juncos are different. I feel, as if on that day, under those trees, some little tether was cast out between me and the birds, and now, wherever I am, wherever I go, they are there, these little reminders of some fragment of me, some little messenger of my soul.

The world of a bird is a vivid one. With the ability to see uv light, with the smallness of one’s body and the vastness of a trembling world, and the unique verticality of one’s place within it, constantly moving. The barrage of cars and light and people and buildings and trees and insects and colour and noise and- many a time have I found myself dazzled by it, absolutely destroyed by it, lying in my bed in the mid-day, feeling the world rotating around me as if through some extra sense I couldn’t understand. I see the sparrows dive through it. Catching all the noise and nonsense on their soft feathers. I feel as if I need to be taught to die, to be taught to live, to face light with bravery. I think the birds know this.

Birds are creatures of solace. They each have different reliefs to give. Robins show you how to find the good in bad situations. Pigeons remind you to love humans, to find strength in community and compassion. Woodpeckers tell you that there is no clear difference between a home and a tree (unfortunately they always tell me this when I’m trying to sleep). Gulls teach you how confidence will carry you a lot farther than you think it will, and to always (loudly) advocate for your needs. Geese teach you to protect closely the ones you love. Cormorants, the value of precision. Song sparrows remind you that music is your birthright and that all you need to make it is your own body. I could go on.

There is, I think, no problem that cannot be helped, even just a little, by sitting and watching the birds. Different people, at different times, need different birds, I needed the juncos, pulling thin strands of soul through the bare trees. Wherever juncos are, I am there, just a little. A part of me will never leave those campus trees, as long as there are juncos. They have bound me there. Attached some fundamental aspect of my living up there in those branches. And it’s too high for me to pull it down.

I don’t regret my attempts. I don’t fit into that narrative I hear all the time, that once I did it, once I saw the view, once I felt the cold waters of death pass over my head, I instantly knew that I didn’t want it and would do anything to live again. I don’t think most people fit into it, though I often see it offered to people like it’s some kind of magic answer to their troubles. I can’t offer happy endings, I can’t offer promises or cures. For myself, for you, for anyone.  Answers, questions, demands. I can tell you what happened, at least as much of it as I am comfortable, I can tell you of the sparrows in the winter trees.

I can tell you memento vivere, you have lived. All the way until you die, you will live. You cannot undo the living that has come and gone, your life is a story of living, no matter how it ends. They lived, I lived, you lived. This is a neutral thing, and no guarantee or command for the future. Only you can decide what to do with that, only I can decide what I will, and I can only hope I will be given the space, and trust and grace I need for the decisions I make, every option an imperfect solution. The grace given to me by those juncos.

You will, as consequence of your living, leave behind some debris. Some keys and books and inside-jokes. I am fascinated by these things. Every life lived well leaves something behind to be sorted through, some remnant of the person ghosting coffee shops and bedrooms and parks. For me, one such thing is the juncos. Long past my lifespan, however it ends, I feel I will linger like dust between their feathers. Gleaming on the light in their eyes. Their tiny voices, small but insistent, over and over, “remember, remember, remember, you must live. Both a triumph and a terror.” The soft and compassionate call of the birds.

Work Cited

Cornell Lab of Ornithology. “Dark-eyed Junco.” All About Birds, https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Dark-eyed_Junco. Accessed 16 August 2024.