"poisoning pigeons in the park"

sunrise:  6:37

Here is one peek at my own backyard sunrise today.

nice to be home.

***********

I have delayed publishing this guest post by 9 days, given all my traveling, but here is T's sunrise blog post:


Poisoning Pigeons in the Park
sunrise 6:34

For some inexplicable reason, some of my friends and I ended up staying up all night
last night. We didn’t party; we didn’t go anywhere all too interesting. We stayed
up, “just ‘cause.” By the time 5:00 rolled around, I thought, what’s the point? I’m
practically there; why not watch the sunrise? I brought it up to my friend, K, and
she said she would stay up another hour and half to watch it with me. Once we had
a reason to stay up, it was much harder to stay awake. We knew if we went to sleep
at all, we wouldn’t get back up in time, so here we are struggling through that last
hour:

Somehow, I’m finding the energy to write this now, before I finally go to sleep.
I’m realizing that that’s kind of how college is going to be: going until Complete
Exhaustion and then going some more.

Here’s the glow of the moon with the glow of a streetlamp (thank you pigeons for
your wonderful timing to get spooked by something).

College is the social scene I never had. During high school, I contented myself with
having a few core friends and leaving it at that. I was in too much of a guarded shell to let more people in. My job this summer broke that shell (because my job was
largely to talk to people) and now I have more friends than I can ever remember
having. I was worried at first that it was just because we were all in the same boat,
with no friends at all, but I’m quickly realizing that many of the people I’ve met thus far are here to stay (and I don’t just mean because they live here).

 K and me with the Boston Common behind us.

Granted, I do like my alone time. I struggled with that when I first got here. I really like my roommate, but when you’re sharing a room with someone, getting time to
yourself is tough. I just want some peace and quiet sometimes. Yesterday morning,
I discovered the solution: I was feeling really sick and I had an early meeting for
the school’s TV channel. I got up, went to Emerson’s café and bought an orange
mango fruit smoothie drink thing (I thought the Vitamin C might help my gross-
feelingness). It was a really hot day so I went and sat on a bench in the Common
and just looked around me. Everything was so chaotic, but had a rhythm to it:

the cars zooming by, the Massholes honking at each other for no reason, the pigeons
waddling about, once in a while flying up together in one, big Whoosh! (something
that always takes me by surprise because I can never tell what makes them all do it
at the same time—kind of like the way I can hardly ever tell what the heck Guster is
barking at—maybe the same thing freaks him out that freaks the pigeons out)…it all
fits into a lively rhythm that can be pretty cathartic.

The poor pigeons probably never get any alone time the way they travel in flocks.
I’m glad I’m not a pigeon.

Here’s a pigeon looking at a homeless person.







Sometimes the pigeons are intimidating. They travel in gangs and the pigeons
in Boston are by no means afraid to tell you how they feel. During my school
orientation, my assigned group was meeting in the Common and we sat down in the
grass. Halfway through the meeting, a pigeon waddled up to a boy in the group and
angrily flapped its wings at him. It reminded me of when squirrels scold you if you
walk too close to their tree, but the pigeon was much more forceful. The unprovoked
attacks and unpredictable take-offs characterize the pigeons here. They make me realize why the satirical song-writer (and amazing pianist!), Tom Lehrer, would write a song like "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park."  He is from Massachusetts, after all. Maybe he had some experiences in the Common with some of these audacious pigeons.

The pigeons are pretty ruthless with each other too; here they are fighting for a
piece of bread.

Unfortunately, in the city, it’s a little hard to get high enough to actually to see the sun rising without getting on the roof of a building, but we get kicked out of our residence hall if we do that. So I didn’t see any sun. I might not have seen it anyway because this morning was very hazy and overcast, but I still managed some nice
photos.

Here’s where the sun would have been.

It’s weird getting used to how different everything is here. I mean, I’ve lived in
Maine for 8 years and before that, I didn’t live in any more of a city-like place than Maine.  Slowly, I’m having to learn what to do and not to do here, how the
subway system works (I hardly ever have to use it anyway because everything is
so close), and all sorts of city things. I love it. I’m really glad I’m here (despite the violent pigeons).