-^-for posterity-^-

‘go to the bird coffee shop’, someone said to me. i agreed but didn’t know how on earth to get there. in a town like long xuyen, you get to know all of the coffee shops pretty quickly. i was surprised i had never heard of the ‘bird coffee shop.’

the coffee shop was someone’s front porch. we sat on small, reddish chairs and drank coffee that was too sweet. surrounding us were 55 bird cages.

i spent the beginning of our time there aloof from conversation and intent on observing the birds. the cages were made of wood and bamboo. they were covered in lacquer and hung from various branches of trees. they were beautiful cages and gave the birds ample room to move around.

the noise was overwhelming. the chirps and tweets and subtle twitters of the birds did not at all combine to make a beautiful harmony. instead the various noises were in unbearable dissidence. they were all screaming out for friendship or love or maybe they just wanted the world to know that they too had a voice. they, even though they were trapped in a glossy, opulent cage, were alive.

black headed birds with glowing blue feathers around their neck that could not have been any more brilliant. white strips down their black wings that curved violently. tail feathers that acted as a brilliant black ballast.

tiny lime colored birds that looked like they had swallowed golf-balls. their bulbous bodies bounced around the cage supported by microscopic wings. their brilliant bodies looked like stars floating and bouncing off of one another.

smallish, well proportioned birds with black heads and necks made of burning embers. white lines down their back and a wide tail of white, black and streaks of orange. they perched upside down and their necks throbbed.

brown, anonymous, small balls of feathers that darted from cage to cage. freckles of white and black thrown on a hideously boring body. the sparrows.

i wondered why they flew from cage to cage. they may have been enjoying the beauty, or they may have been bragging about their freedom. maybe they were jealous of the small tin of dish, or the piece of fruit and the bowl of water that was in each cage. maybe they wanted to sit and rest, to stop scavenging for a day or two. maybe, however, they were mocking the beautiful birds who, while being gorgeous, only had a small space to call their own. i wondered who was luckier. was it the sparrow in his dull brown suit who roamed from place to place at will, or was it the grossly overdressed birds of the tropic who would spend the rest of their lives sitting on a wooden stick in a shiny cage in the middle of a coffee shop next to a dirty river.