I Saw A Bird Today

On visuality, digital minimalism(briefly) and a newly formed passion for birdwatching.

I saw a bird today.

Depending on the perspective you view this statement from, it might carry different meanings. It could be that I have never seen a bird before, which is improbable because I am 25( the assumption here is unless I live on a planet with no birds, I would have come across one at least once in my semi-long lifetime), I can see (within reasonable distance, with or without my glasses), and it was impossible to avoid bird anatomy in biology (which I took years ago in high school).

But I saw a bird today, and I will tell you how.

It was a Northern male cardinal. How I know that can only be answered by the number of searches in my Google tab:

“What bird has a red body and a black head?”

No, that’s not the one that I saw.

“What bird has a red body and a black head and is local to [my area]?”

Image by Craig Reynolds from Pixabay

And there was my answer.

I’ve been reading Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism(better explained in the Katherine Martinko’s linked Stack- if that’s how you say it. I am still pretty new to Substack lingo). While I haven’t been able commit to doing everything as he stipulates for the 30-day tech detox (I check my TikTok once a week, but only on my laptop, and I still have SubStack downloaded on my phone),I have to say the amount of clarity it has brought me has been very welcome.

The first thought I had in my head the morning I saw the bird was mine. That was about two weeks after I had started reading the book.

While I do not recall that specific thought( it might have been my own explanation to one of the 9 dreams I had over the span of 8 hours of sleep), the absence of my phone screen and the incessant scroll that would leave me paralyzed in bed was replaced by a deafening silence that I was not used to experiencing.

And for the first time since moving to my apartment seven months ago, I heard five different bird calls outside.

Out of boredom and curiosity, I took my journal and went outside. I didn’t see the bird(s) immediately. I saw them flitter around with a speed that my groggy eyes couldn’t immediately follow. I tracked their calls—the tweets that seemed familiar and the screeches I had never heard before.

Then, in one of those flitters, it landed on the railing that overlooks the net-less, unused tennis court.

John Berger’s “Seeing comes before words” is a phrase I heard a few times over last semester in my Visuality class. And what do you know: I even wrote a paper on it. But if seeing comes before words, then what comes before seeing?

For me, it was the conscious choice to look, not just using my eyes, but a body primed for seeing. To be aware and, sometimes, maybe rid myself of external, preconceived (not by me) ways of seeing that I picked up unconsciously(and consciously) from overexposure to the barrage of opinions and thoughts available on the internet.

To force myself to see through the prism I have created for myself.

Do I want flowers because someone got flowers and it looks nice? Or do I want flowers when they carry a consideration of my happiness, joy, or peace with them?

Am I evaluating my partner based on the things I saw on the internet that I did not like, or am I considering them as their own person and whether they meet my needs or not?

Questions for the goddesses.

But what I know is that I saw a bird today. After not seeing or hearing birds for a while.

Up close. Personal. Almost as if it was a confrontation—a challenge to see.

To develop a way of seeing that is separate from what I was taught.What I had been exposed to. A conversation with my faculties—mental, physical, psychological (I hope that is not the same as mental, but I’m too lazy to look it up), and somatic.

A conversation that will continue in my minds.( not a typo)