Juncos + Diorama

The Juncos make an incredible amount of noise. Small dark heads accented with the sharp paint mark of yellow for a beak. Their bodies, little dryer balls of off white topped with the brown streak of a cape that trails all the way to their tail end. A tail long and flat like the paint can stir stick sitting in the basement. Even there, between the unfinished concrete walls the Juncos sound, though quieter, still filled the corners of the ceiling. Ascending the stairs, between the hollow echo of each step landing, the chorus grows. The sound gains definition at the top step. Waves of tweets pointed and quick, piling on one another faster than could be counted. Each note the sharp strike of a bow against a violin string. Through the kitchen to the back door, the build continues. The panes in the door window seem to vibrate. Even loosening the deadbolt, cracking the door’s seal increases the volume. The door peels away and the full force of the wave is felt. A symphony of tones constructed naturally to always be ascending. The origin from every brach of a massive pine in a yard two doors down. Little ball bodies perched in the shade while a handful make orbit. The song so light carries, pulling the notes into the air. Light tones, giving weightlessness to objects that never dreamt of flying. For hours, everything is in this simple state, drifting suspended. The sun then consumes the shade, the pine on full display and the Juncos have had enough of the heat. With a finger snap, the last measure is reached. Hundred of round bodies erupt from the pine, projectile like bubbles all evacuating northwest. The backyard is grounded again. A faint reprisal is heard but possibly only the echo memory of the song. Perhaps the notes are the sonata to another performance the Juncos are about to begin.

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Could I be trusted with a mini diorama of my world? If it contained all the stores I love, the tables where I’d have coffee, the pot holes I weave between on my bike but all in miniature, could I be held responsible? What if the diorama was only of my own house? A snapshot in 3D modeled from Google Earth but with the base the size of an atlas. If I could just hold that model of my house, what would happen? What if it was just the living room I’m sitting in right now? A tiny “L” shaped sofa an coffee table. Tiny blankets strewn about, books layered in the TV stand causing the small board shelves to bow. What would I do? Crumble the tiny walls? Run the whole room under a hot faucet until it was unrecognizable? What if it was only a miniature version of this notebook? Tiny, smaller than a thumb nail, the scrawl inside unreadable, the yellow bound rubberband stretched but keeping the tiny pages together. What then? Would I swallow the words back down? Replant them inside regular size me? Wait to see what grows back, what resurfaces that I thought was part of the garden. Or would I set my tiny notebook to rest on a tiny glass coffee table glowing in the sunlight from two tall windows in the miniature house’s walls that are planted squarely on the block, in a tiny neighborhood, in a tiny city. Would I take that diorama and set it somewhere to collect dust an wait for younger hands to find it. To take the tiny versions of my diorama, without any understanding of the intricacies, and playfully destroy it.