Caged Bird
By Matthew J. Spireng
Some believe there's somewhere in the brain
that senses minor fluctuations in the Earth's
magnetic field and uses a sort of memory
of that to travel the same route year after year
over thousands of miles, over open ocean
on moonless, clouded nights, and a built-in clock
that, save for weather's influence, tells
when it's time to go. But they utter nothing
of thwarted dreams in birds' brains, how
a few cubic feet near the ground, however
well-kept and lighted, however large it seems
around a small bright bird, is like a fist
closed tight on feather and bone, how, certain times
of year, the bird's heart races as if to power flight.
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Those of you who read The Bean Zine have already seen this but it's hilarious enough to reprint here. The Sun has an advice column, Dear Deidre, "The World's #1 Agony Aunt," where people write in about their erotic agonies. Here is one man's misery: "My girlfriend only wants sex if she’s been watching Sean Bean on telly."
That's my fun headline for the morning. It's a good thing The New York Times keeps Thomas Friedman and Nicholas Kristof on their op-ed staff, meanwhile, because I learn things from them that get buried amidst advertising if they're covered at all in the news. Here's Kristof asking, What Did You Do During the African Holocaust?
And although I normally shun The Guardian because their reporting on Israel is so biased and at times so flagrantly anti-Semitic, I was rather fascinated by the media analysis of this piece, Rescuing Private Lynch, Forgetting Rachel Corrie.
Last night I did something I haven't done in about two years: watched Jesus Christ Superstar (the Jewison movie, not the recording of the ultra-slashy modern-dress British stage production from a couple of years back). Since I got most of my early Christian education from that movie, Godspell and Madeleine L'Engle, I come to the Jesus story utterly without baggage, and it's always been a favorite of mine, which seems bizarre for a Jewish girl. Every year at Easter we watch the musicals and Life of Brian to maintain the proper sense of absurdity and optimism in the face of Fundamentalism, but we missed this year in England and I don't even remember what happened last year. A strange family ritual.
Speaking of...um, well, the Devil, here is
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