Tweedy Dee and Ruby

Two lovebirds sitting in a tree gazed wildly at each other; something was up. 'Wildly' is an inexpressive or ilexpressive word; one lovebird was wild—the other: tame. The wild lovebird’s expression was wild but sage. The other lovebird’s expression was that of one sitting in a cage: dull yes sharp and restless yet relaxed. How these qualities came to be—present in one lovebird at once—no one can ever know—except the other lovebird. The other lovebird had a wild look, as said, and crazed too, as is unsaid, yet as a saying once went:
Look on, ye warriors,
Not at the battle ahead,
But beyond that,
At your families instead,
And know this, then,
That if you see them again
You surely are not dead.
Poetic challenges as such are never clear, but it is clear what is meant: the lovebird from the wild looks crazed before battle. He knows not what may happen, but only what lies beyond. The lovebird from the cage does not recognize the battle—there is no struggle in cagedom, and cagedom is his life. Yet wisely he knows that something is up.
“What’s up?”
“You don’t know?”
“No, why should I? How could I know?”
“Ha! You really don’t know?”
“Nope.”
“Ha, ignorance is bliss.”
“And apathy is enlightenment.”
“You really don’t know?”
“Know? Why should I? How could I know?”
“It’s pointedly obvious.”
“Pointedly obvious?”
“It’s staring you right in the face!”
“Pointedly obvious?”
“It can’t get any pointier or more obvious.”
“Well then, I must know.”
“You don’t.”
“What are we going to do?”
“Oh, so you do know.”
“What are we going to do about this nest?”
“This nest? What do you mean?”
“This nest, it must be cleaned.”
“Cleaned? It is clean! How do you mean, clean?”
“I mean it must be cleaned.”
“Cleaned…”
“And fixed.”
“Fixed? Fixed! Oh, you’re right. Look at it!”
“There’s a twig missing here, and a twig missing there.”
“And some leaves and stems and that ribbon is loose.”
“What will we use to replace the ribbon?”
“I don’t know. I know!”
“What? What?”
“We’ll use cedar bark shavings. I’ll gnaw them myself.”
“Gnaw away. I’ll try to fix the ribbon in the meantime.”
“Do we even have time?”
“Time is always there—there’s just never enough.”
“Right, let’s get to work.”
“Pointedly obvious?”
“What?”
“How can something be pointedly obvious?”
“It can, it means it’s incredibly obvious.”
“But pointedly means obviously.”
“Right.”
“So it means obviously obvious.”
“Right.”
“Or pointedly pointed.”
“Right.”
“Or obviously pointed.”
“Right.”
“But if something is obviously pointed, or pointedly obvious, or obviously obvious, or pointedly pointed, then it is not necessarily obvious or pointed.”
“Explain.”
“Well obvious and pointed both mean apparent, right?”
“Right.”
“And obviously and pointedly both mean apparently, right?”
“Right.”
“So anything that is apparently some way might be some other way.”
“Right.”
“And something that is apparent is as it is.”
“Right.”
“So it’s almost a contradiction: apparently apparent, obviously obvious, pointedly pointed—they all mean something that is both as it is and not necessarily as it is.”
“Well, in that case, pointedly does not mean apparently.”
“No?”
“And obvious does not mean apparent.”
“Then what do they mean?”
“Pointedly means assuredly. Obvious means assured.”
“So something that is pointedly obvious is also assuredly assured.”
“Right.”
“No, that can’t be.”
“No?”
“No, that can’t be. Something that is assured is something that made certain. Assuredly means certainly, so assuredly assured means certainly made certain.”
“And why does that not work?”
“No, it does. I guess it does.”
“Yeah.”
“But it doesn’t seem to work.”
“No? Why not?”
“No. Because I figured out what pointedly means.”
“What does pointedly mean?”
“It means ‘coming to a conclusion.’”
“Does it?”
“Yes, I remember now.”
“Oh. What does obvious mean, then.”
“You were right about it meaning assured.”
“Yeah, certainly, assured, obvious.”
“Yeah, let’s get to work.”
“I’ll gnaw, you fix.”
“I’ve fixed it.”
“Fixed it? The ribbon?”
“Yes, but you gnaw.”
“But you fixed it.”
“Yes, I fixed it.”
“The ribbon is fixed, I don’t need to gnaw. The ribbon is fixed.”
“But we need the shavings.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know, but we need them.”
“You’re right, shavings are always useful.”
“Yes, so gnaw away, I’ll look for twigs.”
“Do we need twigs?”
“I think so, yes.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know. For the nest. The nest is in disrepair.”
“Oh, right, for the nest.”
The two lovebirds went at it—gnawing and biting and chewing and fixing the nest. The crazed look had slightly diminished in the wild lovebird, but the dull look is ever present in a lovebird from a cage. Cagedom, as said, does this to a bird; it breeds boredom from a cage—boredom that permeates the air outside of the cage, so that free birds feel caged when caged birds feel free. They are mutually exclusive yet completely inseparable qualities—cagedom and freedom—when a bird is ever caged. When a former caged bird is released, then he is free, but his freedom is subjective to the other birds, and they feel the cagedom. Not this particular wild lovebird, however.
“Why are we fixing this thing again?”
“Because it is in disrepair.”
“And why do we care?”
“Why shouldn’t we care?”
“It’s in disrepair because we do not care.”
“It is in disrepair, but that does not mean that we do not care.”
“I do not care.”
“I don’t care either.”
“Then why are we fixing this thing?”
“Because it is in disrepair.”
“But neither you nor I really care that it is in disrepair.”
“Others care.”
“Right, others do care.”
“But what do we care what others care?”
“We should care.”
“But others don’t care that we care.”
“Explain.”
“Others don’t care that we care that they care that this thing is in disrepair. Others only care that this thing is in disrepair.”
“What do we care what others care?”
“Exactly, what do we care what others care?”
“Right, exactly. Let’s do something else.”
“Yes, let’s. Eat. Food.”
“What food do we have?”
“Spray millet and cedar shavings.”
“Ha! You were right. Those cedar shavings will come into use.”
“So we can eat them?”
“Sure, why not?”
“I didn’t know that you could eat cedar shavings.”
“You can.”
“Can you?”
“Oh, I thought you were saying you can. Why did you make me shave them if you can’t?”
“I didn’t make you shave them so that we could eat them. I don’t think we can eat them. I made you shave them for something else.”
“What else is there that we can do with them?”
“We can replace the ribbon with them.”
“But I thought you fixed the ribbon.”
“I did.”
“Then?”
“It’s no good.”
“What’s no good?”
“The ribbon.”
“The ribbon?”
“Yes, the ribbon. I fixed it, but it came undone again.”
“Ah, so we will use the shavings.”
“But we’re going to eat.”
“No, we’re not going to eat. You just said yourself that you don’t know if you can eat the shavings.”
“Not the shavings. We won’t eat the shavings. But we will eat first.”
“Oh, right, yes, we should eat first.”
“Yes, let’s.”
“Oh, here comes Tweedy Dee.”
“Really?”
“Yes, here he comes, he’s flying quickly.”
“Hey, mates.”
“Yo.”
“Hey.”
“How are things.”
“Great, as always.”
“Well.”
“We were just about to eat.”
“Care to join?”
“Sure! That’d be great.”
“Great.”
“Well.”
“Well what?”
“Just well.”
“What were we talking about?”
“I don’t know, I just got here.”
“Not you. You, what were we talking about?”
“We were talking about ribbon.”
“Ribbon, right.”
“What about the ribbon?”
“The ribbon needs fixing.”
“Why does the ribbon need fixing?”
“We don’t know why, but it does.”
“Yes, that’s what we were talking about. We don’t know why we need to fix the ribbon. We only know why we fix the ribbon.”
“And why is that?”
“Because it needs to be fixed.”
“So you only know why you fix the ribbon, not why you need to fix the ribbon?”
“Right.”
“But if you don’t know why you need to fix the ribbon, then why do you fix the ribbon?”
“Because it needs to be fixed.”
“It’s complicated.”
“It’s.”
“It’s what?”
“It’s—it is.”
“It is it is?”
“No, no. I just find it funny that we shorten it is to it’s, but never use it’s alone as a sentence on its own.”
“That is funny.”
“That’s complicated.”
“That’s confusing.”
“What’s confusing?”
“That is confusing”
“That?”
“Yes, that, the word.”
“What word?”
“That?”
“You two are confusing.”
“That’s true.”
“It’s.”
The three lovebirds perched in silent sensory overload. The smell of the cedar, the taste of the millet, the ribbon, the twittering of other lovebirds, the feel of wind through the branches, and now the utter confusion—all six senses were overloaded at this point. There was naught to do but wait and wait.
They waited as the sun hit its highest extreme, sending its warmth down to the animals while the shadows disappeared. Except in the trees—no warmth reaches the trees since shadows never disappear in the trees. The trees did not gently sway in the wind, though the wind was quite gentle. Cedar trees are stiff and their branches are stout. They do not sway, but merely give way a bit. Their smell, that cedar smell, permeated the air, yet one does not smell it, that is, one does not take it in, since it is overwhelming in a cedar grove. The trees, the branches, the loose bits of bark gave way little in the breeze, and the entire forest looked as if it was vibrating.
This the three lovebirds noticed at once.
“The trees are vibrating.”
“Yeah, they are.”
“Isn’t it beautiful?”
“Yeah, it is.”
“The trees are vibrating, it must be windy.”
“I don’t feel a wind.”
“The trees are windbreakers.”
“The trees creak. Listen.”
“I don’t hear it; I have bad hearing.”
“Then feel it. The trees are creaking—feel the vibrations.”
“I feel it. I don’t like it. It makes me feel as if the tree is going to snap.”
“The tree isn’t going to snap. It would take gale-force winds to decimate this old growth forest.”
“We’re not in an old growth tree.”
“But all the trees around us are our tree-growth or older. Don’t worry so much.”
“I always worry. I have to worry.”
“Bah.”
“Bah.”
“Thanks, guys. You really help a lot.”
“We do what we can.”
“We can’t do much.”
“No, you’re right. You can’t.”
“It’s like what we were saying about pointedly obvious things.”
“But that conversation was never resolved.”
“Exactly, that conversation was never resolved. And neither will this one be resolved.”
“Thanks, you really know how to make a bird feel better about himself.”
“Well, you have to look at it logically.”
“You and your logic. Logic doesn’t take emotions into account.”
“Your logic doesn’t take emotions into account. My logic does, since it’s illogical to not take things into account that affect everything else that is taken into account.”
“Logic has ruined us all.”
“Nah, logic has saved us.”
“But….”
“Yeah, yeah. You’re going to quote that author you’ve been listening to. Don’t”
“Reading, not listening to.”
“Listen.”
“What?”
“Ruby’s back.”
“Oh.”
“Oh?”
“There she is. She looks angry.”
“Yeah.”
“Well?”
“Well, what?”
“There she goes.”
“Ergo, I go. Cheers, mates.”
“Catch.”
“No, bye.”
The two original lovebirds were left to feel out their emotions logically.
“I told you it was pointedly obvious.”
“You call that pointedly obvious?”
“The ribbon needs fixing.”
“I told you.”
“If we don’t fix it, the jaanes will be angry.”
“Yeah, because they’ll come home to a nest blown away by the wind.”
“It’s resolved, then. We’ll fix it.”
“It’s never resolved, but we’ll fix it anyway.”
“I feel caged.”
“I do that to birds.”
“Not by you, by the jaanes.”
“My jaan makes me feel better.”
“You’re right, mine does too.”
“Good.”
“Well."