A message from the head budgie
The first short story I ever wrote was called A Message From The Head Budgie, just like the title shown above except with All Capital Letters Because I Didn’t Know Better At The Time Like I Do Now. It was in my first year of college, before I got thrown out or dropped out or tuned in and turned on or whatever the popular saying was at that time. I think it may have been “I’m not as think as you stoned I am,” but I can’t remember. If you remember another popular saying, it was “if you remember the sixties you weren’t there,” but that was from the seventies, the disco decade, so it doesn’t count worth a damn. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
It was a short story because it was short. I could have written it longer but all I knew about writing at the time was that you started at the beginning, went on for a while, and when you came to the end you stopped. When I started it I had no idea where it was going or what it was about, but I had seen a play called Waiting for Godot and what I remember about that play was that Godot never showed up, which I thought was terrific. It brings to mind the joke: “How do you keep a turkey in suspense?” (Take your time; it will come to you.)
The head budgie lived in the kitchen. He was the boss budgie. The implication was that there were other budgies in the house but you never heard them. You never heard from the head budgie either, which was a main point in the story and a key life lesson, if you think 18-year old aspiring writers who have never written so much as a note to their mother to offer thanks for ironing their underwear have any wisdom to share. As I write this story 50 years later I am amazed to think I remember the story at all, or in detail, or that it remains the best short story I ever wrote, if you are a fan of irony and budgies as I am.
The first line of the story remains cemented in my head, which allows my alter ego to this day to taunt me as a cement head. It goes as thus: “The head budgie awoke with a start in his cage by the kitchen window.” The story continues, explaining first of all why the head budgie awoke with a start. It has to do with the fact, as the story implies, that our boss budgie is a self-starter, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed (so to speak) and wide awake before dawn. The head budgie is ready, willing and able to rock and roll at the first hint of daylight. He has things to say, important issues that need to be considered by all and sundry, especially the other budgies. Why wait ’til spring? Hey, do it now!
As the story commences, it is revealed that the head budgie is becoming edgy. He awoke with a start because sunlight is already beaming into his cage. This is most unusual. Where is the butler? It is the butler’s job to remove the cover from the cages of all the budgies every morning, and something is remiss. The head budgie begins to lose his temper. As with all budgies he begins to chat with himself in the mirror. At the same time he starts to preen. As he preens, he chatters to himself. When the butler finally shows up there will be dues to pay, he swears to himself. There needs to be a reckoning. Respect is dwindling. Rules need to be followed.
Of course the butler never shows up. It is Shrove Tuesday, a rare day off for the help, and the rich folks who own the home with a budgie in every room have also slept in. The warmer it gets as the morning progresses the angrier the head budgie becomes. There is no ending to the story. The suspense grows but is left hanging, all in less than 2,000 words. I have never written anything simpler. Such is the innocence of childhood. So we are mindless and silly budgie birds, chattering to ourselves daily, preening in the mirror, oblivious of reality, obsessed with self, waiting for someone to come and do things for us in order to make our lives more interesting.
My story was written and performed in all of two minutes in 1968. I read it out to a small audience at a school class and likely the story was forgotten before it was even finished. I totally forgot about it myself until I actually became a published writer many years later. The story flashed in my mind in bits and pieces from time to time. It wasn’t until God invented cellphones, morphing quickly into smart phones for stupid people, that the topic came back into mind.
I had a cellphone for a decade myself before finally cancelling my account, which was a smart move on my part. This was on account of nobody ever called me. At $40 a month over five years I estimate I spent about $2,500 for about four phone calls. When I am at home I am at my desk typing with two fingers and I have a land line. On the road during my many trips to foreign countries, mostly on one-week press trips, I saw no need to buy a sim card to not use for a week. On all my trips, my own trusty Panasonic Lumix with zoom lens camera is a key piece of equipment so I have never taken a single photo using a cellphone. It took me a long time, usually when someone handed me their own cellphone and asked me to take a photo, to realize that cellphones shoot the opposite direction than typical SLR cameras. What you see is what you get. Hence the ominous arrival of the dreaded “selfie” to our lexicon.
While I write this we have a handsome Prime Minister in Canada who is willing to pose for a selfie with anyone, even if you aren’t. If there is a cellphone within whistling distance he will be happy show you his bicuspids and perhaps even a glimpse at his back molars. Posing for selfies in this day and age makes him a cool dude, or a real dork depending on your opinion. When I was young and didn’t know any better we’d always put my wife and son front and centre of every holiday photo we ever took, and so now I have hundreds of stories to tell but no appropriate photos to accompany them. “Look, here we are at the Taj Mahal.” Nobody cares and nobody wants to know. It’s all about self.
The obsession with self is edging closer to becoming a religion. I’ve seen people walking around on their trips waving monopods with a cellphone attached at the other end, taking endless photos of themselves because no one else wants to hold their camera. “Look at me. I am unique. I am God. Here I am in front of the Holiday Inn in Des Moines. Please pay no attention to that gigantic zit on my chin. Too much cherry pie.” Get a life. No one is going to worship your useless collection of selfies. Nobody cares.
I blame 60’s philosopher Baba Ram Dass for my obsession with conscious awareness because of Be Here Now, the title of his famous bestselling book that wowed the hippies when they weren’t listening to Eric Clapton and claiming he was God. As the cover of the bestselling guidebook People’s Guide to Mexico used to say right on the cover way back in the day: “No matter where you are, there you are.” Quite right. But these days nobody is where they are; they are always somewhere else that they think is more interesting. Why is it more interesting to talk to someone across town about your favourite TV soap opera when you could be looking at that Japanese cherry tree full of pink flowers?
Personally I call smart phones “diddle machines,” addictive toys for grownups to play with when they should be paying attention to their life. Playing with these toys is no different than playing with yourself or twiddling your thumbs, except that twiddling your thumbs is cheaper and playing with yourself makes a mess that you have to clean up and it’s illegal in several provinces and several states in the Disunited Republic, except for the President.
In an interview I once did with Ram Dass for a magazine cover story he advised me to “sink deep into my incarnation and get the nectar,” as if we were both hummingbirds as opposed to being budgie birds or dodos. I have a black leather lazyboy chair I bought for that exact purpose. No, not to get reincarnated but to sink deep into the bliss. That damned chair cost $1,000 and comes with a matching black leather foot stool. You could easily build a religion around that. But the advice from Ram Dass seemed to indicate he already adhered to a religion (Hinduism, Buddhism?) that believed in reincarnation. I wonder if a smart phone will explain to you how that belief system works. According to Wikipedia, “reincarnation is the philosophical or religious concept that the non-physical essence of a living being starts a new life in a different physical form or body after biological death. It is also called rebirth or transmigration, and is a part of the Saṃsāra doctrine of cyclic existence. In short, Saṃsāra is the cycle of death and rebirth.” Whatever. Myself, I can’t even be bothered to call myself an atheist because I am too lazy to look up the definition.
The truth is I know a lot more about reincarnation than you do. I think it’s a great scam to get people to behave themselves properly, with the payoff being that in the next life you won’t be such a godawful slug and maybe you will earn enough money to pay your own bar bill. In Buddhism or Hinduism, if you are born a dog, you deserve it. Maybe that’s why in the Buddhist countries I have visited people routinely kick dogs. Bowser deserves it, they think. He should have opened doors for old ladies in his last incarnation as a car hop. Actually I know more than you do about the topic because I have personally met and interviewed someone who has been reincarnated so many times he was bored talking about it.
The meeting took place in a monastery in Kathmandu, Nepal, as many spiritual events do because there is a lot of Royal Nepal Temple Hash available for a quick trip to seventh heaven, although in this incident neither the monk in question nor I were appropriately blissed. In fact, I had just returned from a 700-kilometre trek across the Himalayas with a Tibetan monk to “find and rescue abandoned children in order to save the last vestige of pure Tibetan culture left on the planet,” and I dare you to top that for spiritual purity. My legs were strong, my mind was open and my heart was pure. As soon as I divested myself from a 20-foot parasite that had taken refuge inside my intestines and was able to stand up and walk I was offered a tour of the monastery by the head monk.
We had a good look and listen to the 10-foot Tibetan horns that had just blown me out of bed that morning, along with the 10-foot drums you can hear for miles and the 5-foot cymbals that sound like plate glass windows smashing. That’s when he offered me a chance to meet with the founder of the sect. I was a bit uncomfortable with the offer because I knew the founder had died several years ago and I had developed a bit of an aversion to cremations, bags of dried bones in a box and similar merchandise. But he persisted. The new founder was the same old founder, he explained, only returned to earth in a fresh new package. Who could resist such an offer?
Evidently Jamyang Kunga Trinlay Palbar is the reincarnation of the sixth Tharig Rinpoche Jamyang Dhamchoe Nyima. The former Tharig Rinpoche snuffed it in 1998 during his South Asian Dharma tour in Singapore. It might have been old age. After two years, His Holiness the Sakya Trizin, Supreme Head of Sakya tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, recognized a boy child born to a Tibetan family residing in Bir Tibetan settlement, a mere 50 Kilometers from Dharamsala, home of the Dalai Lama and the exiled Tibetan Government, as the reincarnation of the former Tharig Rinpoche. His childhood name was Tashi Tobgyal/Ngawang Choeying.
So the head lama and I trudged up the stairs (there are always stairs involved with meeting reincarnated beings) and around the back and into a small room where a young child with bat wing ears sat studying squiggly lines on a page. In the interests of science, I must tell you he was wearing a yellow shirt and purple dress symbolizing his order. He sat with his knees crossed which angered me somewhat because my own knees won’t cross, zig zag, twist, comply or otherwise do what they are told except to hurt. There was a temptation to hold this fact against him, but given that he was five years old holding him in any way might have resulted in a charge of assault so I kept a good distance.
How does a very young Tibetan monk become recognized as a reincarnation of an illustrious former head monk? Evidently there are some serious rules and regulations. You can’t just apply, whether online or in person. Given that you aren’t old enough to find where Grandma keeps her Gordon’s gin hidden on top of the bedroom closet, you need some help. There are gurus and oracles and GPS maps involved. A senior monk gets a vision that some snotty-nosed young boy living in a mud hut somewhere is the right dude for the job. Searches are made. Questions are asked.
The young man in question was found in a small village living with his parents. No doubt the bat wing ears were a clue. He was brought to Nepal. The young lad is shown a room. There is no smart phone or huge plasma TV involved. The room has no connection to Netflix. In that room are placed hundreds of objects that formerly belonged to the old geezer who floated off into the void while dodging arrest in Singapore for a chewing gum infraction. The young monk must choose 100 objects from the room and 100 percent of those souvenirs must have belonged to the old geezer. No cheating and 99 percent success won’t cut the mustard. So Tashi Tobgyal passed the test with flying colours. Why not? All those odds and sods used to be his own trinkets, back in the day.
Being as this was the first person I had met who had come back from the dead I was keen to ask some questions. Does he remember dying? Did it hurt? But the little brat was absorbed by my camera (“Digital?” he asked) and wasn’t keen on talking about any of his former lives. He remembered bits and pieces and could recite them to his inquisitors as proof he had “been there, done that” but his English was poor and I had a parasite of my own to deal with so the session was short. Perhaps if I had a smart phone for him to take a selfie things would have worked out better.
The first I ever heard about cellphones was many years ago when Nokia, a tech company in Finland, popularized them. I saw it on 60 minutes, my favourite TV show, so it had to be true. Reporter Morley Safer showed that Finns never talk to each other in person, like on the bus or in a cafe, but loved to gas bag until the cows came home if the person with whom they were speaking was away, preferably far away, the farther the better. Long distance love. Go figure. Then years later I saw another 60 Minutes show about Professor John Stilgoe, professor of landscape design at Harvard University, who had written a bestselling book titled Outside lies Magic. Evidently the way to get interviewed on 60 Minutes is to write a bestseller and one day soon I plan to do the same myself.
Reporter Safer went on a walk around the block with Stilgoe and what a walk it was although it took them about a week to get to the corner. Look at that fire hydrant, said the good professor. What does it say on the side? Made in India! All fire hydrants used to be made of steel in Pittsburgh. You see how things change? What about that tree over there? That’s a palm tree from the Caribbean; what’s it doing here? Look at that awning on that house! Did you see that bird that just flew by?
In short, Stilgoe proved to Safer in no time flat that everything is interesting if you just take the time to look. The first step is to stop talking to yourself and start paying attention to the landscape. The world is not flat. Nor is it boring. It is a fascinating place if you just know where to look, and how, the second part being harder than the first. How do you remember to remind yourself to look? It’s like the sixties, déjà vu all over again, and please don’t bring up the suggestion of Royal Nepal Temple hash at this point in time. The secret is to stop talking to yourself, open your eyes and shut your mouth and pay some attention for a change..
Since I wouldn’t know a fig tree from a rose bush, I went out and bought a copy of the Vancouver Tree Book, by someone named David (not Dick) Tracy. I started exploring tree locations, especially cherry trees during the spring cherry blossom season in Vancouver. Did you know there are 54 different varieties of flowering cherry trees in Vancouver neighbourhoods, with over 40,000 individual trees? No you didn’t, you were too busy talking on the phone to someone in the produce section of Safeway whether she wanted a rutabaga or a yam. Get a life, you bozo.
The message, whether coming from a budgie bird in the morning or an opossum late for the bus, is the same. The world is a fascinating place. Take the time to stop and look and remember to inhale the nectar. Chances are, unless you are a five-year old kid with batwing ears named Tashi Tobgyal/Ngawang Choeying , you’re not likely to pass this way again. Meanwhile, I will wait here for you.