Feathered Joy

My grandfather's purple martin box.

I've been waiting expectantly since the beginning of the month.  For the last two years, the purple martins who live in our backyard box during the spring and summer have returned from their Brazilian winter during the first week of February.

The box sways in the wind atop its poll, hollow and forlorn, all fall and winter.  The occasional sparrow lights on its perches or squats in one of the dozen apartments, but I pull out their nests if they start to build.  These apartments are exclusively for the purple martins.

My grandfather tenanted large populations of martins.  He had two boxes, each holding over 100 apartments, and most were filled with singles or nesting pairs.  Every year many dozens of birds were born in his boxes, fledged and migrated to Brazil for the fall and winter, then returned to breed and raise their own young in those same boxes.  Papaw would sit in a cane-backed chair under the carport with a .22 rifle, ready to eliminate any starlings that tried to drag out and eat martin eggs or chicks.  His dog retrieved the fallen predators and placed them in a pile by Papaw's chair.  Sometimes, he let me and my cousins retrieve them, which thrilled us.

Rat snakes ate the martins and their eggs, too.  You'd look out the front window and see the long, black body hanging out of the hole while it gorged itself.  Papaw would ascend the ladder within reach of the snake, grab it by its tail end, and whip it out of the hole, forcing it to drop whatever bird it was holding.  In one swift move, holding the pole with one hand and the snake with the other, he would swing the snake in one wide loop to pop it like a bull-whip, sending its head flying over the black walnut trees and out onto the road.  My cousins and I marveled as he slit open the snake with his pocket knife to see how many of his beloved birds had been lost to the predator.

So, I come by my love of purple martins naturally.  I sit in the backyard swing to watch them every day, and I feel an almost inexpressible joy in doing so.  I can hear their sharp, crackling cries from high above me, even above the din of the freeway.  I can pick them out of the clear blue sky even when they are at their highest in the afternoons, surfing the circling wind currents to catch dragonflies.  They are master aerialists, darting and diving and free falling high or low over the lake, their forked tails splayed and turning as a keel.  They zoom over the water, touching their bellies to the surface so as to cool their chicks with wet feathers.  They eat mounds of mosquitos, dragonflies and dayflies.  They settle on the box perches at dusk, chortling and chirping into the setting sun before darting into their apartments for the night.

I yearn for them every year at this time.  And they always seem to come back to their home here right when I need them.  Two years ago, the first one returned the morning after I quit my job.  I woke up after a fitful night and there he was, black and shining in the morning sun.  I took it as a good sign.  Last year, the first bird returned as my friend was visiting us during a particularly trying time for her.  I took that as a good sign, too.

This year, they were almost two weeks late.  But, the first birds returned a few days ago and have already begun scouting out which apartments they prefer.  I begin my second round of chemotherapy this coming week and won't have much energy for anything but sitting in the backyard swing.

Again, it seems, the purple martins have returned to their part-time home at exactly the right time.

Kali: My Chemical Hurricane

Hindus have revered the goddess Kali for many centuries and in many ways throughout larger India.  My friend Calvin sent this card to us recently which displays her in a traditional form.

A dazzling array of devotional practices surround Kali, and the iconography representing her is equally lavish in displaying her common attributes: red rage-intoxicated eyes, lolling tongue, fangs, disheveled hair, dark blue or black skin, 4 or 10 arms, sometimes many faces, wearing a garland of human skulls, holding a severed head and a skull drinking bowl of blood on one side, and a sword and trident on the other.  She is accompanied by jackals and snakes, and often dances in triumph over her submissive consort Shiva.

She represents death, time, energy, the battlefield, change, ultimate reality . . . . . and disease.

I read an article years ago that focused on the ways in which Kali's famous powers of destruction and death are fused with her role as a protective mother in certain parts of India, especially with regard to disease.  The author pointed out that while that "big three" Hindu deities Brahman, Vishnu and Shiva dominate the major urban temples, Kali and other such fierce goddesses reign supreme throughout the smaller towns and rural areas.  People with little or no access to other kinds of medical care apparently need goddesses like these in times of disease.

It takes something more toxic than the disease to fight the disease.  Enter Kali.

This is my first week of chemotherapy for the malignant lemon-sized tumor in my chest.  I am being infused with 4 powerful drugs whose job is to find and kill the cancer cells.  Of course, they'll kill some healthy cells, too, which will push down my red blood cell counts and push out the hair on my head.  But, if they kill the loose tentacles of the malignant lemon and cut it down to size so the surgeon can cut it out permanently, I'm happy to endure the toxic storm of chemicals in my bloodstream for two months or so.

I'm not a very religious person.  I don't pray, meditate or chant.  I don't even do secularized yoga.  When pushed to label myself, I say I'm a pious agnostic.  I don't know what god or gods may or may not exist.  I don't claim to know what any deity wants or needs or demands.  All I know is that I and my world are a small part of an infinitely larger reality that precedes all of us, and will be here when we and our kind are gone.  I revere that even though I don't know what it is.  Mostly, that just means I'm silent in the face of it.

The image of Kali came to me this week, however, and at the same time that I began to use the term "hurricane" to refer to the toxic chemicals being infused into my system.  So, in a particularly "religious" way, I've concocted a sort of mythology that combines all this together into an empowering context for me to forge ahead in the weeks to come.

A hurricane of death and destruction is raging through my bloodstream.  It is combining and swirling and penetrating into every nook, membrane and cell of my system.  Seeking and destroying cancer cells.  Severing their heads, drinking their blood from their own skull bowls.  Drunkenly piercing them with fangs, intoxicated with rage.  Decorated in triumphal dance with a garland of skulls.  The jackals are crying and laughing, ready to eat the spoils.  The snakes are coiled to strike - no one gets away.

My chemical hurricane has begun.  She is coursing through my veins.  She is more toxic than the cancer, and will kill the cancer so that I alone remain.  My chemical hurricane is a category 5 and has been officially named.

Her name is Kali.