Farfel in the tree

Farfel sat in the tree and wondered if there was any reason, really, to come down.From his vantage point the ground below looked like a far and away city, the sidewalk cracks like freeways, the patch of grass a recently denuded forest.Down below and looking up the girl only half consciously wondered why her mind was suddenly wandering, thinking about the interface workings of computer chips and how they looked like suburbs seen from airplane windows, but turned her attention once again skyward and tried to refocus.Farfel thought about jumping. The girl called out perhaps sensing his thought in the slight tilt of his head looking toward the earth.He imagined a fall to hit the cement with a solid body slap and a soft forever splat, for him at least, was an impossibility, unless he was struck by some thick curl of talon from a predator above, or unless his old heart blessedly chose that one moment to stop its insufferable thumpings and allow him to do what no bird he knows has done, and fall off a branch to his death.30 is a long time to be around. Even for a man who has had countless wives, especially if all those wives were only copulating with him out of sheer genetic encoding to do so and he was the only male allowed within the barred room of their nuptial suites.Usually though, hen-pecked and rejected, a gentle hand would eventually remover him from his enclosure and take him back to the comfort of the old nesting box where he could recover his senses, pluck his feathers and ask himself the only question he really knew how to ask which was, ‘Why, why, why?’Life for Farfel wasn’t unbearable in any way, thought the girl, a hint of resentment in her the voice of her thoughts. The girl loved him for all his sadness, he certainly enjoyed a variety of foods; he was petted and fussed over and adored. He had his inane love of ripping adding machine paper rolls, his popcorn, and his jazz radio music. Why he chose that moment in her hands to lift off she decided was simply beyond her scope of understanding.It was a walk in the park, his cage being pulled by a little red wagon, a chance to see the world if only from a lowered perspective and only for an afternoon.Beyond the girls small thoughts was a bigger truth of course, which was that she would have done the same as Farfel, a thousand times over, for to rise above, losing sight of everything that existed below her newly formed wings would be impossible to resist; date-nights and taxes and dishes to be washed and vacuums and old books and fear of aging and love of cheeseburgers, beyond all that there is always the desire to transcend, to pass over it all and simply take to the air.