Los Pajaros

My Papa has had a bunch of weird, surreal, real experiences with birds at significant moments in his life. Going with my theme of recreating moments never actually captured for people on their birthday cards, I made this drawing.

It's a story Papa told me about when he was in his 20s and working at my Grandma's store in Toronto. He found a key to a door in the backyard of the store that he was previously unable to open. He found an overgrown area with really tall grass so he cleared out a space to do Tai Chi and unwind on his breaks back in the days he first started getting into Tai Chi and meditation. It got him through some tough times hating retail. One day he decided to do 200 donyus (a Tai Chi move) in a row. A very difficult feat, it's hard to even do 50. Just as he finished the 200th donyu, there was a loud noise and then smack on the ground between his feet, landed a white pigeon. It wasn't going anywhere so Papa picked it up and held it in his arms for a long time, it looked him in the eye, until he finally had to put it up on the wall because he had to go to work. Years later when he was deciding to close the store, more weird bird stuff happened, we're talking dead birds this time. Papa realized the first bird was trying to tell him to get out of doing retail but he didn't know how to read the sign at the time. True story.

This was interesting for me to learn less than a year ago since I have quite an obsession with birds especially in my art and since I've definitely been paying more attention to them (it helps that I live on a park with a lake and tons of bird species) and using them even more.