It Was a Sign

A bird flew overhead and shit on a windshield.

“How lucky!” said the woman driving. Everyone knew being crapped on by a bird was a divinely lucky sign!

Not just a bodily function of a flying descendant of dinosaurs.

On the sidewalk, a man looked up and saw the same yellow tanager. They were so uncommon! Here at the beach, adjacent to thousands of acres of reserves, it was a bird he hardly ever expected to see among all the seagulls, who were actually terns, and the blackbirds and crows, who were actually grackles and cowbirds. Given up honestly, he wasn’t a dedicated bird watcher. He was a bereaved man who needed something.

And this bird was yellow! His dad’s favorite color and favorite bird. Therefore, this was special. And he hadn’t merely noticed it in the Taco Bell parking lot—he had seen it three times.

AND it was his dad’s favorite.

He knew his father’s spirit was close. He’d smelled cigar smoke earlier. And coffee.

How much more did he really need? Earlier that day, the photo of his dad had fallen off the wall!

“I love you, Dad,” he whispered to the air, his heart full of love and comfort.

Everyone knew your loved ones visited you after they died.

A woman outside the coffee shop saw the yellow tanager land on a fence.

She had just asked the universe whether she should leave her husband. She felt she was “on the fence” about their marriage. She had written that in her journal.

And now, there it was. Her sign.

An actual bird that landed on an actual fence. What were the chances!

The bird took off.

There it was. A bird. Free. She should leave her husband!

Inside the coffee shop, another woman watched it perch high in a tall pine.

She had been wondering whether to stay with her family. Her husband was awful to her. Her teen sons had picked up mimicking his disrespect. The bird was near a nest.

There it was. A bird. Choosing her nest.

It was not the bird’s nest. It was just a nest. A squirrel’s nest, to be precise, not that the woman processed that.

She had seen what she wanted to see. A reason to stay was less scary than getting a job and moving out or asserting herself and confronting the disrespect.

Later, a devout man saw the bird picking insects from a tree and thanked God for the reminder that He provided for all His creatures. They all had enough. He didn’t need to worry. God would provide.

Another man saw it dive-bombing a cat and alerting the other birds to its presence. This was a lesson from the universe about defending what was yours. Natural order.

A witch recognized it as a sacred messenger.

A life coach recognized it as content.

Brittany filmed it through the window.

WHEN YOU FINALLY TRUST YOUR WINGS. #windbeneathyourwings #useyourwings #BriteLyfeStyle4ver

The bird should have been exhausted!

By afternoon, it had confirmed a divorce, kept a family together, delivered a dead father’s affection, demonstrated divine providence, justified protecting private property, and announced a major energetic shift.

It had also eaten several insects. And almost one cigarette butt. Thankfully, he wasn’t a stupid bird and had spit it out.

That evening, everyone went online.

The woman considering divorce watched videos about the signs it was time to leave.

The woman considering staying watched videos about the signs it was time to stay.

The man watched a reel about birds visiting from heaven.

The next morning, YouTube and Fakebook had more messages from his father.

“Dad, I miss you,” he whispered.

He watched another.

Before Dad could speak, he had to watch five seconds about gutter protection.

Soon, each person was receiving ads for screen-printed T-shirts. From local retailers, of course. Certainly not anonymous storefronts with interchangeable names and a mysterious assortment of warehouse addresses.

The woman ordered a shirt that said TRUST YOUR INTUITION.

She checked the reviews first.

Brittany especially knew it was important to attune to your authentic self so you could be marketed to accurately. And you increased your marketing reach by being identifiable.

She loaded her cart with more customized lifestyle gear and added links to her website shop, where she sold customizable lifestyle gear printed on demand.

These were called passive income streams. She’d watched a reel about them.

It was SO important to become the identity you were selling.

Self-righteous. Rebellious. Witchy. Faithful. Western. Patriotic. Athletic. Spiritual.

The worst thing you could do was fail to be #identifiable or #categorized.

You could be anything you wanted, as long as it was something that could be cleanly identified.

And—this was GENIUS—refusing labels had a category!

SHOP THE UNDEFINED.

This was capitalism. It was about maximizing your shadows and your masks.

Your fear needed a subscription. Your anger needed a shirt. Your loneliness needed a community with three membership tiers.

Even the parts of yourself you hadn’t understood yet were an emerging market.

BECOME WHO YOU REALLY ARE.

Shipping calculated at checkout.

No one believed they were under the influence.

And if they feared they were, they could join a church, a cult, a yoga group, a motorcycle club.

After a while, they would watch several videos and reels confirming that OTHER people were the sheep.

THEY WERE THE INDEPENDENT THINKERS!

Ha ha ha!

It was always others. Never them. What a bunch of dummies.

Of course, they would never be duped. They were modern and media literate. Or they were deeply grounded and traditional. Or they were spiritually and attuned to ancient energies.

But the machinery had been put in place long before they were born.

They were just a new crop. Naive. Completely unaware of how sophisticated and enmeshed it all had become.

It had reached their predecessors through print, radio, and television. It had studied their desires, fears, aspirations, and need to belong.

The internet added measurable responses. Social media blended promotion with personal relationships. Now the machinery could use what people watched to help choose what they would see next.

But wait! There’s more!

It could even make recommendations to influence interests and behavior.

It was genius!

And everyone thought they were doing it themselves.

They were all self-aware, of course. So no way were they being influenced and programmed! They weren’t their parents or grandparents! They were modern. Sophisticated. Evolved.

But every previous modern generation had inherited the machinery too.

Recognizing an obvious advertisement didn’t mean recognizing every way they were being marketed to.

So when they saw a bird, it confirmed a story they had already been primed to recognize. The meaning felt personal. The reinforcement arrived afterward: another video, another message, another invitation to become who they really were.

Until they walked around wearing a T-shirt that meant everything to them.

And nothing to the universe.

From cradle to grave.

The man’s father was dead, but he was still helping sell things. Maybe even another cup of coffee in hopes of seeing another yellow tanager. Maybe a yellow tanager coffee cup to keep dear old departed dad close. It’s not that creepy of course, is it?

The bird, completely not creepy in ordinary, meaningless real life, meanwhile, belonged to no one but had spent the day selling things without a contract.

Now it flew toward a tree reflected in a glass window.

And not realizing he had been turned into a reel, a t-shirt, a coffee mug, and earrings, it struck the glass and dropped unconscious onto the patio.

A cat who’d been watching intently from the garden below stopped chattering and huffed.

“Damn,” thought the cat. “What bad luck. It’s not nearly as interesting anymore.”

He went home to eat Tacky Cat, topped with a little quail egg and drizzled with sauce, served in a pedestal bowl.

Brittany believed animals were our greatest teachers.

“Wait,” she told the cat.

She moved the bowl toward the window.

“Wait.”

The quail egg had slipped beneath the pâté. She retrieved it with tweezers.

“Wait.”

She wanted people to see how naturally she cared for him.

MY CAT IS MY FURBABY 4EVER! #catsrule #allhailfurbaby #mammaslilboi

Product links below.

The bird had now appeared in three videos about freedom, one of which had gone viral.

No one knew he had long since expired on the welcome mat on the Gundersons’ porch.

In 2043, he’d be resurrected as a hologram and become an inspiration to—

Never mind.

This machinery wasn’t delivered by aliens.

Our nature made it.

It grew over centuries out of our eagerness to be seen, reassured, flattered, frightened, included. Someone wanted a sign. Someone supplied one. Someone noticed they could charge.

We wanted to be special. We wanted instructions. We wanted someone to explain why we were right and why our enemies were idiots.

There was demand.

We supplied demand. Like screaming babies.

Then we raised our children inside it and wondered where they got their ideas.

The machinery was inside us. We carried its stories, repeated its promises, rewarded its performances. We sold them to one another for money, approval, company, relief.

We were weak-minded in ways we found deeply meaningful.

Even our suspicion could be satisfied.

YOU’RE RIGHT. THEY’VE BEEN LYING TO YOU.

Finally. Someone honest.

Subscribe.

We grew the impersonal machinery organically, generation after generation, then stood beneath it decade after decade like baffled little villagers beneath a great big thundercloud.

What was this enormous thing influencing our lives? Is it the gods? Is it a political party? Is it an advertising agency? Is it all our fate?

Maybe it could be a sign?

That would do nicely.

We could put it on a shirt.

We probably already have.

Because, of course, this isn’t our doing.