I have been on jury duty all week long. The first day I had to report in person to the courthouse, where I went through a long jury selection process before finally being dismissed at 5:30 pm (and I was not put on the jury in question). Then, Tuesday, Wednesday, and now today, Thursday, I have not been called in. I have one day left, and I won’t know until after 5 pm if I need to show up in person or not.

This has made for a strange week but one that is leaving me feeling a bit oddly appreciative. For all the anticipatory hubbub that has been dancing in my brain leading up to this jury duty week, I found the experience on Monday to be extremely interesting. Let’s face it, of all the moments in my life where I could be available to partake in this civic duty, now is a pretty perfect time.

Also, when in life can you just NOT plan anything for the next day until after 5 pm of the evening before? Talk about a little exercise in patience and allowing. It’s actually brought about a heightened feeling of presence, the staccato ability (and inability) to plan day-by-day has meant that I’m suddenly dropped into a moment. I’ve landed into each day by parachuting into it, is what it feels like.

But all of this isn’t necessarily what has pulled me into writing here this morning. Rather, I’d like to share more about this little book on pigeons that I started reading. I finished up the book I brought with me on Monday, and later that night, standing in front of my TBR pile on my bookcase shelf in my bedroom I decided to select this little pocket guide on pigeons as my next book. With the uncertainties of this week, the idea of grabbing a novel with an actual plot line I had to follow felt like not the best choice, nor did any of my nonfictions, for similar reasons. So instead, my eyes settled on this little pocket guide on pigeons, and we had a moment of mutual agreement, this book and me.

Tell me you also see the pigeon in my latte foam.

Why pigeons? Or- if you are someone who detests pigeons, maybe that question is in all capital letters, with added emphasize, like, “EW WHY PIGEONS?”

This is why. At the start of the pandemic, we were living in a high-rise building right on Michigan Avenue in the South Loop. And here we were, all stuck inside during quarantine. I became somewhat fascinated in studying the neighbors around us in surrounding residential buildings (not in a creeper way, cross my heart). It was more an observing, that here we all were in these glass boxes stacked one on top of the other. I could look out my window and see what a neighbor was doing on floor 17 of the building across the way, and also what that neighbor’s neighbor was doing on floor 18, or floor 16, and it struck me as such a quirky thing, because of course the floor 17 neighbor had no idea what was happening above or below them. And I knew that while I could see who was in their kitchen cooking or who was watching TV or chasing their kids around their small living room, they could also be observing the same things about my family, and the neighbors above or below us. It wasn’t an invasion of privacy, at least it never felt that way to me. People could have lowered their blinds. If anything, seeing all this routine movement in the apartments all around us felt connecting, humanizing. We weren’t alone, really. I remember feeling such gratitude for the way we lived during those early weeks and months, because of how easy it was to see that others were going through what we were going through. As a community, there we were.

‘Cool Lindsay,’ you say. ‘You’ve said nothing about pigeons.’ I’m getting there, I promise!

Next to us was an older building that was probably only about 6 stories tall, and on the rooftop was a small water tower, something you see in many older buildings (and several have been taken down due to their dwindling structural integrity- when we lived on the north side one actually crashed off a rooftop and onto cars in a neighboring parking lot. But that’s another story).

In those days of looking out the window and watching the clouds change and lone cars traveling Michigan Avenue without any other traffic during rush hour times, I started to notice the water tower on the building we overlooked. The rising sun over Lake Michigan broke through gaps in the buildings in the early mornings and settled onto the water tower’s eastern-facing side. Nestled in that golden light on the rooftop of that water tower were a flock of pigeons, all curled into each other (Google, what is a group of pigeons called? In addition to flock, other options include kit, flight, loft, band, and passel). They always looked so cozy and safe, snuggled into each other and soaking in the intense sunlight on an otherwise chilly March morning. I often found myself standing at the window with my morning coffee, gazing down at them, and when I got my kids into their coats and out onto our balcony before remote school began, the pigeons were right there basking in that sliver of sunlight. When we were finally able to venture out of our building, any pigeon I noticed scuttling about Daniel Webster Park at Indiana Blvd and 14th street felt like an acquaintance, someone I could just as easily strike up a conversation with as I do with folks I bump into on the elevator. “Oh, don’t I know you from the water tower?”, I would have thought to ask. I was smitten.

And in that attachment, I noticed other behaviors from this new group of feathered friends. In the mid-morning hours when the sun’s angle broadened and the light became more diffused, the “loft” of pigeons decided it was time to stretch their wings. They flew together, and fast, zooming around our buildings. They all moved as one. They’d be going straight, and then suddenly, fluidly, the direction of the entire flight shifted, all the wings tipped down to the left. They soared and they twirled. They actually looked…happy…if pigeons can possess such a feeling. They zipped and undulated and zipped again through the chill coming off the lake. They were free.

Ever since that time, I have been obsessed with pigeons. Gone are the days of ever considering them dirty or as city rats with wings. I love them. I love their colors. I love their little sounds and their waddling gaits. I love the flurry of their wings flapping as they collectively haul ass and leave the park. The way they glide. How the sun reflects off the shimmer of their feathers.

As we were approaching the 5 year anniversary of the covid pandemic last year, I felt compelled to write an essay about my pandemic pigeon-watching. I decided to feel my way through it without having a set plan. I wrote draft after draft after draft. None of it felt right. I just couldn’t capture the essence of what I wanted to say about that time. I took a quick break and read a book on pigeons that I borrowed from the library- Pigeons: The Fascinating Saga of the World’s Most Revered and Reviled Bird by Andrew D. Blechman (it was good, but it was focused more on our human behavior around pigeons than on pigeons themselves). And still, I just couldn’t get it to work. After all these unsuccessful attempts, I decided my ideas needed some air, and I set the project aside.

At about the same time last winter, I was also starting to feel so fed up at my job (like more so than usual, which is saying something). Our department went through a re-organization, and it was exhausting. I could not handle one more decision tree or standard operating procedure discussion. I looked out my window at the moving cars and trains and felt so trapped. I was so tired of sitting at that desk and needed to move. Another idea entered my head for an essay. How about one about the ways we move through the world? I started collecting movement words. For weeks I wrote drafts about meandering and traipsing and stomping and roaming. I wrote about passing a little squirrel who was leaving wee tracks with his skinny toes in the snow, and how it introduced the word ‘scampering’ to my collection of movement words. Kids seem to scamper all the time. When did we lose that?

Just like my pigeon essay, my movement essay couldn’t take shape. I tried and I tried and then I sat and stared dully at my computer screen and melted inside at the thought that my professional life had been reduced to this. My shoulders tensed. I randomly partially dislocated a few ribs putting my coat on one morning and eventually hobbled to a chiropractor (hobbled! a new word!) to help set my bones back in place so that I could feel my fingertips again.

I had taken a lovely class on the lyric essay form through StoryStudio the previous fall, and the Chicago group that took the class with me met in person a couple times after the class ended, including once when I was trying to get these essay ideas to flow. “I don’t have anything to show you,” I admitted during that meeting, ashamed to show them my dozens of shitty first drafts where I felt like I was just talking in circles. “But here is what I am trying to do.” And I told them about how I was trying to write about movement, and I shared all those movement words with them. The time when my husband and I had just moved to the city and went downtown on a weekend morning with our DSLR cameras, and how we wove our way north from there on foot, snapping pictures of the dirty CTA signs leading up to train platforms, bright red staircases in Old Town, and those glorious shots of Chicago where there is such a combination of old and new architecture, before our roving brought us to the threshold of Pequods Pizza. Or that delicious dream I kept having of breaking free of one’s work schedule, wandering without a plan, and not caring about if anyone was waiting for you to respond to an email or Teams message.

I then told my writing group of my other essay idea, about pigeons. About how we were there, looking out of our glass boxes and wondering if life would ever be the same again, and how during that time I began watching the pigeons and the ease with which they navigated the quiet South Loop, arcing gracefully through the air, the entire band in sync with each other.

After sharing my ideas with this writing group, one of the members nodded, seemingly deep in thought. Finally she spoke. “These two essays sound like one,” she said. “It sounds like it’s all about you feeling stuck.”

The significance of that moment still sits in my chest today as I write this. I was stuck, and my search for words for these essays never presented itself as the guise it was. Of course. This was all me trying to get UN-stuck. When we were trapped during the pandemic, we knew it. And here I was, 5 years later, still stuck, and unaware.

This past week I told a another writing group that I haven’t been afraid of writing shitty first drafts recently (sharing is a different story). For the first time in years, I feel free. I feel like a kid on the playground, running with my arms spread out like an airplane, fingers splayed to feel the movement of air as I cut through. Maybe this is how pigeons feel when they are in flight, rising and diving. Playing.

The idea of being stuck- this struck me again this past Monday, as I was one of a pool of 45 individuals being considered as jury members for an upcoming trial. On that day we were definitely trapped, sitting in that room as the hours spread out, my name called and then not called, and then called again, and then not called again. There was so much waiting in that room with no windows. A type of déjà vu settled over me, a feeling that I still remember so clearly from almost 6 years ago now. For here I was, surrounded by other humans in a space where we were living in parallel, our interactions minimal but our experiences all the same. How as the day went on, the faces of the others who were there with me began to feel familiar, like we knew each other in some way without having said a word. In that physical space, I felt it again. A connection. Our common humanity.

And that night, I reached for my book on pigeons.

Pigeons

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