I’m
close—very close. After all the mistakes and misapprehensions, after
all the doubts and all the derision from the skeptics and cynics among
my colleagues, now, finally, I know, I’m certain, I’m within
a fingernail’s grasp of it: the key that will unlock the code of
their communications. The language of the birds.
No,
I’m not talking about the hackneyed excuses for meaning espoused
by those so-called philosophers—the blind and blinkered withered
souls that would reduce these intricate articulations to strictly instinctual
demands. Territorial cries? Mating calls? Do you think I’ve been
tracking these sounds for so long to confirm something so inconsequential?
On
the contrary. For if we can understand how the calls inter-relate, how
they cross-reference from species to species, if we can uncover the deeply
embedded structures underlying the language of birds, we can begin to
unravel the threads of a mystery revealing insights—not just about
these avian friends of ours—but about every creature that creeps,
slithers, crawls, flies and walks . . . on this throbbing ball of mud
we call the earth.
Oh there’s meaning in their songs all right. And if my readings are correct, the veneer of our human understanding is about to be peeled away to reveal a domain of wisdom more refined than all the computer-stored information of the last twenty-five centuries.