12/12/10 dark birds in a bright sky

On the bus--those dark fluttering, twitching starlings over Broadway in the periwinkle, rose-bright morning city sky.

It reminds me of the series I am writing on blackbirds.

It reminds me of sessions with the healer I visited twice in Paris. Her name was Michelle Cremisi, which I only remember because of how awkward it was to master the accent in my still-loutish French. I had seen her flyer on the bulletin board of the Maison des Femmes--the House of Women, where I was attending endless discussions on what to entitle a public survey on sexism that they had conducted two years earlier. Michelle offered "massage Californique," but didn't mention that her practice had turned to mainly "guerissement energetique"--energy healing--which I learned over the phone. She had a first floor apartment in one of those compact, European complexes that resemble military housing--uniform, concrete bunkers--a little forbidding on the outside.

It pays to get used visiting healers. Their offices and healing spaces mostly resonate with calm, open acceptance, soothing colors and fragrances. Michelle was no exception. I remember sitting with her in a small office space, and explaining in my halting command of the French, my wish to continue healing. And lying on the bodywork table in the teeny healing room, trying to describe the sensations I was having, as she moved her hands gracefully above me. The only thing I remember clearly was that "black birds flew out of my heart, dark birds like crows flew out of my heart." And in my mind's eye, while Michelle's hands and heart worked their magic, I saw the flocks of black birds leave like a dense river and ramble and flow over the roofs of Paris with their red clay tiles, a dark river that eventually passed out of reckoning.

And what were these dark birds that had fled my heart? The troubles and secrets of my life, my childhood perhaps, sad dreams that had roosted with their weary shoulders on the phone wires and in the elm trees of my life, my heart, like bedraggled migrants, waiting their hour of awakening to motion and evanscence. The dark birds of the heart, may they remember how to take wing. May they find the practiced hands of the proper healer, the clear skies of their proper capital. May even the darkest dreams hear the songs of even the most loutish tongues. May we all find our flight.