What the vulture sees
What I have come here to do — with an unlikely companion
When I close my eyes, I can feel him perched upon a rock behind me, craning his slender neck, as if to tell me something privately, his huge wings outstretched, eight feet of pinion power display, rising up behind my back and over my shoulders, crown and protection alike.
His presence is a force to be reckoned with. He does not look gentle, in fact he has a slightly frightening air about him. But he is my fiercest protector, and with him at my back I know nothing can happen to me.
His name is Vulture, and he is my friend.
For two decades now, I have immersed myself in psychological coaching, intuitive training and the holistic approach of the human condition. I do this like other people immerse themselves in sports, gardening, bird watching or cooking: because I enjoy it so much. And if you keep at it long enough, you eventually become a very decent creative cook, or you can tell almost any bird apart just by glancing at their silhouettes as they pass at the edge of your vision, even if you don’t aspire a career as a wildlife biologist or a restaurant chef. Your love of the tastes and textures of your experience is what pulls you on.
That’s how it works for me with the vast field of personal and interpersonal human development. I can’t claim to be a therapeutic professional, but I know my way around very well — and I’m ever hungry to learn more and expand my view.
What, I can hear you think, has this got to do with that big, scary carrion bird looming behind your back?
Vultures are birds who soar high in the skies, regal like eagles. But they don’t trap smaller birds in full flight, or swoop salmons from rushing streams in a spectacular dive. When they spot a dead body, they descend to ground level to feed.
This has a lot of people shudder in revulsion or contempt. But vultures are by no means the only creatures on the planet who eat dead material. In fact, most organisms do, even we, humans. The difference is we first kill a living organism, which we then eat. Very few people will want to take a bite out of a living cow, or eat an apple while it’s still attached to the tree. The main distinction between us and vultures is simply that we are predators (of a very specific kind that will often also process — e.g. cook — its kill before eating it) and they are cleaning up what’s left.
There’s a reason we tell our kids not to touch roadkill, or to wash their hands after they’ve been in touch with something rotten. Imagine if carrion wasn’t eaten. It would take weeks for a festering corpse to decompose if not for the maggots, worms and birds that help it disappear so much faster. And they themselves don’t take lives. They only clean up what others killed, or what died of old age or disease.
So why my love of vultures?
One reason, as I have told before, is that I was visited by one. Marked, is what it felt like. Graced by the presence of an immensely powerful creature that came down alongside the platform where I was standing holding my dad’s camera.
Yes, this was vulture country. But if you think the phenomenon was ordinary, think again. My dad visited the very same place again later, waiting long and fruitless hours on the exact same spot. My encounter would not be reproduced so easily. One more reason to cherish it immensely.
This is the full sequence, all shots from that single graceful dive. They are not very good, and I’d like to imagine I’d make better photographs now. But remember this is three years ago, before I had my own camera to practice with — my dad and I shared his between us on this trip — and the bird seemed to come out of nowhere. One moment he was a tiny silhouette high up in the sky, the next he was right there. It’s a miracle I managed to capture him at all, things considered.
Another reason I love vultures is the metaphor they represent. It is perhaps not an image that will work for everyone, but it works for me and I feel strongly connected to it.
Just like a vulture on the thermals, I like to look at things from a high and broad perspective. It allows you to see a wider range of connections and meanings. In my case, this is particularly true when it comes to human psychology, emotions, disease and trauma, and all the ways we have of dealing (or failing to deal) with them. Looking from great height helps me recognize particular events as crossroads in the much larger web of interrelated facts and undercurrents.
And just like a vulture, I will spot infested areas where something needs to be cleaned.
Getting to know a person from a holistic point of view is not unlike getting to know a 3-D matrix building with multiple stories (physical, emotional, rational, behavioral, spiritual, subconscious and then some) that all have numerous sublayers which will interact with any other given area of any other given level. You could compare it to a very complex grid of inner plumbing, connecting everything to everything else within the building, and to the outside world as well.
Of course all people are unique. But some tendencies are easy to spot because they are rather common. I am familiar with a number of frequently trodden pathways of what are — to me at least — easily discernable patterns. This might sound like bragging, and I don’ t mean to imply I am able to see or solve everything anyone is going through, far from it, but I do have a knack for the exact trajectories and interconnectedness of a number of inner processes. I know where a lot of the plumbing is usually connected, so to speak, and — let’s keep working with tasty metaphors in this particular blog since we’re at it — where the dirty dish water or the sh*t is most likely to pile up if a particular pipe gets clogged up.
And if that’s the case, there will be leaks eventually. The pipe might even burst. No one is surprised about this when it comes to plumbing. But in the case of emotions and behavior, we are all too often at a loss. So many people invariably go ‘I don’t understand, where did that come from all of a sudden?’. I can only shrug. I caught the first gurgling signs of malfunctioning long ago, I knew the tension was building up and I knew where this particular tube was headed. Or if I didn’t, the nature of the eruption, when it happens, will tell me a lot about what came before, and where to start digging for the cause.
Of course I will talk to people about what I see and feel, if they are interested and open to listen. But some conversations can’t be had so easily in a workplace environment, at a kitchen table or at a social gathering, especially if you don’t know the other person that well.
Perhaps you wonder: why is it so important to find the cause of some inner process or ailment? If we stick to the metaphor of the clogged toilet or the leaking water pipe, this shouldn’t be hard to understand. Much as we dislike the whole affair, it’s not going to go away. If you don’t want to clean up the mess over and over again every time you do the dishes or you flush a toilet, you better find out where it’s coming from and do something about it.
Unfortunately, in western society today we are very good at symptom control. We have invented robots and contraptions to mop our floors and empty our waste buckets. We have pills and remedies for almost everything — except the deeper causes. And yes, those are often frightening or ugly. It’s never fun to wrap your arm in a plastic bag and try to locate the swollen swab of toilet paper somewhere around the bend. But I think it’s not only an ineffecient solution to just keep cleaning the muck every time it spills, I also think in a lot of cases it is a shallow and particularly stupid kind of neglect.
Okay, sorry y’all.
This was Vulture getting carried away a little, here.
I realize quite well that the above is a very direct approach not everyone in every situation will benefit from. Sometimes it can be wiser not to put your arm down the toilet tube, because it is too difficult, too traumatic or simply unwise. There are always other ways to approach or solve a deep problem and stimulate life to become more harmonious. But the hands-on approach is one that naturally appeals to me, since, vulture-like, I don’t mind putting my head in a bunch of entrails and disappear in them up to my neck. That’s where the real cleaning gets done — quickly, efficiently. It’s a dirty job while you’re at it, but the results are usually quite gratifying.
I do understand, though, that this might be a tad too radical for some. Vultures are equipped for the task with very slick, short feathers on their heads and necks. It enables them to dig in as deep as they do, and come up relatively clean, but for the blood — which will dry and flake off, no harm done. Ironically it is exactly this feature that gives them a less appealing look than, say, eagles or hawks, who specialize in killing rather than cleaning.
And of course I, too, have my very dark corners, the places of my psyche I will only approach carefully, sometimes when I have no other options left. Old pain, or the memory of it, has the tendency not to lose its sting, unless you know how to disarm it. I do know by now, but I also know it never happens without one-on-one contact. Tough job, usually, even for a vulture. So I, too, will reach out for help and counsel when I feel I am in need of it. And there’s no better reminder of how fragile and human you are and always inevitably will remain, than to bare your soul to another person and admit to them you’re stuck.
Part of what I have come here to do, I feel — I know — is vulture work, even if I’m not entirely sure yet what exact form this is going to take in my everyday life.
So I am very grateful for my mighty friend, spreading his impressive wings on the rock behind me. At times, we will soar high. At others, we will get down to where the work needs to be done.
Bring it on.
