The Nearly-Severely Depressed Bird

The nearly-severely depressed bird has many interests. She enjoys making smoothies; drawing different foods she has eaten; packaging things to send to other birds; stealing from corporations; supporting independent, organic vegan restaurants and grocery stores; and adhering to an organic vegan diet low in non-fruit carbohydrates, high in nuts and seeds and raw produce, and free of sugar and other refined foods. Each night the nearly-severely depressed bird stands in her nest for 2 hours thinking of things she can do the next day, neatly writing each activity in a 3½” by 5” Moleskine journal she stole from Barnes & Noble by putting 5 of them on her head and flying away calmly.

The nearly-severely depressed bird reads for about 1 hour each night before sleep. She reads mostly graphic novels, books on veganism and ethics, fiction by writers who write from an existential point of view without being dramatic about it, and non-fiction books about birds that have been marginalized in society at least twice—once by the mainstream and at least once by a subculture. Tonight the bird who is nearly but not at all severely depressed reads from a book called The Mole Birds about birds who can’t afford to pay for a nest and also (for a variety of reasons including shame; a lack of sense of belonging; and being constantly raped, beaten, or harassed) have been alienated from the aboveground nestless bird population, and now live underground.

“Carlos and Frank met in an apricot tree, where Frank, a large eighteen-year-old from New Jersey, was hustling,” reads the bird in a quiet monotone inside her head. “Frank lost more money than he had, and Carlos helped him escape, by creating an apricot obfuscation. Since Frank had no place to sleep, Carlos took him to the hole. Frank has lived there three weeks, and each day says that he does not intend to ‘live in this dirty shit-hole for another day.’ Carlos has lived with nine other birds in the hole for over fourteen months. ‘I’m afraid of being lonely,’ Carlos says, ‘scared to find no one there. I know I’m living down there partly because I’m afraid of going to a nest and being by myself.’” The bird puts the book down and goes to sleep.

The next night the bird who is almost always very close, she feels, to experiencing severe depression and crippling loneliness opens her Moleskine notebook. She picks up a red pen she stole from Harvard’s bookstore and writes “clean nest 10 minutes.” She stares at her Moleskine journal for 30 minutes and then writes “find ferret and pet it with my wing.” 5 minutes later she writes “drink orange smoothie.” She stares at the Moleskine. 40 minutes later she writes “mail 5 sticks to 5 birds.” The bird sits, looks at her pile of books, chooses Bighead by Jeffrey Brown. She reads and sometimes grins at the drawings, and the dialogue, but also feels nervous and like she might cry because though she currently does not feel bad she is very aware of the possibility of feeling very bad. It is a feeling like she is metaphysically “surrounded by endless shit.”

The shit isn’t touching her but it is near her, in a precarious way, like she is standing on a small raft floating on liquid shit inside a room whose walls and ceiling are made of shit. It is very difficult to balance on the raft to prevent it from becoming slanted. But the raft almost never becomes slanted and when it does become slanted the bird always recovers. The bird has never fallen into the endless shit, because though it is very difficult and requires a lot of energy and focus to balance on the raft the bird does it existentially, meaning it is a kind of work, the bird feels, that is done at once automatically, deliberately, carefully, without fail, without reprieve, and without choice.