When the first blue jay visited my garden this spring, it felt like a good omen.
For three years, me and my husband lived along the outskirts of Colorado Springs. If you’re familiar with this area, you know that the outskirts consist mostly of fields. Miles of them, as far as you can see. There aren’t a lot of trees, and most of the lush areas where natural life could thrive are inevitably ripped up and developed. A flatland of concrete and soulless architecture.
Growing up in Alabama, hearing birdsong in the morning was a constant. With my childhood yard completely encircled in trees, it didn’t take much. So naturally, I took it for granted. While we were frequented by all kinds of birds, blue jays were my favorite. They’re big, loud, and colorful. It makes complete sense that a child would admire them the most.
Fast forward almost ten years, and I’m in Colorado and moving into our first house.
Finally! No more apartment life!
I have a yard!
I can hear the birds in the morning again!
But alas, suburbia wasn’t ideal for anything other than the pigeons living beneath my neighbors solar panels.
Even still, I bought our first feeder, and filled it diligently every few days. I’d hoped that if birds could gossip, they’d spread tales of a new feeder in town, and all the prettiest birds around would flock to my yard in no time. But after three years of fattening up solar pigeons and the occasional crow, I hadn’t welcomed a single blue jay.
There were many little things that made living in the suburbs frustrating, but the absence of birdsong was something that had taken its toll on us unexpectedly. We hadn’t understood the effects of living in a foliage-less environment for so long until we finally moved again earlier this year.
With luck on our side, we found an absolute gem in the heart of the city that checked every one of our boxes. Most importantly, it has a yard larger than the floor plan, delicately encased in a variety of trees that pepper beautifully throughout the neighborhood. I got to work immediately. Purchasing two more feeders and the seed was the easy part. The hard part was waiting, and attempting to outwit our backyard squirrel, Dottie. A furry ball of insatiable greed. It took about a month until we got our first feathered visitors – Black-capped and Mountain Chickadees. Cute little guys, but not who I was waiting for.
At the same time that I was working on my garden, I was also going back and forth on how, or even if, I would ever start my own art business. When you’re someone that feels like any decision you could make is the wrong one, it can be easy to stand still and do nothing at all. It feels safer that way, sometimes. But it had started to eat at me. I had so many ideas, and nowhere to properly channel them. So I started to make art again. It felt so silly at first. Getting second-hand embarrassment from my own work was so incredibly common, I had to force a new rule on myself that I wasn’t allowed to throw anything else away. If I made it, I had to live with it. For some reason, after making that rule, I feel like my work improved. I think I’ll talk about that later, though. Back to the bird.
The first strange experience I had was while on a phone call with my mom in my garden, drinking our morning coffees together. I was talking to her about how I wanted to start something, but that I was scared to take the leap. Suddenly, at that moment in conversation, I saw a blue jay for the first time in years. Not on any of my feeders though, funnily enough. I almost spit out my coffee. Instead, it perched right across from me on the fence, stared for a moment, and then flew away.
This continued on for about a month. Every time I felt myself get lost in my thoughts and anxieties about everything, a blue jay would find me and say hey. Still, never on my feeders. I got so accustomed to getting these weird acts of reassurance, it felt like if I didn’t start ZLEE off with a work of this bird, things wouldn’t work out for me. So I started, and finished, ‘Blue Jay.’
And then the visits stopped, as quickly as they’d started. I took a break and began reading Theo of Golden by Allen Levi. Days melted by, and I felt like the momentum I had while making ‘Blue Jay’ had faded. The anxious thoughts began to swirl again. It’s just a bird. It’s not that serious. Should I really start with this?
One evening after a long day of reading, I decided to sit down and start working on this entry. I’ve always loved to write, almost as much or more than making art, but I was really struggling. I couldn’t make it past the first sentence, and the second-hand embarrassment was creeping in again. I closed my laptop, and reopened Theo of Golden.
The last thing I’d read was how the main character Theo, and his friend Ellen, were on a bike ride to bird watch together. Their trip had ended, and Ellen had just given Theo a gift she’d made. A smooth piece of wood, drilled with holes, to hold and display bird feathers. I start reading, and these are the very first words I take in:
Theo pointed to a six-inch feather, deep blue with five short black bands on the narrow side of the shaft and an inch of white at the tip.
“That, Mr. Theo, is a rare blue jay feather. It’s a tail feather. I found it in the Boughery near Mr. Asher’s. I have never seen a blue jay in Golden. Not one. And I look for them. Somebody told me there used to be lots of them around here. Well, not now. But here’s what I know: if there’s a blue jay feather, there’s got to be a blue jay somewhere. That’s just simple logic. If P, then Q.”
“You know what they say about blue jays? They say blue jays go to hell on Friday. Even Mr. Nobel Prize William Faulkner said it in one of his books. Maybe all the blue jays got trapped down there one Friday, except the one that lost this feather. Maybe the old devil grabbed at his tail when he was escaping and pulled this feather loose, and when the bird got to the Boughery, it finally fell out. That’s where I found it, down in the Boughery. Mr. Theo, that feather might belong to the last blue jay on Earth. You never know.”
I almost threw the book across the room. What the hell? After hours of agonizing over how to write this entry, if at all, I open a book I’ve been reading and boom. Blue jays. Again. So I reopened my laptop, and kept writing.
And now, here we are. ZLEE Studio is officially live, and I’m still obsessed with blue jays. But I’ve not had an experience with them since. I’m still refilling my feeders, though, just in case.
If you made it this far, I appreciate you. The ‘Blue Jay’ original is now available for purchase. Prints coming soon. Oh, and the next time you see a blue jay, tell it I said thanks.