Since August, just to ramp it up a bit, I asked them to go techni-coloured; go on, I dared them, if it's so important: do something in colour. All good and well these black and white tell-it-like-it-is-to-the-ear-that-always-hears feathers, but it went sorta cray-Z last summer (even coming with the birds, dead, themselves: first in white - pigeon- then in black - blackbird-) so it was a fair demand I figured. Black and white was becoming part of the street scene full of murder and accident. I stopped trusting my clear vision for it!

There are plenty of ex-domesticated green parakeets in flocks flying through the street every evening; and bluetits or bluejays, or the park 20 minutes away has one or two fancy ducks with curly rust coloured feathers on their heads as if they are playing at Indians to us cowboys, which I would accept, but a red robin downy feather would proove they really went out of their way (never found a red feather before or what about a pink long-tailed tit feather: in fact WHY have I NOT got vases of multi coloured feathers in every toilet by now?)

But now you hand me a rainbow feather to satisfy all demands in one.
Crucified to your tree. No jockey in your saddle. In your bidding wars that turn out to be peace offerings, of course on the Hill. It's all about Golgotha anyway. All the Fools know that. Thoth, the scribe of all scribes, the Hermes, the prophet, the winged dove who wrote till his wings bled, told us so.

Hilma af Klint

And yes, we could go on loving till the cows come home, compasionate like, but then what? Be loved back in return with a pat on the back? "Race you to the post and back", one might try to put the sting in the tale again; and then there you stand alone, tapping your toes, twiddling your thumbs, all parts and parcel again.

The letters of Paul bundled up (Sant Appolinare Nuova, Ravenna).
We learned a long time ago that there is nothing more toxic than man (unless it be fluoride). Men warn us all the time ("don't use us, we'll use you!"/ "Use is a useful, respectful word." Sigh. How about just calling us precious?). Women (and the woman in a man, or the woman men play to hear the woman within himself, like a guitar softly weeping) have more hope than they have sense. That's what a rainbow feather has to whisper loud enough to not be misheard.

Why this feather counts as colourful is as follows.
I was walking my daily round in August, shortly after having been so plucky as to change the goalposts and ask for more colour in our communications, when I stepped right over a bright blue feather. I gave it no thought. Ten steps later I arrested my pace and you could have blown me down with that very same feather.

Wasn't I going to let it count just because it was too big to be a bluetit's and too small to be a blue jay's? As if it had come off somebody's feather boa instead. A sneaky snakey feather? It was a dang feather, for blooming's sake! Will I always demand more and more and more? Just to satisfy my pigheaded chauvenist moronic doubt? Oh, yes, I was a man in a former life, alright! I can feel it in every stubborn cog in the brain!

If that is possible then so is this.
If I know one thing, then so I do another.
That simply has to be the working premise for anyone at 50 and over.
We simply don't have time left to waste to figure out any other.

Is there such a thing as upbirth (upheaval+rebirth)?
I'd love to wish you a happy upbirth then, in advance, as the contractions announce this fortuitous event already.