Ordinary Splendor

1.
 
I saw a video on Twitter of a polar bear swimming for nine days straight gliding his translucent body through the dark blue sea; gliding his fur through cold and ice ice and cold, and the icy cold dark of the ice, of the deep of the cold; gliding his paws through the shimmer and the shale; the icy and the pale, the smooth crust of the water’s frost. Imagine him skimming through the first day, the ordinary splendor of the ice, then the second and third, the crisp air, the ice rocks at the hairline of the sea and at his or her hairline, who is he? oh glittered one of ice and blue, the icy-blue, and I think, nine days is a long time not to stop. Nine days is a long time to stop; nine days is a long time for anything to survive. There, in what I assume is the arctic, he is free to meander, to swim, to glide his body as he wishes, as a force of nature, for isn’t that what we all are? 


2.

Isn’t that what we all are if we want to be: a force of nature? A sort of splendor to ourselves. There is so much to love, so much to dote over and what is ordinary to one is not ordinary to another. It’s the splendor that carries us from one day to the next. When I first heard about Flaco the Owl, I felt my body warm at the thought of him. Would I see him on one of my walks? My heart beat for him, a silent pattering under the day. I loved knowing about his adventurous spirit, this beloved urban owl flying around my city. And now, to hear about his death is an ache, an empty, a heartbreak, but that’s the city-life sometimes. New York is a city of hits and misses, but an owl knows both; an owl owls his way around the trees and the stars, the people and the dogs, the whirl of the buses, the cars, and the night. It is an act of love to love this city; it is an act of love to love anything good, and anything good enough. How can one love a bird? It’s a funny question, through the fault of your own looking and here I am open-eyed. That’s what this life is for. I remember in October, walking down Columbus and a man was dressed as Flaco for Halloween and I smiled and laughed, tugging on my boyfriend’s sleeve – he’s Flaco. he’s Flaco, I exclaimed, but the truth is: all of us are. We all want to be loved. We all want to be free. We all want to explore the splendor.


3.

We all want to explore the splendor. I led with something like that the last time I updated my dating profile. I wanted to start with wonder. I said, someone who admires the little things in life. I said, one who lives their life in wonder; someone who lives an artful life and on the second date with my boyfriend, we passed a statue of an owl on a stoop in Chelsea and I said, I love owls and he said, I love owls, too, and we had a little laugh and he told me a Great Horned Owl once flew down to him. He never told anyone, but he told me. I said I used to hate birds until I read a book about hawks, and then I turned to owls. On our third date, we went to the Bronx Botanical Garden on a dark, rainy night to see the Light Show and there was an ice sculptor carving a statue in real time at the end of the road. I could see his gleam and glimmer from where we stood, shivering under one umbrella, freezing yet happy, happy yet nervous, newly knowing one another. So much of the world is veiled in light, and as we moved closer, the ice became an owl, and I screamed in excitement, what are the odds! And he said I know, I know and shh, but I stood there screaming because sometimes the world is extraordinary, a splendored thing.