.

on the tameness of birds



in 1925, Glover Morril Allen compares
the smallness of thought to the vastness
of time. in his book, Birds and Their Attributes,
he describes the incredible gulf of 150
million years separating humanity from the
days of Archaeopteryx hopping about on
the reedy shores of Bavaria. but 150 million
is an incomprehensible number. he asks;
imagine a line 150 feet long where each
foot represents a million years. humanity
a point at one end and Archaeopteryx
a point at the other. if we start moving
toward this ancient bird, and at the point
of passing Tutankhamen`s great grandfather,
we will have progressed a distance equal
to the width of one thick pencil line
(one millimeter = 3333 years).
moving further along this line, a third
of an inch from our starting point will
bring us beyond human history to the
early Stone Age of Man and at the end
of the first inch, to the Glacial era.
likewise, the first foot of this journey
will mark the arrival of the latest
(Pleisocene) epoch of Earth`s history
and having moved less than half-way
towards the end of the line will only
bring us to the fauna of the Paris
Basin and the great Diatryma of
Eocene days. but even at the end of
this line we will still be a long way
from the starting point of birds.
his conclusion: geologically-speaking,
a thousand years is not such a long
time by which to judge progress.

whatever the image of time,
there is in the human psyche and
wedged deep in ancestral memory
an unexplainably-ancient connection
to birds. our fascination with
flight and wordless conversation,
their trust.