BIRD WATCHERS ANONYMOUS

12-step programs are proliferating like pot holes. AA, the Granddaddy, begat Al Anon (for those unfortunates who must live or work with alcoholics) Cocaine Anonymous, Crystal Meth Anonymous and Marijuana Anonymous. (A slap in the face to the perfectly normal, fun-to-be-around, creative and productive long-term pot heads of my acquaintance.)

Every addiction gets its own Anonymous: Overeaters, smokers. Some groups are so anonymous that no one really knows much about them. (Nail-biters, nose-pickers, navel-contemplators. You know who you are!)

There’s also Emotions Anonymous. Yes. Verily, I say to you. My name is Naomi and I am powerless over my emotions. “Hello, Naomi.”

The participants are earnest. But they also laugh, even at mere attempts, of humor.

There are sponsors and leads and shares everywhere. And rules. And more rules. And burned coffee and generic bags of Oreos and Chips Ahoy.

There’s also an abundance of the word God. Not God per se, just the word God. Also referred to in these ecumenical, non-secular, all-are-welcome, politically ur-correct settings as my/your higher power, a force greater than my/yourself, a cosmic force. It is said a lampshade will do as a substitute. (The Joy of Cooking actually lists three large lampshades as a substitute for God. Check out the appendix.)

12 steps to spirituality. Prayer is mandatory. To whom or what such prayer is directed is of no apparent consequence.

People hunt. All omnivores do. Mammals and reptiles. Birds and fish. Spiders and insects. We devour one another and attach no particular spiritual rules to this pursuit. Falcons and spiders would die if they were prevented from the hunt. Not so us. We hunt because: 1. We like to eat the flesh of certain animals. 2. We like to kill things. The animals we kill presumbably have no 12-step programs or higher powers. They simply exist and frequently die to grace our tables.

Cats chase squirrels. Their skills are just not up to the kill. Do they pray to a higher power to improve their skills or to remove their desire to chase them? It is a serious matter.

Vegans still have nipples, males and females both, because they’re mammals. Omnivores pure and simple. Vegans define their humanity by rising above their mammalness. “I have a choice.” Is this like the higher power?

I can’t stop thinking about eating the flesh of less fortunate animals, some of whom have next to nothing that can be called a life. My name is Bubba and I’m powerless over meat-eating. Hello, Bubba!

P., a colleague of mine was fired for watching birds. He had an office that opened onto a small verandah and a pair of binoculars in his desk. As he sat before his monitor he would glance out onto the wooded lot now and then, hoping an unusual flash of feathers might catch his eye. He’d seen kestrels and mockingbirds, catbirds, red-tailed hawks, peregrine falcons and all manner of warblers.

Those who can’t fathom why there are such things as bird-watchers don’t realize that we are all bird watchers. We watch birds whenever we peer into daylight. They just don’t register in the uncaring mind. Bird-watchers register every winged creature. They dismiss the crow, sparrow or robin in a nano-second, but they do register.

As in all pursuits, short-cuts take hold. The arc of flight. The lack of color. The familiar flap of wings. The mundane calls. All quickly indicate the run-of-the-mill, singly or in combination. But just as quickly, a glimpse of pale green or yellow, a sudden swoop upward, bizarre head movement, a bright orange beak create intrigue.

Eventually, my birding colleague began to focus more on the nestling woods than his monitor. He carelessly put his binoculars at hand’s reach and forgot the security cameras installed throughout the complex. The binoculars were of no use in a drawer anyway for when a potential subject is spotted, the eyes cannot be averted. You must keep them locked on the quarry. A great deal of skill is required to keep the head still while you place binoculars to your eyes and focus them ever so subtly on your objective.

Zeroed in on a bit of feathered exotica, one drinks in all the detail. Size from beak to tail. Color of feathers, beak and feet. Crowns and movement. Shape of head, eyes, tail, breast. Then, having gleaned every possible detail before the bird takes flight, you reach for your field guide. You have a clue, of course, of what you’ve just witnessed, but it doesn’t count unless it matches up with the illustration. (Photographs never cut it in bird guides. They’re always hand-illustrated.)

After being let go, my colleague told me that his biggest regret was that he’d probably never again have such a great office for watching birds. “I really think they’re God’s favorite creatures. I can’t see why he’d care more for us than he does for them. I really can’t.”

I was shocked when I came across P’s obituary some years later. He was in his forties and I found out he died in a car crash – probably watching a goshawk soaring above.

We admitted we were powerless over bird watching and that our lives had become unmanageable.

We came to believe that a power higher than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

Hi. I’m P. and I’m powerless over bird watching.

Hello, P.

PUNCHING THROUGH

Bert Parks (remember him singing "Maggie's Farm" in the Brando film, The Freshman? Pure gold.) hosted many a TV game show in the '50s. One was called "Beat the Bank." A daily feature of this primitive show was a muscular man whose task it was to punch himself out of a paper bag. The bag of course was body-bag sized and the contestant slithered into it as it lay on the studio floor. The objective seemed within any human's reach. Punch your way out. In 60 seconds.

No one ever succeeded. The bag would jerk to the side as each blow was thrown like the second-hand of a digital clock, but was too well constructed to be penetrated by the human fist. Paper composition and the laws of physics conspired against the doomed muscleman, who you would guess operated a jack hammer when not making a fool of himself on national TV.

Surprisingly, no simple Houdiniesque aid was ever employed. (A sliver of concealed razor blade would have been sufficient to win the $100 reward, but this was after the $64,000 question scandal and besides who isn't man enough to conquer a brown paper bag?)

Whoever came up with this quasi-Sysyphian labor almost certainly was not out to create a metaphor for human frustration. But after some forty years, the spectacle still lingers. Do we all ooze from the womb into a brown paper bag from which entropy is the only escape? Or is the womb itself a brown paper bag from which we must be forcibly expelled? Both could be true.

How many of us spend our 60 seconds of life punching fruitlessly at a thin membrane that separates us from the light? Can one even train for such an undertaking?

Superheros could do it, but that's precisely the point of superheroes, isn't it? Overcoming reality. The laws of the natural world. Perhaps the laws of the spiritual world as well. Did Superman every pray? Did he ever need to? Maybe he was on speaking terms with the Almighty. Maybe the Almighty is irrelevant in a Superman-graced universe.

Most of us remember Bert Parks as the unctious tuxedo-clad belter of the climactic "Here She Comes. Miss America." Younger folk may know him as the entertainer at the Kimodo Dragon banquet in "The Freshman." For me, he'll always be the guy who consoled the losing bag-puncher with a variation of the line: "I thought you almost had it. You came awfully close."