The Underside of a Wing

An albatross is a bird who doesn’t go away, even though its body is capable of movement, long distances in fact, over nine thousand miles in fact. An albatross can circle the globe, stay in flight for over nine years without stopping. In Latin, an albatross means immutable, unchanging; eventually an albatross returns to the same island. There are at least nine species of albatross who are endangered; with a white underbelly camouflaged by black upper wings, an albatross is easy not to see. There are at least nine species of albatross who endanger; an albatross is a bird who will always bring you down.

1.

The albatross is riding the SkyTrain back from Commercial Drive. The albatross doesn’t know why a girl even bothered getting on the SkyTrain, taking the bus all the way down the mountain in Burnaby, making her ears pop just so a girl could go to some graduate student meet-and-greet for the psychology department where the albatross avoided talking to anyone all night. She doesn’t know why a girl bothered when the albatross ended up alone, in the bathroom, throwing up nine-dollar wine and playing PC classic solitaire on her phone. On the SkyTrain, a girl tries to make sure the albatross is not seen by the two other people who are sitting too close to the albatross, who are sitting just close enough to each other so that the edges of their thighs are touching, just close enough to be a couple. The couple doesn’t seem to notice the albatross; the couple is looking at clouds. That one’s a seashell. That one’s a heart. The albatross used to play this game with Rob, back when Rob was going through his Hitchcock phase in film studies, back when every third cloud was the blood in the shower scene from Psycho. The couple is able to name the shape of a cloud and agree; the albatross can tell by the reaction shot, the part where they kiss. Rob loved to talk about Hitchcock’s use of the subjective camera, the reaction shot which follows the point of view shot where the image is the exact representation of the image as a particular character perceives it. At first, a girl thought that she and Rob were speaking the same language; she had done a minor in film too. But Rob never saw what the albatross saw, clouds that poured rain, clouds that eventually disappear, pushed higher and higher by global warming, causing the darkening of ocean water, the death of desert bacteria, the worsening of pollen allergies. From Rob’s point of view, it is better that Rob is back in Toronto, that Rob doesn’t see the albatross anymore. It is better if no one does. The albatross just can’t see it. But that one’s a plane, a bird, maybe.

2.

The albatross posts selfies, but they are taken in her bathroom mirror. A girl captions them with the goal of the day. Going to do the Grouse Grind. Going to run across the Capilano Suspension Bridge. In the background, no one can see the unmade bed where the albatross can’t sleep, the stack of take-out sushi containers, the pile of Hitchcock DVDs she took from Rob’s apartment. The murder in Rear Window reminds the albatross of the murder of Kitty Genovese, who was killed while thirty-eight people watched or listened without understanding it was an emergency. That murder was the reason Darley and Latane studied the bystander effect, which was the reason newer research found that the flight or fight response inhibits helping behaviour, which is the paper she should really be reading right now. But the albatross just switches The Birds for Rear Window, uses the DVD as a coaster the next time she cracks a beer. Going skiing at the top of Whistler Mountain in August before the real work starts. Going to sleep well tonight! From the point of view of Rob, against the right background, say the Lion’s Gate Bridge connecting Vancouver to the North Shore, the albatross will be hard to spot. From the point of view of Rob, it will look like she’s having fun.

3.

The albatross is sitting across from a man who is sitting in the good leather chair in an office at the university. The albatross is sitting on a plastic chair, the one that has some padding but is not built for support like the leather chair. She is trying to make sure the albatross doesn’t say too much, agrees mostly. From the man’s point of view, the albatross is falling behind; the albatross is heading into academic jeopardy. A man does not understand the relevance of the albatross’ references. An albatross’ language is mostly sky-calls and bob-struts, the clattering of a girl’s ring tapping against the chair, a constant hollow drumming like a heart inside her ears. Has she read the classic study on mistaken attraction due to activation of the flight or fight response on a suspension bridge? Of course, the albatross is making her leg jump up and down and up and down, making her look as though she is nodding; the albatross, with a wingspan of over nine feet fully extended, has to keep it together or a man is going to notice. A man is going to ask what’s wrong. From the point of view of a man in a supportive leather chair, there’s no room for the albatross in an office, at a university.

4.

A friend will want to meet the albatross for lunch; a friend will say she understands what’s wrong. From the point of a friend, the albatross will just need to move on, get out, meet people. A friend will have answers, proper nouns. The albatross should try eHarmony. The albatross should try Moksha yoga. The albatross really shouldn’t have another glass of Merlot. The albatross will appear to have so much going for her, a friend will say she just needs to stop worrying. A friend will describe how she learned to stop worrying when she went to Thailand, met her fiancé; a friend will show pictures of them on the beach with a perfect blue ocean and a perfect blue sky, skipping past the dark clouds from a waste-to-energy plant burning plastics beside a shrimp farm, the animals kept by themselves in cages at the Pata Zoo. It’s the albatross who will want to think the ocean is photo-shopped; it’s easy to photo-shop tropical islands, Google images of beaches and hammocks. A tropical bird unable to fly in her cage is real. An ocean that blue is not. There are not even clouds in the sky. The albatross will excuse herself to drink from a flask in her purse in the bathroom, cry while reading the graffiti on the stall that promises a good time if she calls someone named Dan. Last time, the albatross forgot to fix a girl’s eyeliner and a friend said she wasn’t looking that great; is something wrong? The albatross texts to say it would have been great to see a friend, but she just can’t make it. The albatross doesn’t care how it looks.

5.

The albatross is not looking well, despite the concealer under her eyes; the albatross is not sleeping. The albatross is checking boxes on Web MD at 2:30 a.m. The albatross is supposed to answer always, often, sometimes, rarely or never to get definite answers but a girl is having trouble agreeing on the exact nature of the problem with the albatross. The albatross checks that she always has difficulties falling asleep, but she never has difficulties staying asleep: she can sleep in a lecture hall, or a cafeteria, or through the first year introductory psych course she is supposed to TA at 3:30 p.m. She often experiences excessive worry; the albatross never experiences worry that is excessive. The albatross sometimes experiences worry in social situations; she always worries that others will notice the albatross. Tonight, so the albatross’ roommate doesn’t notice, she is watching The Birds with the sound turned off. Rob once told her that in filming the attic scene, Hitchcock tied live birds to Tippi Hedren’s costume. The fear on her face is real. Only a few of the birds she is afraid of are not real. Sometimes it’s hard to tell. Web MD doesn’t give definite answers; it says the albatross should consult a physician. But she often experiences a fear of the albatross speaking in public.

6.

At four p.m. in the university health clinic, the albatross is sitting behind the glass with her clinical supervisor. The albatross is supposed to be sitting in front of the glass while a woman named Mandy, who is doing her Ph.D., observes from behind the one-way mirror. Instead, a woman named Mandy is explaining to a man why no one can see if he has an albatross right now. Unfortunately, it’s already four and they close in an hour. Unfortunately, they are short staffed because the albatross, who is still drinking vodka out of what is supposed to look like a vending machine Pepsi, is late for her practicum shift. (Unfortunately, there was traffic, there was a problem with her alarm, there was the fact that a girl needed the albatross to drink at least half of what used to be Pepsi before the albatross would stay quiet. Unfortunately the albatross is going to have to wait to make a girl’s excuses about why she’s late this time later; can’t she see Mandy is doing an assessment right now?) Unfortunately, there is a bit of a wait list, maybe a few weeks to a month, even if a man can’t see himself waiting that long. They don’t take walk-ins unless it’s a real emergency.

Unfortunately the glass at the university health clinic is not real glass, but tempered glass, supposedly the shatterproof kind wrapped in plastic coating, the same kind used in a marketing challenge that involved breaking a million dollars out of a West Van bus stop, known for visible distortions. For example, from the point of view behind the bus stop glass, five hundred dollars looked like a million dollars; Mandy says that from the point of view of her supervisor behind the university health clinic glass there is no way to see a man’s albatross today. An albatross is not a real emergency. From the point of view behind the glass, a real emergency is a man banging his fists against the glass. A real emergency is a man threatening to break the glass; an albatross is not supposed to go behind the glass at a university health clinic. A real emergency means Mandy is going to have to call security; from the point of view behind the glass her supervisor doesn’t see it as an albatross. A real emergency, according to page nine in the manual, is a sudden traumatic event, or a loss, or thoughts of suicide. Of course, the supervisor says later, a real emergency would have been if the man had told Mandy that he was planning to jump off the Lion’s Gate Bridge, but he didn’t tell her that. There was no way, from behind the glass, to have seen that coming.

7.

On a bench in Stanley Park, the albatross is drinking rum from a plastic iced tea bottle because she needs Rob to answer his phone; she needs to tell him she finally understands why it took Tippi Hedren almost losing an eye to tell anyone how she was afraid of Hitchcock. The problem is a girl needs the albatross to be quiet; she needs to read. She needs to read about how people who were afraid on high suspension bridges mistakenly felt attraction but the problem is that on her phone the albatross is reading that Alfred Hitchcock thought false fronts underneath a sheer nightgown would make Grace Kelly more attractive. Alfred Hitchcock was unable to detect when Kelly wouldn’t wear the plastic insert breasts because she thought they would look fake. The problem, the albatross is now sure from her reading, is plastic is linked to cancer, anxiety in children at age seven, the death of albatross chicks whose bellies, cut open, are filled with brightly coloured garbage while no one notices. For example, even when it starts to spit rain in Stanley Park, the albatross doesn’t seem to notice. She doesn’t move from a bench in Stanley Park; she reads how no one noticed that Albert, an albatross off the coast of Northern Scotland, was alone for more than sixty years with gannets who didn’t understand his language, the meaning of his cries. The problem is the albatross reads, but there is nothing in the literature to suggest that gannets could ever understand an albatross, that the albatross would ever be aware it wasn’t a gannet. Most birds can’t pass the mirror test, recognize an image as themselves. The problem is Rob doesn’t pick up his phone and she needs to tell Rob how she can’t tell anyone, but she is afraid of what a bird can do. She is afraid, especially when crossing from Prospect Point, to go back to her residence room. She is afraid, seven hundred metres above sea level on the Lion’s Gate Bridge, that the albatross is unable to see her face in the water below.

8.

In a seminar room where people are sitting in bright orange plastic chairs, a girl is supposed to be answering questions about the bystander effect. She is supposed to be explaining why, when Kitty Genovese walked home that night from a bar in Queens, thirty-eight people listened to her being murdered and didn’t see it as an emergency. She is supposed to be explaining, but the albatross won’t be quiet. The albatross isn’t sure if the black t-shirt camouflage is working or if the people can see the white deodorant circles under her arms; the albatross hasn’t been to the lecture for the course she is TAing in weeks. She is supposed to be explaining why, but the albatross doesn’t know why people couldn’t have understood it was a real emergency even though one of the people in the orange chairs is saying that actually, the first articles in the Long Island Press and The New York Times reported no witnesses; actually, a lawyer later on argued that very few residents of the nearby building could have seen the attack. Actually, new research suggests that people will only help provided it’s a clear emergency. Actually, she is supposed to explain the difference between a real emergency and a clear emergency but the albatross is talking in its own language, which is a drumming of her heartbeat getting faster and faster; the albatross, actually, is not talking in a way that makes sense at all. The albatross is saying how maybe Kitty was less scared of the man attacking her than of the people attacking her for being what she was, a woman who worked at a bar coming home late in Queens; maybe Kitty didn’t want help, even though she was clearly screaming for it. Maybe the albatross is just breathing in and in and in and no words are coming out because an albatross can’t explain how a real emergency is not a clear emergency; the albatross can’t explain why she would go to the Lion’s Gate Bridge because she needs to get off the island. It’s a real emergency. It is the kind of emergency where she is seeing black, where everyone might see the white underneath part of her wings instead of the black, the kind where she might be having a heart attack. It is the kind where everyone is going to see the albatross as she passes out for a few seconds, then wakes up on the floor, where she can only see the feet of the bright orange plastic chairs.

9.

At Nanaimo Regional General Hospital, the albatross is waiting in the emergency room. The albatross doesn’t like it here. Everything is made of plastic. The chairs in the waiting room she can see from the hall are made of the same orange plastic as the ones in the seminar room; she can’t see her own reflection in the fluorescent light hitting the seat of the empty ones. The pen the woman in the booth behind the glass is using to write down what the albatross says is made of plastic; the glass itself is probably made of plastic because the woman says the albatross can wait, but it’s highly unlikely the doctor will see her tonight. It’s highly unlikely because they have a thing called triage. It’s highly unlikely because the albatross is not bleeding or burning or having a heart attack. No, from what the albatross has told the woman, a girl did not experience the symptoms of a heart attack. No, she probably just had a panic attack and should go home and get some rest; a girl is fine. A girl is fine, but the albatross is not fine with the orange plastic chairs, or the plastic window; the albatross is telling the woman that plastic is killing the oceans. The albatross is telling the woman she wants to take one of those orange plastic chairs and hurl it through the glass. A girl is telling the woman that she can’t go home to Toronto; the albatross is intent on leaving the island, will leave Vancouver for the North Shore via a bridge seven hundred metres above sea level. The albatross is telling the woman with the white undersides of her wings pressed hard against the plastic glass. Then the girl is feeling the body of an albatross thrown over and over against the glass; the girl is feeling how the wings of an albatross get pinched when held behind her by security. The girl is feeling the body of an albatross is her, face down on the ground where she can see the rubber, not plastic soles of a nurse’s shoes.

10.

A nurse is saying an albatross is a bird who eventually goes away. Eventually, it learns to fly, long distances in fact, effortlessly in fact. The girl agrees somewhat an albatross might be a danger to others. The girl might not agree, but a woman who is a nurse who came out from behind the glass believes an albatross needs to be seen. The girl might not agree, but Hedren never got Hitchcock to listen; Albert on his gannet-filled island spent years and years just trying to find someone to talk to so he didn’t have to die alone. Kitty spent her last moments screaming at apartment buildings whose lights were on. The girl might not agree, but an albatross is a danger to herself. The girl might need to be seen as an albatross, at least for seventy-two hours. Eventually, the girl is told, an albatross can change; it can become extinct. Eventually, she is told, the girl can learn how to fly, without being in flight.

 

 

Photo by David Popa on Unsplash