fashionable birds

Sunday I published a post on FASHION.   Monday morning, I was abruptly aroused  by a commotion.  The birds were prodding, poking, mooning at the window, desperate for me to roll over and let them in.

Miffed by their presumptuousness, but now awake,  I climbed out of bed to make a small breakfast.  I watched the kettle boil (it does happen, but it takes a long long time, as I anticipated), and sat idle for a full six-minute tea steep.  I baked a bun from scratch, ate it morsel by morsel, dropping all sorts of desirable crumbs which the birds could not eat.   I read my very first piece of mail seven times seven times over.    At last, I opened the window.

To a spazzle-dazzle flurry of highly-excited, almost agitated birds.

Apparently, birds are very FASHIONable, a fact I had failed to observe in all my days in the obelisk (though I had noticed the black swan’s exorbitant vanity).

All week damask and leather occlude my view, collars and pantaloons sail over my head, shifts and roses hover mid-air, borne in beaks of birds.  Or claws.  There are swords in here.  Ridiculous stockings.  A crook-necked staff?  Jewel boxes.

FASHION squawk the birds, preening.  REGARD ME.

To appease them, I’m making portraits.   Immortal Portraits of my FASHIONable friends, the birds.

REGARD THEM.

First, the black swan, of course:

fashionable black swan

(Conversations with the black swan are indexed in the “Black Swan” category to your right.)