purpose is a dying bird

~encyclopediac

Today, while on a walk through the neighborhood, my friend and I chanced upon a baby bird sitting on the pavement. It was tiny, and weak, and underneath its gray wings was pink flesh. It could barely open its eyes. As my friend searched for a nest, I studied its shaking body in the palm of my hand. The fledgling and I breathed together. I found a makeshift nest, where it will die peacefully enough, hidden from the cars.

Although no sound sprang from its opened beak, I would know the bird species anywhere. They roost in all the trees in the city I live in. They have their own roosting season: two weeks in fall, immediately before lifting off in mass migration. In those two weeks, if you get downtown early enough--between 6 and 7:15 in the morning--you will hear them, thousands of birds singing and awakening together, drowning out the city's soundscape. No amount of human activity or infrastructure can match the noise, not even the construction.

Holding the fledgling against my chest, cutting through traffic to find a safe place for it to die, reminded me of my own existence. Provisional and loud, and unbearably young. Beating my barely-developed wings against the fingers of the Universe, trying to articulate a familiar noise.

I feel I was born to forever be an observer, writing about the sounds of birds without ever interacting with the birds themselves. I find Baldwinian purpose in observation. Someone must record the protest instead of picking up a brick. Not everyone is built for action. But could there be a such thing as observing, and acting? Taking note of the cars on fire, and then pressing the ridges of my skin into the brick? Sharing the morning birdsong, and easing the short-lived breaths of a premature fledgling? Perhaps Baldwin should be known not just in his writing, but also in the readers he inspires.

Along with my own purpose, I am confronting the problem of AI. Survivorship bias has me thinking about it less and less as it is integrated more and more into the corners of my life. Observation is all AI can do. Even if I am not confident in my posture at the soapbox, I refuse to be delegated the same purpose as a digital algorithm that runs up carbon emissions. I must create, I must write, and I must take action because it is my duty and privilege as a human to do so. I am not a fledgling screaming silently.