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The birds, the bench and thebootsHoney-dewed morning dawned on the canopy of the ash trees enclosing the communal park.Twittering of starlings pried open his tightly shut eyes from an unusual deep sleep of the night

before. An early riser, he thought, how classy. Sixty years has swooped by without me noticingthese chirpy creatures. I must be so old that I actually have time to muse upon their arbitrary

singing. Of course Im old. Ive had time slashing in the space between my fingers, leavingwounds here and there, so long Ive forgottenwhat it feels like to be waiting, he thought while

making his all-time favorite soy latte for his morning rituals. Examining wrinkles around his

weary eyes that blinked only as a sign they were just barely functional. Spitting out toothpastefoam after brushing a few teeth left. Buttoning up a carefully ironed shirt. He had to stick yellow

post-its all over the house to remind him of that simple task. Dusting off a tattered greyish fedora

to complement his neatly donned-up flannel suit. Walking cane on one hand and a pack of

breadcrumbs on the other, he had a date with the birds.

It was two hundred and nine normal steps, no stretching or tip-toeing, from his bed to thewooden bench by the lake. For the first sixty five steps, he exchanged greetings with fellowelders who happened to have a lot of time to waste like him. Occasionally, it was the next-door

little girl in polka-dot dress and pink ribbons, to whom he would give a lemon drop, his favorite.

On the one-hundred-and-second step, he would reach a thrift shop and stand in front of itsdisplay window, gazing at a mini-show of old relics gleaming with a pale green light, perhaps the

glass they used for the window filtered out past glamor. Within five minutes, he pulled his

attention back to the daily route. He did not want to be late. Birds are impatient creatures. His

hands were not the only ones throwing breadcrumbs to them. And being gazed at while gazing ata window dressing was no enjoyable feeling for him. Nor being asked what he was interested to

buy was.

For the last one hundred and seven steps, yellow leaves of ash trees on the sides of the road

danced in the chilly autumn breeze like in a ballet show. A flannel suit was apparently a wrongchoice, he mumbled while holding tight the collar of his trench coat. By the time he came to the

lake, a young woman was already feeding the hungry birds. She sat on his favorite bench and

was sprinkling out the same brand of breadcrumbs. The woman was no more than thirty years of

age. With hair swept back to her left ear, she counted exactly fifty pieces every time she fedthem. Birds are impatient creatures, but they are not when it comes to food. For a crispy morning

like this, she was a little bit scantily clad. Not really scantily, but certainly a linen sundress and

leather ankle boots were not enough to shield anyone from October cold breezes. Hardly could

she enjoy the cold. Her bitten lips gave that away. A small dull sack looking as if it had been

soaked in ditchwater resided in her lap. She cant bring that much breadcrumbs, he silentlychuckled.

We can never satisfy these birds, can we? They just keep coming back for more, he broke the

tranquil silence.

Actually, theyre flying down south. A storm is coming to this town, replied her without

turning her head to see who was behind.

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At least they are free and warm up there then, he supposed that was the end of the

conversation.

Warm, yes. But free, nothing is ever truly free, dont you think? Its all preconceived before you

know how to make a choice.

Why not? They have wings and hollow feathers and stuff. They can fly anywhere they want.

The sky is the limit, the clich said so. And of course, though we dont like them, most cliches

are true.

She stopped for a while. The man had his point. Along these twenty eight years, no adage hadever been proved wrong to her. At least until now.

But you know what, birds dont fly because they want to. Its because they have to. Otherwise,

they would die here in the frigid winter, and get eaten by stray cats, or ants, whichever is worse.Their lives are framed by North and South, or the sky and the ground, whichever is narrower.

Sharp retort, he gave up questioning. It was no use for a shivering old man to have anargument with a grumpy young woman.

Silence reigned across the lake. It was as if all air was sucked out of a transparent dome, leaving

an enlarging vacuum. For a brief moment, the world was turned upside down. And two of them

were just a couple of faint distorted reflections on the surface of the lake, gazing out into the realworld.

I lost my husband a month ago. He is irretrievably lost. Just like my mother. And these boots in

this sack will be too. Theyre now meaningless, her voice lowered to a point of inaudibility.

Nothing is ever trulylost, dont you think? We spend our entire lives defining something bywhat it is not. Now its a good point of departure. A bird is certainly not a stray cat that eats dead

bird and vice versa. It would be a cannibalistic world if something could be anything. But have

you ever noticed its not just about binary? Take a real good look at this bench. What do you call

the space underneath it?

Well, certainly its not a bench. Its a-bench. Anti-bench. Un-bench. De-bench. Whichever isright, she started tolose her patience. After all, she was no professional bird-feeder to possess

that kind of patience.

I love prefixes. And you are half-right. Say if I mold this seem-to-be-nothing and fill it withconcrete, wouldnt it be something? At least I can still sit on that something and call it a chair.

That something comes from this very nothing. So even if you take away the bench, or the

bench is irretrievably lost, he signaled a quotation mark in the crispy air, the spaceunderneath it, firmly molded by it, attached to it, and signifying it, by no means is lost.

Sharp retort. But what do I do with thin air?

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Its not like you have to fill every square of space around you with something. You can just

leave it there. Then find another bench to sit. We tend to find meaning in everything but we

usually forget that meaningless is a meaning too. Its like a spectrum that doesnt start with zero.After all, zero is just an arbitrary concept so we have something to anchor our whole system.

Intriguing hypothesis. Wisdom really comes with age, the clich said so.

And those shoes, too. Meaningless to you as they are, they were made to do something. Dont

let them sink down the bottom of this lake in silence.

You know, there are a lot of flaws in your hypothesis. But well, Ill give you these shoes. See ifyou can give a new meaning to them, she said while her eyes peered into the fog closing in.

If you say so. I can never say no to shoes, you know. A good pair of shoes can take you

anywhere, they have always said so, his face wrung up with a big grin.

Ive finished my pack of breadcrumbs. Maybe yours will satisfy these greedy creatures, andthen she left, leaving behind a pair of ankle boots exactly the same kind of the ones she waswearing.

On his way home, the old man dropped by a grocery store and bought himself a bottle of

massaging oil. Winter always came with dull aches in his poor old spine. After boiling some

eggs for a frugal lunch, he removed the prosthetic left leg that had helped him walk more thanfour hundred steps that morning.

Perhaps Ill never get used to this fake stuff. Oh well, at least I only need to tend for one shoe

now.

And he put the left shoe onto a shelf, together with ten more left shoes. The shoes seemed towelcome a dusty veteran to their gang. They never had a leather ankle boot before. This one was

certainly a new breeze.