I never would have expected that pigeons could teach me something about myself—but some of life’s most valuable lessons come in surprising ways.
TRANSCRIPT:
In this episode of the podcast, you’re going to hear a conversation that Romina and I had back in mid December, 2020 when I was still in Austin. And I had just discovered the beauty and art of pigeons flying. All right. Stay with me. I had never thought about pigeons or that they were beautiful creatures in the air.
I, I thought I’d seen plenty of pigeons in my life and I had. Discovered everything worth discovering about them, which is not much. They seemed totally unremarkable and like creatures that I didn’t deem worthy thinking about or paying attention to until I had a new vantage point and new perspective, and I had made a personal discovery that inspired me to added a lot of beauty to my days in Austin.
And I wanted to share it with you. I believe you might be surprised by the story as well as maybe inspired a little bit to walk through life with more open eyes and open minds, and maybe a perspective that will allow us all to make new discoveries that lay in plain sight. Enjoy.
I really don’t want to bring this up, but I will pigeons
the least remarkable animal. I never think about out of a long list of animals. I never think about to the very top of site. Never really care about and never think about it. And until recently where I’ve moved into this apartment and I’m overlooking the top of a different building and on the top of the building, a lot of pigeons congregate, nothing interesting yet, but what I’ve noticed and what I’ve continued to watch every day for the past week.
Is how small groups of these pigeons. Sometimes it’s large groups, but mostly it’s I don’t know, maybe 20 of them at a time leap up into the sky from that, top of that building. And they fly these beautiful formations. And they fly up and down and they loop and they do the just fly formation for me.
And then they get back to the top of the building and they’re just chill there for us. And then they start decided to flag them and they’re not flying somewhere. they’re not flying from point a to point B. They’re just flying and they’re flying beautifully, actually surprisingly beautifully.
And there’s poetry in it. And then there’s a second swarm and does their own little, like the loops and down and up and left and right. And then sometimes they join and then they’re becoming a biggest one and they dance in the sky. That’s all they do It’s a beautiful artful flying together.
In advance formation, sort of flying in the sunset. And it’s absolutely mesmerizing. It’s really beautiful. And every time they land, I go, Oh, it’s pigeons. Who would have thought pitches? I have a thought that would fly like this. I always just thought pigeons are like so dumb and it just like whatever animals and they, when they fly, they just fly from one point to another point with more food, but that all fly away from danger, but never thought of pigeons as like this artistic bird that it joys flying and flies.
Artfully, I never thought of it that way. Not that I ever thought of pictures that much, but it’s just been surprising that I’m like, wow, this animal that I thought of as very basic, very like just three instincts. And unremarkable. Yeah. Very unremarkable and just goes to food.
Goes away from bajur sleeps, like shit eats, sleeps, and flies to food, closer to food flies away from there’s nothing really artful. And it’s not like some beautiful bird of the woods or something, or one of the great birds that we all admire and we symbolize in our cultures.
It’s just a fucking pigeon. I, first of all, I didn’t know that pigeons would fly in flocks. Never knew, never noticed, never heard of, and then they would that they would fly. They literally, for hours jump off the roof and just fly beautiful formations in loops. They fly, fly, fly, they get back on the roof, the chiller, and then they whatever the leaders or whatever the intelligence of that group dictates and the next one leaps and boom, all they leave and they’re just flying to fly.
And I’m like, wow, this is beautiful. And I’ve never thought of this creature as being capable of beauty and of even enjoying or participating something that seems to me is doing something to do it like does flying for the sake of flying versus flying somewhere or away from something that’s super interesting.
I don’t know why it’s so compelling to me, but it’s almost more beautiful than watching. Beautiful birds fly because they’ve unsealed this beauty inside of something that I felt was more or less kind of worthless ugliness. And so I’m like mesmerized by watching pigeons fly now, like, I don’t know.
I’m just, I D I don’t even know the two, I never appreciated the flight of the pigeon. Yeah. And it’s even, usually my curiosity might dictate to me to want to research this and be like, why are they let me learn more about it? And I was like, fuck, no, I don’t want to know what the science is behind of this.
I don’t want to know the reasons. I don’t want to explode the stories. Nothing that I can read. We’ll make it more pretty and beautiful than what I’m observing, right? No, it is it’s full and it’s beautiful. What am I looking for? An explanation for what,
what to do? What, what, right. What chances are there that they explanation will make it more beautiful and more artful? Very little. There’s a good chance that if I research more, but I’ll read some other things about pigeons. I don’t like, or some like thing that this is the utility during this time. I don’t want to know that shit.
I don’t care. I don’t want to be a pigeon expert. I may never get, but. I mean, never live anywhere again, where I can watch this as much as I do here, but I tell you what boom. Now this has changed. I will never look at a pitch in the same way. Anytime I’ll look at a pitch and I’ll think about, I know fuckers when nobody’s looking, you lose fuckers are beautifully fly in the air, artfully together.
I know you’re doing it. Nobody else knows, but I know I saw it with my own eyes. You’re not tricking me. You’re not that dumb or that ugly. You kind of creative and beautiful. You do something you love flying. I know that about you now know you. Don’t just love fucking breadcrumbs. You love flying, who would have thought, I appreciate you.
And you’re flying. That’s it now like forever. I will look at pigeons. They go, you guys got a secret, but I know about it. I saw it, and I think it’s. That’s my and story for you. There you go. Here’s a story I even thought about taking a video of it. And even that collect that and ugly to me, like why?
For what purpose? What am I going to do with it? Post it on. It gives a shit. I love this right now. This is all I need. I need to capture this. I will not. Just I’m just observing this and thinking motherfucker pigeons could fly. Who would it fuck it. Fly beautifully. I find I am blessed by the beauty of pigeons flying.
Yeah. Yeah. You can’t put that experience in a box and then open it anytime you want or give it to someone, but you’ve had it already. Yeah. It’s, it’s not, I don’t know. It’s some things less and less in our, in, in our lives. Many things are not to be captured there just to be experienced. That’s it? That moment.
If you get out of first person to capture it, you’ve missed it. You missed you’ve corrupted. It you’ve never really been there. You can watch a video, but you were not there. Right? You missed the moment. when I watched them fly and I’m like, wow, this is so pretty. I have to leave myself. I have to leave that moment to find my phone and to do the video.
And then I’ll look at the video and I’ll go, Oh, it doesn’t look that nice on this shot. Maybe the lighting should be, what am I doing now? I’m just fucking myself. All I’m doing is I’m fucking myself. Well, I could just keep sitting here and just feeling amazed by the beauty of these birds flying and that’s what I choose to do.
And it’s so weird that I even, I thought about it a couple of times, I was like, I shouldn’t mention this to remain. This is kind of weird and interesting. And then I always forget it today. Today when I was watching them flying, I was like, today is the day I will talk about this. I’m finally ready. It’s a dull story.