Close to You

A couple of days ago I pulled my sexy green Corolla, aka Curbie, into the oil-slicked parking place of a large shopping center in my local town. Not particularly fond of shopping, I hoped and searched for a distraction from the chaos. Out of nowhere this tiny bird appeared just outside of my window. A hummingbird! I hadn't seen a hummingbird in years and yet there he/she (didn't get a close enough look) hovered, wings all a blur darting around in quick, precise movements.

It seemed to be saying, "look what I can do that you can't do" but it could have been saying "anything you can do I can do better" or "now you see me, now you don't". Suffice it to say, it seemed to be flaunting its abilities...showing off for its audience of one. And it worked. I was impressed! I didn't understand how a bird could pull off that magic trick - disappearing and then reappearing. I could have googled it, but sometimes mystery is better than information. How does Hummie not accidentally reappear inside the concrete column supporting the shopping center? Or what about falling asleep at its invisible wheel and finding himself/herself one with Curbie's engine block?

I started thinking about Hummie's little bird life. Did he/she have a family? Was my shopping center his/her shopping center also? Why was Hummie in such a hurry? Late for humming practice at school? Or maybe little bird ditched school...Hummie Bueller's Day Off. Maybe Hummie is a writer with his/her own little blog. Just maybe Hummie's blog needed to be finished an hour ago and even as I watched he/she worked away in the quick, tiny Internet of the hummingbirds. Of course, all this personification assumes that Hummie's life reflects ours, but it could be the other way around. What if all that we know and do actually began in HumLand? What if we don't even have our own will, but are simply puppets of our superior hummingbird counterparts?

Occasionally, I have been known to overthink things. Without working at it, I can turn the simple into the complicated...or sophisticated. Yeah, I like sophisticated better. As the clouds of possible Hummie-Mark connections (are we related? do we know some of the same people/birds? does Hummie dislike shopping also?) floated through my brain, the sunshine of truth broke through my thoughts: "why do birds suddenly appear, every time you are near? just like me, they long to be close to you." Obviously, the little bird named Hummie ditched school because he wanted to hang out with me, the new guy in town.

Or, maybe in Hummie's world the song goes, "why do people suddenly appear...close to you"