On the Perceived Escapism of Birds

Bird-like. Photo by Laura Edgerton.

My mom once told me that when she was a child, she dreamed of being a bird so that she could fly away. I have never forgotten those words and the emptiness in her eyes.

For years, I have thought about the symbolism of that admission and how obscuring my face in photos feels therapeutic at times, as though this intentional act can eventually manage to obliterate the damaged parts of me that still exist. There is a part of me that believes that, through this sort of annihilation, I can erase my mistakes, and theirs, too. The desire to do this, and the sadness that accompanies it, is very real, even if it is a game of pretend.

One could argue that it is pointless to wallow in the past, that humans should be able to move on from old hurts; I think that there’s a balance between allowing the past to consume one’s present and acknowledging that whatever has happened before is unalterable and therefore a part of what shapes one’s adult subsistence. I wonder sometimes if the human brain tries to understand the lifelong ramifications of trauma through creativity. I hope so; without an ability to write or to compose photographs, I would be a person going through a series of daily routines, devoid of artistic goals to propel me forward into something else, a stagnant version of me.

I watch for birds as we walk, as we drive, as we sit at a stoplight and wait. I like birds’ movements, their shadowy weirdness as they take flight and swoop and land and then fly off again. I daydream about finding an open field, somewhere remote that no one else knows about, an unclaimed parcel of land not yet discovered by ambitious city developers, where I can set up a tripod and be still and wait for the stirring of birds and listen only to the sound of my shutter and my own breaths.

The image here is a favorite from a recent shoot. I still don’t understand how I managed to elicit such extreme facial distortion; I love that it is disturbing to look at, the face elongated and warped, bird-like. I don’t recognize myself.

Visits to see our oldest daughter are comprised of time spent with family, one or two nondescript fast-food restaurants, the occasional iced coffee and the familiarity of the route between her home and ours. These trips always seem to end quickly. Somewhere south of Louisville, I ease the car into a parking spot at a rest area. I walk with the girls to the bathroom and then I allow Alex to pull me to the nearest tree while Chris heads into the one-story beige building, having kindly waited for us to go first. I grip the leash, imagining the horror we would all feel if our beloved pet got loose and ran into traffic. Other people look as exhausted as we feel; I wonder where they’re all going, where they’ve come from, if they’re happy.

Moments later, I sit and watch the highway race past us, around us and beneath, a smooth blur marred only by the occasional pothole or aggressive driver. There is companionable silence accompanied by Chris Cornell’s voice wailing through the car’s speakers. I look out the passenger window, watching for the inevitable groups of birds that cluster together at the tops of electrical poles or faded billboards. Birds look so small from where we are; I can glimpse them for just a couple of seconds before we’ve passed them. I keep my right index finger on the camera’s shutter; this action has been second nature to me for years, as much as breathing. I raise the Nikon to my face, but the last group of birds has already vanished. They are little ink blots, I think, waiting to drip down, down, down onto the passing lives below, staining them with regrets and resentments. I am almost never fast enough; the birds are gone, and we are still in the vehicle, flying towards what comes next.