Birds. They make sounds. Is that what we know about birds? That they make sounds? And is that all they do? Birds? Think about birds, then think about what you think birds predominantly do. Let me leave you with the thinking a while. Let me, as I often tend to do, digress.

As a matter of fact, it is tough not to digress at the moment because there is too much noise around. All around. So much noise that nothing makes sense; it is difficult to make sense when there is only noise. Everyone wants themselves to be heard, they all want it badly and therefore everyone is shouting and nobody can be heard over, or under, all of that shouting.

The shouting is about this and that, about this side and that side, about this is right and that is wrong, about what about this and what about that, about then and about now, about this way and that way and the highway, all sorts of things. Everybody’s yelling, but nobody is getting through to the one they are yelling at. It may well be they cannot listen to what they themselves are saying, such a deafening noise there is all around. It’s like a constant rat-a-tat-tat of shutupshutupshutupshutupshutupshutupshutup.

And nobody is listening. Nobody is shutting up. A mangled heap of crashed and crashing decibels, that’s what it would look like if you would try turning this into an image. A whirl of dingbats, flying, flown, fallen. That’s what it would look like.

Oh that reminds me, something else flies. Birds fly. They make sounds, yes, undeniably, but birds also fly. They have wings, although not all wings facilitate flying. I mean emus have wings, and ostriches, and all they can do is scram and bury in the sand. There are wings and there are wings. There are yet other kinds of wings. Left wing. Right wing. Those sorts of wings may not facilitate flying; tough to tell what they facilitate at the best or worst of times.

We were on birds. Or we had returned to birds after a digression and we digressed again. That happens. Digressions, and this has been said here before if I recall right, digressions allow us to travel longer, more varied distances than the straight and narrow road ever would have.

The birds are making sounds, some of them can make sounds as they fly. It’s called multitasking. Some of them make a sound just as they take flight. It’s called lift-off. Some of them land and begin to make a sound. It’s called, wonder what that’s called, something or the other. Everyone makes sounds upon landing, ever been inside an arriving plane?

But that is teddy bear’s picnic sound, no match to the sound these birds make, the birds that have never been known to fly but are everywhere, birds that have gone where no man has ever been before. These are no ordinary birds, the sounds they make can make and break kingdoms, bring down governments and instal new ones, trigger wars, puncture peace, rip families and friendships, put folks in harm’s way, alchemise lies and give the truth a poor name, they have such power, these sounds. It isn’t a power that always destroys, no, these sounds can protect and preserve too, but you know how we are, our proclivities to choose the evil over the good are a proven thing. Else, we wouldn’t seek a perch on the Neelkanth and say, all right now, just bare your claws, we know how wondrous you can be, but we only want to see your virulence. Keep your good side, Neelkanth, just give us access to your bad one.

And so it one day flew

And they cried, oh where?

It had a neck a certified blue

Tick, tick, tick, she goes there!