When The Birds Hit The Windows Essay

When The Birds Hit The Windows. Essay, Research Paper

On November 24th, 1999, the man that lived in the second house on the

other side of the river took out his rifle and shot himself. I want to

tell you about it; about the things that are going on that could push a

man to such an act.

I can also tell you about that man’s brother, who died in September,

1999, at age fifty-four, from a ruptured blood vessel in the frontal

lobe of his brain. And about his twenty-two year old son who died in an

unexplained accident two weeks later. And of the grandfather, now in

care for the heart attack that followed his son’s suicide.

I can’t tell you about that son’s experiences as I’m not fully informed

on them; but, I can tell you about mine, just a few miles down the road.

What I’m about to describe falls into the appalling and the incredible.

The kind of data that is gratefully dismissed and that one thankfully

ascribes to mental phenomena, reassured that some specialty or another

claims to ‘understand’ it and can even do something about it. Until it

happens to you.

The first thing I took note of, in early 1998, was a visual disturbance

in my right eye. A wiggling shimmer; an occasional ’spark’ in the space

before me; the sudden increase in brightness of whatever I was looking

at with that eye. Then I noticed a crystaline form on my line of sight,

like a small lens. Solitary, spiritual, and open to all types of

communications, I quickly moved through surprise, fear, discomfort,

interest, and, finally, acceptance. I got used to this ‘little lens’ a

few inches from my eye. I got used to the morphing visual effects it

created. I integrated it into my paintings, my walks in the woods, my

life.

Soon, other things were added: I could hear a high-pitched whining sound

and my ears would often ‘click’ or pop; I felt tired, so much so that

when I lay down, I’d drop into a deep unconsciousness that didn’t hear

even the big farm tractors driving in the hay wagons not twenty feet

from the house. Then I’d often feel painful, needle-sharp jabs into my

fingers, especially when I was sitting on the couch, in the same space

for some time. Occasionally, my legs and feet got jabbed too, and an odd

sensation of “pulsing” on the surface of the skin would start on my

stomach, my shoulders, my neck, my head, and any points of contact with

whatever my body was touching.

Walking across the kitchen one day, I got shoved hard from behind. I

avoided the hot wood stove, barely. After that, there were many

incidents of “shock wave” type, especially directed at my head. When I

was working with knives or tools, shock waves would hit my hands. After

a fresh surgical incision was smashed open against a door frame, needing

a fast ride to emergency, I learned to focus my full attention on what I

was doing. Gone the relaxing, soothing motions of sweeping or raking:

the simplest task demanded concentration, with pain the penalty for me,

and damage or breakage the penalty for objects.

I woke from a nap, in the fall of 1998, my skin burning and prickling,

feeling scalded. This happened several times. In a few weeks I was

barely able to move, weakened by diaarhea, my gums and privates

bleeding, my skin peeling, my hair falling out in large amounts each

time I brushed it, my face and abdomen bloated and digestion iffy at

best. In those two weeks, I had lost ten pounds. Strange to feel so

sick, yet have no fever, no cold symptoms and no name-able illness. It

seemed to pass, whatever it was. Not much later, I woke one morning with

a large and painful hole in my gum, going deep under the tooth. Several

rinses a day with iodine and salt in warm water got the ‘infection’

under control, but the sore left a deep and sensitive scar.

The birds had started hitting the windows with dismaying frequency, even

with the glass soaped to eliminate reflections. The squirrels regularly

missed their jumps and fell to the ground, stunned. I watched a

chipmunk run for a hole in the shed door, big enough for a groundhog to

go through. He missed and smashed into the thick wood. By June, 1999,

most of the usual small wildlife had left the area and many of the field

flowers were gone. As were the butterflies and the ladybugs, the snakes

and the toads that worked my organic garden. In the garden itself, for

the second year in a row, my carrot and lettuce crops failed to

germinate and the cucumbers that did grow gave a poor and misshapen

crop.

Light aircraft flying low over the area eight to ten times a day, from

February and on through the summer, dropped bands of particles, five or

six inches wide, separated by gaps of about half an inch. The foliage

got increasingly shiny and rain formed very large, iridescent drops that

glittered in even the faintest light. A slick l

Внимание, отключите Adblock

Вы посетили наш сайт со включенным блокировщиком рекламы!
Ссылка для скачивания станет доступной сразу после отключения Adblock!

Скачать