ladysprite: (Default)
ladysprite ([personal profile] ladysprite) wrote2004-03-16 08:03 pm

Idle Concerns

I worry sometimes about seagulls - I wonder if that's even an appropraite name for them anymore, watching their teeming hordes prancing stiltedly across parking lots miles and sometimes entire states away from anything even vaguely resembling a sea. Even if their bodies have managed to adapt to such a lifestyle, it can't be psychologically healthy for them to be trapped so far from their namesake.

Do mother seagulls whisper to their nestlings of a time so long ago that it has slowly become birdy myth, when the grey speckles on their wings were echoed in churning white-capped waves beneath them? Can their tiny brains encompass a collective unconscious that holds images of endlessly churning water, and the taste of salt and fish? And if so, do they long for a return to that core state, endlessly promising future generations that they will be the ones to reclaim their birthright, spurning this unnaturally solid and motionless world for one that rocks them gently and sings them to sleep with the sound of water on stone that nurtures a sea-creature's soul in ways that dry land never can?

Or, perhaps, do they see themselves as conquerors of a new world, abandoning watery uncertainty for a life of ease and luxury? Have they willingly traded white caps on black oceans for white dividers on an asphalt parking-lot sea, and, surveying their domain from telephone poles and rooves, think the change dear but worthwhile as they feast on human detritus and think us the fools for abandoning it to them?

Or am I just far too bent on taking an incredibly dim bird and turning it into an excuse to abuse a metaphor well past the point of sanity?

[identity profile] metahacker.livejournal.com 2004-03-16 06:00 pm (UTC)(link)
They're more like McFryGulls now, aren't they...?

[identity profile] cyan-blue.livejournal.com 2004-03-16 06:11 pm (UTC)(link)
You're wonderful...

[identity profile] mrpsyklops.livejournal.com 2004-03-16 07:21 pm (UTC)(link)
Mine!? Mine!? Mine!?

Mine!?

Never go to college health care centers!!

[identity profile] melissaagray.livejournal.com 2004-03-17 12:22 pm (UTC)(link)
That was going to be my reply, darnit!!

But yah, what he said. I think it's fun to write and imagine this sort of stuff too, but in reality Seaguls are "not so much with the brain power"...certaily not the kind of long term memory or story telling you speak of. I can see it now....

"Daughter let me tell you the tale of churning white-capped...Ooh a french fry! Mine! Mine! Mine!"

[identity profile] wcg.livejournal.com 2004-03-16 08:26 pm (UTC)(link)
I think they've been forever changed since the legendary life and tragic death of Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

You remember the song, don't you?

Jonathan Livingston Seagull loved to show off
All his aerobatic tricks, he had quite a blow-off
Eight miles from LaGuardia his program got upset
He was sucked into the engine of a trans-Atlantic jet.

Chorus:
Jonathan Livingston's feeding all the fish
Sliced, diced and toasted he's a very fancy dish.
High above the Ocean
Half way to heaaaaaaaaaaa...ven.
Slurped through the engine of a 747.


I have the rest, if you'd like it.

Of course, among seagulls Jonathan's exploits are legendary. Having given his life for all seagulls everywhere, they are now blessed with a manifest destiny to fly higher, go further, and acheive more than seagulls could before Jonathan.

They even number their calendar: BJ and AJ
gingicat: deep purple lilacs, some buds, some open (Default)

[personal profile] gingicat 2004-03-17 04:35 am (UTC)(link)
Bent or not, you paint a beautiful word picture. :)
bluegargantua: (Default)

[personal profile] bluegargantua 2004-03-17 07:15 am (UTC)(link)

ALBATROSS!



Tom

[identity profile] matildalucet.livejournal.com 2004-03-17 07:15 am (UTC)(link)
I thought I might be weird when I worried whether a diet of cold greasy fries might be bad for their health. It's nice to know somebody else thinks of gulls in terms other than "ick." Too bad their little brains can't appreciate your word pictures.

Today I saw a seagull

[identity profile] madamruppy.livejournal.com 2004-03-18 11:40 am (UTC)(link)
Actually several of them in the parking lot at the Dunkin Donuts (hmmm latte) I found myself wanting to go over and ask them about it. I didn't, one was trying to eat and being chased by a crow. They were busy, and I wasn't sure they'd answer. But I did look at them and wonder.

Puggles