The Birds. Not Hitchcoks' though...
Last night as I was closing my eyes, a lost memory from childhood came to me. All of a sudden I could clearly see the table mats my grandparents had at home. These plastic mats had birds on them and their scientific names. I remembered the texture, the colours and (what would nowadays be considered sort of vintage) plastified silhouettes. I'm sure that real birds had long before that, caught my attention, particularly having lived in the countryside as a child, but this was just one of those surprising, unexpected memories that often come to you pulled by the sounds and smell of a specific time. So my mind started wandering, recalling with vividness different feathered images.
I also remembered watching a film on TV, whose name I can't even remember. It was about a young girl around thirteen who invites her classmates home after school. The girl had a bird she had found wounded and had taken care of, and the children in their unthinkable cruelty started throwing stones at the defenceless creature. The scene was atrocious to me; why did it have such an impact? I ignore it but I couldn't hold the tears.
Another memory; this one from an older age: I found a wounded bird, a black sparrow, it was not even a beautiful bird, but surely I felt I wanted it to fly again because I took it home, put it in a small cage mom had as a decoration near the fountain and put it beside my bed. The next morning I woke up to find it had died.
