Statue birds

Callan sits beside me in 304 this semester. In middle school he and some of my friends had some sort of feud which to this day remains unresolved, but somehow I've always managed to stay neutral in these things. Of all the people from our graduating class to end up at SFU, only two other people ended up in the same program as me, so we tend to stick together where we can.

Though it's nice to have someone to sit beside, he always copies off my notes and invariably I will have written something down in a more succinct way than the prof said it, using a word he doesn't know. Then in the middle of the lecture, he'll lean over and whisper "Erin! What does that word mean?" to which I have to reply that I'll tell him during the break.

By the time there's a break in the lecture I've got a running list in my head of things he's asked and then I proceed to give definitions of words or concepts or say why I wrote a random name beside something, or explain that Kosher cooking involves keeping meat and milk separate. Sometimes he asks the most random things.

But today he didn't have any questions for me, other than personal ones. He has the strange ability of being able to ask questions that are so bang on, they cut and I find myself saying no, even though the answer's yes. And then, even stranger, he'll make some sort of assumption about me that's completely off. I don't know how he can do both.

"You have a whole apartment to yourself. Aren't you lonely?"

"No, not really."

"Why aren't you living at home?"

"Home's not home."

That's a hard realization to make.

Coming home tonight I heard the kil-de-deer-kil-de-deer of the cormorants. At least I think it's cormorants I hear. It's always hard to match the sounds to the birds, especially since cormorants only ever seem to sing in the evenings and I only ever see them in the mornings out on the log booms. As the marine fog clears, you see them appear out of the mist, standing perfectly still with their wings out.

There used to be another kind of bird that used to call theodore in the evenings here but I don't think I've heard one for at least five years. When the climate's changing, the bugs change and then the songbirds follow them, so I've been told.