Consider The Crow
By: Day
CLOOONK.
A crow drops a walnut on my windshield.
I am reversing out of the jail lot after a twelve hour shift, and I almost run the crow over and slam the brakes.
I laugh as he plops onto my hood and watches the walnut roll off.
I pull forward, and in the rearview he is pecking away at the walnut I HAD JUST DRIVEN OVER.
The fucker made me crack open his dinner. The clever bastard.
I thought about inviting him over to help with the taxes I still have yet to file.
I felt outsmarted. So much for bird brains I think, and speed off.
That crow weighed one pound and my Jeep weighs two tons, and he will build one the day hell freezes over, he will change a tire when pigs fly, he will drive the fucker at about the same time, and there I was anyway, two tons of steel and a state paycheck, his slave, cracking open his breakfast.
Put a crow in a room with almost any bigger animal and I bet against the crow.
Fortunately, the crow is smart enough to avoid your stupid fucking room.
That is the first thing he can teach you.
People are playing the wrong games. Fighting losing battles. Dying with knives in their hands and bullet holes in their heads. The tall man’s sport, the rich man’s market, the smarter man’s test.
Humans, unlike the crow, are encoded to follow the rules.
Hey hey I know, you are the exception! Or it is you and it feels like somebody else’s fault. K through 12 made sure the 99 would color inside those lines by instinct.
On the drive home my mind wanders and I keep thinking of that little bird. I sift through my memories of crows and remember reading something a while back about crows solving math equations or the likes. I should have had a pet crow back when I dropped out of math in tenth grade.
I get home and between flips of scrambled eggs mixed with canned chicken I do some research on crows. I realize the crow is one of the best USERS of the world. I have much to learn. My roommate asks what I am reading so much about.
Crows.
“You are so strange, Day.”
“Yea. We might get a pet one. Look up some bird food. Extra walnuts.”
My mind wanders to the eagle. America’s bird. The poster child. Beautiful, mean looking, eight foot wingspan, untouchable.
In my hometown eagles flew all over the woodlands and I remember my dad telling me, “Don’t ever shoot an eagle. It is a federal crime. I heard of some kid doing a year in jail and paying a fine.” He said zero about crows. I recall throwing rocks at them as kids.
But the eagle has to be protected. Wipe out a forest, build a subdivision in its territory, and the thing wobbles right out of existence.
Meanwhile the crow can be found in your trash, your sidewalks, your streets, your roadkill, your telephone wires, and your Jeep. The ugly little black fuckers walk around like they own the world.
Sure, the eagle was installed with better equipment. The crow is better at using the world.
WARNING.
Read ahead only if you are willing to lose the way you think.
Adopting new lens and eyes from which to view the world from can damage your psyche. It can help you make quantum leaps or it can unhinge your brain from the walls of your head. Read on and consider the crow if you dare.
The crow does three things you have been failing at your entire life.
I ran all three by accident and they got me out of a jail and onto an island with a blonde English girl and a laptop.
Free sheep, this is where I lose you. Off to the fenced in areas of life.
Wolves, and crows, come on in and pour up
Bring walnuts.
WAY ONE: TRAFFIC
I found a video from Japan of a crow dropping walnuts into the crosswalk, waiting for the light to turn red so the cars stop, then strutting on out there full of swagger and eating his freshly prepared meal.
GENIUS.
I would argue a crow is smarter than at least 33% of the humans walking our streets today.
Most people try to do everything allll by themself. They follow every rule and lack the creative thinking to step outside the box they were placed in the Day they were born, and so they stay unfree to think new original thoughts, their real thoughts, the way the world can be seen.
People want money so they try and invent a product. The crow finds a river where money already flows and stands downstream with his mouth wide open. People want an audience so they buy a domain and expect strangers to stumble in by happenstance and spill their wallets out across the floor. The crow throws a million posters up in rooms where ten million people walk through a day. Bish bash bosh bosh slosh. You want a skill so you enroll your ass in school for four years. Consider the crow. He follows the one who mastered it around until the walnut cracks open and he can feast.
I think of my first months here on Substack. I was dropping walnuts all over the damn road in the middle of rush hour traffic. Notes, comments, other people’s audiences, X, TikTok, Instagram, just waiting for the right car to come by and crush them open. The internet was my four thousand pounds.
Instead of asking how do I become powerful enough to crack this thing open, ask the crow question.
What powerful thing is already in motion that I can place this walnut underneath.
Two more things the crow knows that you don't.
FULL ESSAY ON SVBSTACK// DAYDAYDAY
