Storytelling Excellence Part 2

Last week we began to take a look at Bill Harley's questions for storytellers. Today we'll look at his next few questions storytellers should ask themselves as they work on their craft; please take a look at the original article, it's a valuable piece. This closer examination may be of use for slammers preparing for the Big Mouth Off: I hope it will be useful for everyone who practices the fine art of oral storytelling. Regardless of whether you're an experienced teller or a novice, there are points here to consider. I certainly found myself cringing here and there as I wrote this piece.

Let's tackle the next few topics one-by-one, Harley's comments in italics.

Language

Does the storyteller have command of the language used? Does the storyteller have an adequate vocabulary, and use the right word? Is the style of language consistent throughout the piece? Is it authentic – especially if it represents some culture other than the performer’s own? If it is a caricature of a culture, is there an understanding of what that means? In the context of the choice of language used, is the grammar and vocabulary consistent and authentic? Is there a consciousness of it being an oral language, rather than oral presentation of written language? Is there breath in the words, or do they sound as if they are coming from the page? (c) 2010 Bill Harley

• Don't use an accent or modified speech pattern (street language, for example) unless you can do so authentically and consistently. If done poorly few things are more distracting to an audience or insulting to the culture you're trying to evoke.
• If you memorize your stories make sure the rhythm of the language sounds spoken, not read.
• Choose your words wisely - and watch out for ums, uhs, ands, he said/she said.

Voice and physical instrument


Does the storyteller have command of his/her vocal instrument? Is s/he understandable? Does the vocal instrument serve the story, or does it attract attention to itself? Is the voice flexible in its presentation of different aspects of the piece, varying in timbre, pace, and dynamics?
Does the physical movement of the storyteller serve the story? Is the storyteller conscious of how the use of his/her body is serving the story? Is the performer in control of his/her physical instrument, using his/her body to serve the presentation, or does the movement distract from the story?  (c) 2010 Bill Harley

• Please try not to mumble, speak in a monotone, yell constantly, etc. Remember, as a storyteller your voice is your instrument. How you use your voice matters. Try recording yourself in practice and make modifications based on what you hear - would you want to listen to you? And listen to recordings of other tellers you admire, think about how they use their voices.
• Use your body appropriately. Videotape yourself and determine what kind of body language you want to use; too much inappropriate movement can be distracting as can no movement.

Performance skills

Are all skills integrated into the story? (e.g. – music, movement, juggling) Are the skills used developed enough so that they are not hindrances? Are skills and technique transparent so that the story is served, rather than the demonstration of technique? Does the storyteller use different modes of presentation in the performance? Is there a spectrum, or vocabulary, of content and presentation? If the storyteller has committed to characterization in a piece, are the characterizations consistent throughout? (c) 2010 Bill Harley

• If you choose to integrate other skills into your performance please make sure that they equal your storytelling chops. Struggling for chords or singing off key may distract your audience. 
• The underlying work should be extensive (practice) and invisible. 

So what does this all come down to? Practice your craft. Don't be afraid to make artistic choices that will better serve your story and audience, even if it means editing out bits you might love - if it's not in service to the story and audience then it doesn't belong. Be honest with yourself about your skills and abilities; stretch, but don't do things that will knock the audience out of the story trance because they exceed your reach.

This weekend I'll finish up Harley's list with Relationship with Audience, Show Structure and Aesthetic. I'd love to hear what you think about today's post.

Have fun, practice those stories and I look forward to seeing you at the Big Mouth Off on April 20 at the Boston Public Library!

(c) 2010 Laura Packer

Singular

I spend last weekend unplugged, alone with very limited access to the internet and email. It was wonderful and restoring.

We are so connected that it's easy to forget how lovely it can be to not think about everything at once. I know I often forget that really, I don't need to check email every 30 minutes. That the world will not end if I don't know what CNN has to say. That Twitter, as much as I love it, will get along just fine without me.

For the last few days I did only one thing at a time. I was a singular entity.

If I was eating, I ate. I felt the textures of my food and took the time to taste each bite. I didn't have a book open or the tv on while I consumed my meal thoughtlessly.

When I wrote I was thinking only about the structure of each sentence, the way the paragraphs connected. There was no music, no wondering when I would get to the dishes. I was only mind and fingers on keys.

When I walked felt my muscles pull and lungs expand. I was in the world, of the world.

I was singular, not struggling to do multiple things at once. How lovely.

It's easy to forget that we evolved to do one thing at a time most of the time. Red Riding Hood got into trouble when she did too much at once. But Jack saved his family by doing one thing at a time.

Be Jack. Be a trickster who knows when hide, knows when to run, knows when to chop. And does each thing for itself, very well.


(c)2010 Laura S. Packer

Curious Lists

I love lists. I've written about this before, both how lists can help you understand yourself and figure things out and how lists can function in other ways, including as stories.

Lists can also help spark runs of creativity and break blocks. I'm having a great time playing with Curious Lists: A Creative Journal for List-Lovers and I bet you would too. It includes all kinds of prompts for lists, many of which you can interpret as either quite mundane or as permission for flights of fancy. It's broken into general topics and then specific lists.

Topics include:

• Lists for Tuesdays
• Lists for Bedtime
• Lists for Friends to Help With

and specifics within topics include:

• Gourds better for carving
• Elaborate schemes for avoiding a call
• Walkable cities
• Rattling objects

See what I mean? You can be pretty straightforward or go way out on a limb with these. I'm finding it quite inspirational and an awful lot of fun, so from time-to-time I'll post one of my lists here. I'd love to see your additions to my lists.


Nomadic Cultures (c) Curious Lists
An anthropological whimsy, by Miss Laura S. Packer, observed in her travels and over many pancake breakfasts.

The wandering shoes

• Usually bi-color
• Rarely in pairs, tribes of lefts or rights
• Found under beds, gone the next morning
• Coming of age rituals involve hunting dustbunnies

The lost hipster tribes

• Known for their cool silence and occasional witty sayings
• Artifacts include coffee cup sleeves, shed technological items, beard trimmings
• Sightings said to presage the opening of another Starbucks

Landbound fisherfolk

• Travel in landcruisers
• Native costume includes slightly too tight t-shirts from obscure tourist resorts
• Extensive mythology around lost objects nearly found
• Mating rituals include fire dances
• Mythology passed on around firepits, during ritual sacrifice of mallows found only in marshes

Hordes of traveling salesmen

• A questing horde, driven by religious fervor for “Deal”
• Wander from sales meeting to sales meeting
• Regarded w/ great fear by hospitality industry
• Known to be reckless and destructive in search of the elusive “Deal”
• Should one of the tribe rise above the rest in their quest they are sacrificed to “mammon-ment”

(c)2010 Laura S. Packer

Storytelling excellence

Last month at Sharing the Fire: Northeast Storytelling Conference Bill Harley presented a keynote that raised worthwhile questions about storytelling as an artform. He challenged the storytelling community and storytellers as artists to strive to be better, to not settle for the label of folk art but to do the necessary work to raise storytelling to the same level as theater, dance and other fine arts. This rings resonant with my work as a producer and performer. I believe that yes, we are all storytellers, because that it is part human nature to tell stories. But as performing artists we have a responsibility to always improve our art, to work on the craft, to not just assume that the label “storyteller” makes it okay to be sloppy.

Bill Harley laid out several questions we can ask ourselves to help us become better artists. If we take ourselves and our work more seriously the world will too. In the next few weeks I’d like to look at some of these issues in detail with the hopes that it will help all storytellers of every stripe, from slammer to epic performer.

Harley has the following checklist for every performer to consider as they develop a piece (to read it in detail click here. And you should):

• Narrative Form
• 
Language

• Voice and Physical Instrument
• 
Performance Skills

• Relationship with the Audience

• Show Structure

• Aesthetic

Let’s start with Narrative Form. Harley suggests every performer ask themselves the following about narrative form:

Is the structure of the piece strong – does it show an understanding of narrative structure, even if only to make it possible to experiment with that structure? Is the structure flabby – are there parts that do not belong? Is there an awareness of narrative tension? Does the piece show an understanding of character’s place in the narrative? Is there resonance in the piece, with elements introduced early bearing fruit later on? Is there an understanding of an underlying subtext in the story? Is it clear that the storyteller knows what the story is about? Has s/he made choices about what material to present to best serve the heart of the story? Is there a dramatic build that reaches some form of climax when a truth is revealed? Is this revelation presented in a way that delights or enlightens or moves the audience?  ©2009 Bill Harley

Massmouth slam judges are asked to rank three criteria, the first being narrative form. Does the story have a beginning, middle and an end? Does the story make sense? It makes sense that this is a point of judgment because in any narrative artform we long for coherence. We want motion and closure. Checkov said, "One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it." The same applies to storytelling. Every element needs to be there for a reason. If you’ve practiced your piece you have a chance to cut out the narrative fat, the unnecessary elements, no matter how beloved they may be.

Storytellers have an additional burden that most narrative artists don’t have. They work in real-time with a live audience. If you don’t know what the story’s about or you lose your train of thought because you are so busy trying to tie up loose ends, the audience knows. You don’t get to rewrite, try a scene again or rewind the DVD. You must know your story, why you’re telling it and why each part is there.

Slam storytelling provides different challenges than longer form. You have very little time to create a coherent narrative, so your story must be direct. You need to know what you’re saying and why. This may be part of why slams are so effective for newer tellers – they aren’t tied up in trying to get all the little nuances in, they just want to tell the story. The short time limit means you don’t have time to worry about narrative fat.

Long form storytelling offers both more and less freedom than slam stories. While you have more time to spin out your narrative, more opportunity to weave interesting characters and explore the interstices of the story, you also have more opportunities for loose ends, more opportunity to get lost in your own love of a particular detail. You do have more time to build tension and have a satisfying ending but more room for failure. It takes work to build a successful long story. These stories in particular can fool the artist into thinking they know their own meaning. How often have you worked on a piece (anything – story, writing, art, etc) then come back to it years later to find meaning hidden that you never realized was there? This is a particular risk with long, told stories. If you find unexpected meaning in the middle of a performance, you risk violating the audience’s relationship with the story if your performance falters as you have your revelation. 

And that’s what it comes down to. Know your story. Know what matters in your story and what doesn’t matter. Tell what matters. Discard the rest. Leave your audience the white space to do the heavy lifting and trust them.

Next time I’ll look at Language and Voice and Physical Instrument. I'd love to hear your thoughts about this post!

(c)2010 Laura S. Packer

Rereading and the romance of words

I love to read, as I'm sure many of you do. I read many different formats, including blogs, magazines and books. Each has their own merits, but oh, I love books. While I have and use an e-reader, it's the weight of a book, the sound of the paper turning and the layout of the words on a page that give me secret shivers.

I don't have enough time to read. My life seems to be too full of the mundane details (gottagetreadyanddrivetowork, trafficisbad, ninehourslaterbravethecommutehome, gotothegym, what'sfordinner, thedisheswon'tdothemselves, finallyachancetoread and barelyachapterbeforeI....fall...asleep - sound familiar?) to consume books the way I used to. I miss it.

When I do have time to settle into a book I sometimes find myself choosing an old friend over something that might challenge me in new ways. Either option is good and valid, but when life is just too much I often choose comfort. The embrace of a beloved book is at least healthier than a half-pound of chocolate.

That's what I'm reading now, a desert island book, one I would take with me if I knew I could never read anything else every again. I'm sure you have a few books like that; I'd love to know what they are, so leave a comment.

As I'm reading this novel among novels I'm considering what is it that brings be back to this one volume. I've read it so many times that the cover has fallen off, the pages are stained with tea and the residue of wet fingertips from many baths. It's something about the simultaneous complexity and simplicity of the story and the beauty of the writing.

The word "romance" has been limited in modern literature to stories dealing only with romantic sexual love, a fairly modern notion. Generally "romance" is taken to mean genre romance novels. There's nothing wrong with these, but it is a limitation on a useful word. (Stay with me here, I'm getting to the book in a moment.) Romantic sexual love is, of course, tremendously important and made moreso in modern Western society - much of our art and popular culture extolls the intensity of romantic love. I'm not complaining about this, but I think it means we sometimes neglect the other meanings of romance - that sense of romanticizing, the larger-than-life story.

My warm blanket, cup of tea, old friend novel, Possession by A.S. Byatt, encompasses both. Set in two times, in the mire of academia and the ocean of poetry, two scholars researching two poets uncover a hidden love affair and have one of their own. Byatt captures many distinct written voices - the overarching narrator, the two letter writers, their distinct poetic voices as well as incidental other voices that drift in and out. It's not a novel to be consumed quickly; I smell libraries and the ocean when I read it, I chew it in small chunks and luxuriate in the language.

Because that's what this book is: While it contains a multitude of love stories, the real romance here is language, how it pulls and compels, how we create and destroy worlds with words. I think that's why it's one of my top desert island books. Every time I read it I find something new. A new turn of phrase. A new observation on the power of a poem. This book makes me want to write and I can think of no higher praise.

When it comes down to it, I'm in love with words. Spoken or written, the well turned phrase makes my toes curl. In rereading an old friend it is truly an old romance, with the comfort and passion of a great love. I am inspired, surprised, delighted and yet unalarmed.

(c)2010 Laura S. Packer

Friday Flash: It has the subtle nuance of...

Please note: This isn't so much a piece of fiction as a set of possibilities. Thanks to Kevin Brooks for the conversation that sparked this piece of writing.

*  *  *

If wine descriptions were more like life

1. This wine clearly has long lasting legs, surprising in something this cheap. I'm getting something floral and rather overpowering, kind of like the perfume you came home reeking of last week. It doesn't last long, but then again neither do you, and it's quickly leaving a rather sticky aftertaste with overtones of cheap vodka and nervous sweat.
   
   
2. It has the subtle nuances of graveyard dirt with just a touch of the bitterness you experience when you discover you were written out of the will. A lingering dryness on the palate to remind you of just how bad a child you really were and  how lonely you will be when you get old.
   
   
3. Indescribable, like the memory of your favorite summer of childhood, this wine has a nose heavy on cotton candy and grass stains. Tasting rather like your first furtive high school gulp of  Boone's Strawberry Hill, it slides past your tongue and leaves a lingering sense of something wonderful on the palate with a repressed hint of something else better left forgotten.
   
   
4. I'm sorry, but I drank the whole bottle, so it's a little hard to pick out the subtle details on this one. Let's just say it goes down easy. Really easy. This wine slides down your throat like a $500 whore who, just when you're about done, hits you on the head and takes all your money. You wake up with a headache like you wouldn't believe and are horrified to realize you lost all your cash on something you can't even remember.
   
   
5. If you were ever lucky enough to taste this wine, you would know that it has the mouth feel of silk with overtones of the scent of sunlight on smooth skin and a hint of smoky gazes at midnight. If you ever had the opportunity to hold the glass up the light, you would see that it caresses the inside of the goblet like a haze of excess, each molecule of wine clinging to the surface as though the hard and soft are one living thing. If you were some one else you would know that the nose of this wine, and this wine alone, seeps into every pore like a humid night redolent with tropical flowers and the coming storms. But you never will be that lucky, will you. 

(c)2010 Laura S. Packer

Fortune cookies and fate

I recently finished reading The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food a delightful cross between memoir and food writing that explores the history of Chinese food in America, or more accurately explores Chinese-American food. It was a lot fun, I urge you to read it for yourself. 

As you may know, I love Chinese food. I also love fortune cookies. I've been saving fortunes for years and have some really good ones:

One year for my birthday I went with friends to a restaurant in Chinatown. My fortune was, "You bring happiness to everyone you meet," while my best friend's fortune read, "Happiness is sitting next to you." She was on my right. No kidding.

I've been thinking lately about the signs we look for in everyday life, how those portents can be woven into story and how the yearning for oracles can change the way we see the world. In this vein I conducted an experiment: I spent a day deliberately looking for omens.

• I saw no fewer than seven green VW Beetles
• I overheard or read at least four references to death by heart attack
• and another three to death by wild animal attack
• I made seven consecutive green lights
• and then hit seven consecutive red lights (I was trying not to modify my driving, but who knows what my body was doing in service to this experiment)
• At storytelling most of the stories were about funerals
• Three of the phone numbers I called had the same four numbers
• My shoelace broke.

So what does this mean? I'm about to be hit by a green VW Beetle by a driver having a heart attack? Or I'll be attacked by a swarm of green beetles? I should have played the lottery with those four numbers? Truthfully, I think it has more to do with the human ability to find patterns than anything else; I don't recommend playing this game, it's enough to make you paranoid and twitchy as you see more and more coincidence.

Order out from your favorite Chinese takeout instead. When you get to the fortune cookie, close your eyes, crack it open and enjoy the sweetness on your tongue as you contemplate small wisdom on a slip of paper. After all,

P.S. Don't forget about my follower bribe, extended for a few more days!

(c)2010 Laura S. Packer

Storytelling vs. lying

(This was first written for the massmouth blog, butI like it enough that I wanted to share it here too.)

The theme of last night's massmouth slam was "Love and Lies," a juicy topic for any storyteller. Ten tellers gave it their best shot so the room was full of succulent love stories and juicy fictions. It got me thinking about the balance of truth and lie in storytelling. This is something I think about a lot, it's almost the meta-theme of my personal blog.

The word "storytelling" can sometimes have the taint of "lie" about it. Parents might ask children, Are you telling stories? When what they mean is Are you lying? Performance storytelling walks a very fine line between truth and lie. For a story to work it much be real, it has to have internal integrity, the teller has to believe it, even if it's entirely fiction. This doesn't mean it's a lie. Even a liars' contest has stories full of truth, even if they are encased in fanciful fiction. Sure, those stories might be made up, might be untruths, but if the stories are told convincingly they are told as if they are true. They are believable stories. The storytelling is well crafted, well performed and not done with the intent to harm. Lies can be harmful and cause separation - storytelling is not harmful and brings people together.

Part of what makes storytelling so powerful is that the audience can witness and participate in the creation of fictional truth. The teller weaves their tale and, no matter how fanciful, if they believe their story the audience is likely to come along for the ride. The implicit contract between teller and listener is that for the duration of the story we all agree on this reality, that what you're saying is true, even if it didn't really happen. The audience can imagine it however they like, the teller can revel in the momentary truth, and then it's done. Because storytelling is such a temporal art form outrageous fictions can become true, can be utterly believable for the span of the telling, and the dissipate into the realm of mermaids and giant blue oxen. Stories use fiction to convey truth.

This means, of course, that storytelling can be pretty dangerous and can be used for evil purposes, but that's different blog post. For now, I want to suggest that storytelling does not equal lying, because stories in the moment of telling are true. The mutually created, consensual reality that exists between listener and teller is more powerful than a lie. Besides, who's to say mermaids and giant blue oxen don't exist anyway?

(c)2010 Laura S. Packer

Stuff and nonsense

I've written before about domestic paleontology, my friend's mom's house, packed to the gills with the results of a life of hoarding. The image here, by the way, isn't from her home (I wanted to protect her privacy), but it is representational of what it was like when we started.

We're almost done. After many trips, countless bags of trash (let's see, 8 years x maybe 6 trips a year x an average 25 bags of trash a trip = far too many. And that doesn't include bags to goodwill, stuff hauled to the dump, etc), stuff sold on eBay, given away to worthy organizations, put into storage, offered to family and friends - the house is livable. It's a kind of nice place.

It's a little surreal.

We're not done yet. There are still corners of the basement we haven't explored, we keep finding treasures and nightmares, but now it seems like a place you could build a life in. For the most part, it's a home again. We've reconstructed it by emptying it, building it by creating space. In the course of doing so we've discovered just how much of the structure was held up by detritus; there was a chest we were sitting on while cleaning up in one room. When we looked inside we found it was full of plastic bags, so we emptied it out, thinking someone could use the chest once it was clean. When we sat on it again, it collapsed. The bags were the only thing giving it structural support. The whole house seems kind of like that, as though it's lost its identity without its densely packed innards.

What this has me thinking about is the way the stuff in our lives defines, confines and enshrines us (yeah, I worked for that phrase).

My friend's mom defined herself by her stuff, by all of the potential value and use she saw in what I saw as trash and clutter. We all do this. I'm sure you've met someone whose sense of self and value is wrapped up in their possessions. Their car. Their computer. Their clothing. Their stereo. Something. I know I love my books, seeing them line the walls of our library room makes me smile.  Never mind that I haven't read most of them in years and, if I have to admit it, there are some I've not gotten around to yet. The stuff in my home is certainly a reflection of how I want to present myself to the world and of what I find comforting, but I don't think I define myself as a library (though that could be an interesting topic for another post).

My friend's mom certainly has been confined by her stuff. She could barely move around her home and no one else could move with any ease. She was also tethered to it all; moving away was incredibly painful and even now, years later, she asks how how the house is, how her stuff is, have we thrown away everything she loved. By placing so much value on the stuff that defines us, it limits us metaphorically as well as physically. We become our car, our computer, our clothing, our stereo, our books. It becomes hard to see beyond the limits of that self-definition. But the stuff can't appreciate a friend's kind gesture, a sunset, a concert. We can.

And in the midst of my friend's mom's stuff we keep finding sacred corners, the clearly honored items or those items that honored her. Old letters. Photos of people and especially things she loved. This whole house became a shrine to a life and to a way of living based on the phrase, "Don't throw that out, that's still good!" The stuff helped build a barrier between the family and the neighborhood, the rest of the world. The stuff kept her safe. Frankly, there were times when I worried that the sheer weight of the stuff in her home would literally enshrine her, as it did the Collyer brothers, but fortunately that never happened, they were an extreme case. We all hoard the relics of our pasts, whether in our memory or in our stuff. In my own home I have photographs and carefully sequestered piles of old diaries. The shrines to my past.

Sometimes I play the "what if there was a fire?" game. You know the one - what is the one thing you would grab before you saved yourself from your burning home. The answer has changed over the years. When I was little it was my teddy bear, then my journals, now it's my computer (which seems awfully antiseptic, but years of writing and photos live in there). This tells me a lot about how I define myself and what of my stuff really matters.

I know a woman who lost everything in a fire and she told me once that, while it was the worst thing that ever happened to her it was also the best. She cares less about stuff now. They no longer define her. She feels free.

When I get home from this trip I will, as I always do, look at my accumulated stuff through clearer eyes. I will sort and discard until I again forget that this stuff isn't just a way of declaring my identity, it's a chain. I'm left with the ongoing question of how to find the balance.

(c)2010 Laura S. Packer

Friday fiction: Migration

 Every day Alex brought the same three things to work: his lunch (tuna on rye, an apple, a store-bought cookie smelling of childhood) a book and a plastic sandwich bag full of breadcrumbs he would feed to the birds on his lunchbreak. His co-workers didn’t notice his routine enough to even snicker. He was all but invisible in his grey coat and black hat. If they had noticed him and whispered behind their hands he would have ignored them.

It was only when things changed that they realized he had always been there.

On that particular Thursday, Alex arrived at the usual time, parked in the usual place, hung up his coat on the wooden hanger he had long ago brought from home. He tucked his lunch, book and bag of crumbs into his lower desk drawer as he always did. He didn’t notice that he had been followed by birds. He simply got to work.

But the birds knew something was different. At first a few hundred birds perched in the manicured trees outside. Soon the bare branches were sagging under the weight of sparrows and goldfinches. Alex kept working while his coworkers clustered around the windows. The cheeps and trills could be heard through the sealed glass while the employees gossiped back.

No one knew what to make of it. At first it was exciting, an anomaly in a day that was otherwise like any other, but soon someone laughingly said, “Hey, it’s kind of like that movie ‘The Birds.’ What do you think will happen when we go out?” and immediately everyone felt small and vulnerable.

They began to discuss their options. Should they call the fire department? The police? The SPCA? Maybe someone should go out and see what happened, sacrifice one for the good of the many. Polly, from accounting, noticed the birds were mostly on the south side of the building. Swirling gales of birds would wheel past one window in particular seeming to make patterns she couldn’t read.

Alex pretended not to notice. He turned his monitor away from the window but kept seeing the flicker of wings in the screen. He closed his eyes and typed without meaning. When the phone trilled, he jumped

Polly’s voice was shrill, Polly who had once asked him what he was reading and didn’t laugh when he spilled his breadcrumbs, so startled to be addressed by someone else. Polly, asking if he knew what was going on, why did the birds want his attention, what was happening?

His sigh came from the soles of his feet, a warm draft that fluttered his inbox.

“I guess they think it’s time.”

“What do you mean, time?”

“Come on, I’ll show you.”

They met by the south side exit. She hung back, afraid to step into the whirling chaos. “Don’t worry, they won’t hurt you. They only want me to go with them.”

It was a maelstrom of starlings and crows, sparrows and pigeons. Polly flinched as birds rushed overhead and around but Alex walked out fearlessly.

A tornado of birds wrapped itself around him, a density of feathers and beaks converging until Polly could barely see him reach into his pocket and pull out a baggie of crumbs. Shoes flew out of the rushing cloud, then an hand clutching a jacket and glasses. “Hold these for me, would you?”

She took them just as he let them fall, then she saw breadcrumbs firework high above the storm of birds. They called and swooped everywhere, picking crumbs from the breezes made by their own wings. The force of their flight increased, Polly was pushed back to stand against the building and Alex’s outstretched arms seemed to grow brighter and broader. She crouched, clutching his jacket to her as the birds flew wildly, pulling at her hair with every wingbeat. She put her hands over her head until the air around her began to subside and light seeped through her fingers. She looked.

The birds were gone, V's high in the sky pointing south. All that was left of Alex were his wingtip shoes, one fallen on its side. When her co-workers asked, she said, “I think he migrated.”

When he didn’t return to work the next day or the following week, Polly insisted they put out a birder feeder and bath. “You never know,” she commented, “He might get hungry and stop by someday.”

(c)2010 Laura S. Packer