Omens

The owl has portended good luck or bad luck, victory or defeat, death or a long life, over the ages, for those who had associated with it their own good luck, bad luck, victory, defeat, early death, or long life. A symbol of wisdom, solitude, and restraint, the owl lives a double life--one on the perch and one in the air, talons set.

Nina had been the golden-feathered favorite of the CEO, rising faster in the company than anyone else. She was perched pretty, overlooking her charges with the promise of wisdom for those who sought it, but also the potential to tear apart any enemies, with unused talons awaiting their moment.

"That's your problem," Marcus, the CEO, told her. "You've got it all, but you don't use it all. It's an open field. You have to hover over it and pick out the ones who won't help you--and eliminate them. They're the most vulnerable, because they have nothing to offer. You will see them scampering about. It's just business, after all."

This was the manifesto by which Marcus had become CEO; and it really was just business, because that was how business worked.

"I hope I don't have to be like that, sir." Nina replied. "I can do it without the carnage, I think. I want to rise up in your company based on my own worth, not by pushing others down."

"Not if you need to eat, Nina. What if your future depended on it?"

"Then maybe my future's uncertain," she said.

"Certain to be hungry," Marcus said, shaking his head, not knowing if he could save this gentle soul before she ended up table scraps for the next predator in the tree; inert, her own talons gripped the clerical bark in equivocation instead of according to scheming machinations.

I'm like the wise owl, I suppose, Nina thought, as she sat on her corporate perch with her tenuous wisdom. Was her mindset the path to maturity...or to a fool's end? She ruminated. Was corporate maturity the same as personal maturity?

Young and pretty and smart, Nina could offer different worlds different things, from savvy capitalist leadership to kind, nurturing motherhood. Was there time for both, she wondered? Was there a way to remain intellectually honest with herself along all of these paths? Or did different hats mean different degrees of being true to self?

Nina considered her Golden Rule upbringing: from the very beginning, two kinds of beings had been doomed to mortal battle on Earth. The great Biblical conflict between angels created just too much bitterness for them to stay, and so they were cast out, together, to settle their scores in the tangible world. The opening shot had been released as an arc of a soaring owl in the sky for both groups to witness, and that was when the hostility was to be authorized, both groups beginning in earnest.

Nina reviewed her company's Mission Statement: this is the opening shot, she realized.

She was to choose a side, which was tricky, because neither group was as bad as the other claimed; nor was either group as good as it felt itself to be. Wasn't that always the case, she asked herself, among traditional enemies who have yet to find the wisdom of sharing, even to the air that is breathed?

"Nina," Marcus addressed her as he crossed the threshold to her office one afternoon after lunch.

"Yes, sir?" she answered and stood at her desk, her brown bag the only remnant of her private meal.

"Sebastian's report," he said.

"Oh?"

"It's very impressive," Marcus said, offering it to her for perusal.

She shuffled through the report, read the comparative accomplishments, strengths, and shortcomings of all of her peers. She was surprised to see herself in the list.

"Is it," she asked, "Sebastian's place to judge me as well? I hired him. I supervise him."

"Let's just say he's swooping down, Nina, like I had warned."

"I see," Nina mumbled, digging deeper for a gestalt that summarized all of the tabulations. "And sir, if I didn't know better, between the lines he's recommending the company can make a tidy profit by replacing me with him. Is this a future prediction of some sort? I'd hate to not get the proverbial memo."

"Nina," Marcus said quietly, "you did get the proverbial memo."

Memo from Sebastian to Nina: thanks for hiring me, thanks for the training, thanks for the friendship, thanks for the sex that time, thanks for carrying me when no one else would, thanks for nothing, and thanks for the corner office.

Nina held tightly onto her owl's perch, refusing to sway in the ill wind blowing through. It had a stench, yet she held firm. Which side would it finally blow her, she wondered? Which of the two groups, the two Heavenly phalanxes was she to follow? Educated by Jesuits, she had been trained to question everything. Was the Bible a fiction of symbolism? Were we not the good and the bad angels, avatars of our own immortal selves beyond, slugging it out.

Détente between the two was impossible, for each had different dictionaries, thus each relied on different definitions. One said they were the chosen people; the other claimed the title for themselves. One said all is fair in love and war, as long as they were not the victims of said strategy; the other said all should be fair for all. One said the other was an abomination; the other said the opposite was the case. One said it alone was authorized to decide on abominations; the other said abominations were in no position to decide on who was the abomination.

Symbolism is a nesting doll, Nina realized, stacking upon stacking from Earth to Heaven. Now, with her face in the mud, tire tracks across her neck, and the knife in her back, she had played in the dark, and when the opening shot fired, the aeon of begrudgingly endured coexistence had ended and the ravaging ensued between those like Nina and those like Sebastian. There she lay, wondering.

Those like me? Those like them? Which side am I on to even ask such a question?

Her wisdom, like the owl's, was hers alone, glowing with self-worth even in its silence while planted disheveled into the dirt. Her self-appointed enemies, Sebastian and the thousand Sebastians to come, had also considered themselves angels, but among men and not necessarily in the eyes of God, which wasn't even important. Some even said they were His equal, which was enough for the self-declared "good" ones, right or wrong, to fight all adversaries to the death.

Talons unused devolve away by attrition, so when the Sebastian's talons were at the ready, they lashed out with cutting, slashing, and tearing Nina to pieces.

The stench was a summary of the outcome, extrapolated in ink on his report. Victims' lives lost at the expense of the victors, who sported another stench altogether--the smell of pride, of opportunism, of inconsideration's ultimate cruelty--advancement at the expense of those in the way, the hubris of deciding who was not kosher in the eyes of God. It was just business.

So, Nina, admitted, the symbolism makes the statement of the human condition, and the human condition is the representation of a much larger battle.

The victims lie face down in the mud, with the trampling evident on their bodies, their heads, their faces. Nina well knew she could reverse the tables by disclosing just one of many secrets about Sebastian to which she was privy. While she had had the power to avoid her defeat, it would have required equal blows against the victor who goes that one step too far--a step others refuse to allow themselves to take.

"You really can fight a dirty fighter, if you had the gumption," Marcus told her. "Yet," he continued, "it is not my duty to judge the fighter by the fight itself, but only by the result."

Nina laughed. "You and I both know that the only way to fight the dirty fighter is to become a dirty fighter myself."

"Again," Marcus said, "the fight is not the point. Even the fighter is not the point. It is only the result, because, Nina, the fighters come and go, don't they?" She knew this meant it was time for her to go.

She remembered the different worlds to which she aspired, and the kinder, nurturing, and loving world seemed to win a prize far more valuable than a quarterly bonus or even a job. Her job was to attain fulfillment, and she wouldn't find it here.

"Fighting dirty is where the victims draw the line, Marcus," she told him, which seemed so foolish and naïve to him. She didn't care. Her owl's wisdom was complete, because where the victims draw the line is the point where they welcome the footfalls of the winners, and are finally revealed as the good angels as apart from the bad ones in God's eyes.

There were no good angels nor bad ones: only us, Nina realized. Isn't how we live with each other and treat each other the eternal antediluvian battle? Is it not commissioned from above--to decide the way things are to be, for each, outside of time? The moment doesn't define eternity, even when the bottom line is at stake. She turned to Marcus and smiled.

"Living in a bubble is extremely dangerous business," Nina said to him, as Sebastian peaked in.

"Yea, but it is just business," Sebastian said out loud, the closest thing to an apology Nina would ever get from his bubble. When she saw him, her talons clenched reflexly, then unclenched divinely.

"So, Nina--the guru, the supervisor with all of the answers, the wise owl waiting to take flight...looks like it's time to take off," Marcus announced. And with that, Marcus reached down to pick up Nina's office keys. He handed them to Sebastian. "Congratulations, Sebastian."

"So sorry, Nina," Sebastian apologized, but it was even less sincere than when he had told her that here was just business. "But I have to do what's best for me. Right, Marcus?"

"The ugly truth," Marcus agreed, as they shook hands.

Nina knew that the owl taking flight is not the opening shot to begin the eternal battle. The point, she realized, is that the owl flies away from it altogether. That is the real wisdom, she knew, for when it returns, what will be left?

Nothing worthwhile, according to her own definitions from her own dictionary. She picked up the remnants of her lunch and tossed them into the trashcan along with the distorted definitions she recognized around her. She picked up her purse off of the desk and slung it over her shoulder. She retrieved her coat from the back of Sebastian's new chair and cloaked it over her shoulders. She smiled at both men and then silently soared out of her former office to her new life and toward her new fulfillment.

"Well I'll be goddamned," Marcus said.

"Yea," added Sebastian. "Not even a goodbye."