On Disgust:

A bird had become trapped in the train station. It flew frantically from window to window, seeking freedom. It swooped. It pecked. Feathers flew. Who could say how long it had been in this dilemma, ignored by the station employees and passers-by? It could have been starving or dying of thirst. It could have had a mate that was worried about it or a nestful of tiny beaks to feed. From one window to the next, it circled and flapped. Thirty feet above my head, it didn't approach the floor. There was no way for me to escort it safely out. There were no custodial employees in sight. When it was announced that my train was delayed by thirty minutes, I knew I could not spend that entire time in the presence of that poor creature, silent witness to its agony, so I got up to buy a chocolate-chip cookie.

That's when my multiple personalities declared civil war.

"How dare you eat a chocolate-chip cookie while that bird is suffering!" part of my mind demanded, a particularly shrill part of my mind that has heretofore chiefly concerned itself with slowing the fascist dismantling of our democracy.

The other part of my mind--the complacent part, the lazy part, the look-away part, the coward part, the dead part--was almost insanely reluctant to approach anyone about the issue. "You don't need to worry about it. Someone else will do something, sometime. Buy a cookie! Eat, eat, eat!" I wanted to comply, to recline back into my American haze, but after staring for some time at the cookie, insulated from the world in its case of spotless glass, I peeled myself away and forced myself to speak to the Amtrak officer in charge of Information.

"Um, I don't know if you're the right person to ask about this," I began miserably.

"Uhhhhhh hummmm," she said. There was a matte finish to her expression that indicated I had picked the wrong person to ask about anything, but I soldiered on.

"Well, there's a bird in here. Flying around over there. It looks like it's really upset."

"A bird?"

"Yes. Over there. Inside."

She didn't turn to look. "It ain't a pigeon, is it?"

"No, it's some other kind of bird." I wondered if it mattered terribly what kind. Having lived in New York, I know my pigeons. Some people don't like them, and some people do. Clearly, the Information officer was one of the former. Perhaps I should have claimed it was a parrot, or a turkey. Something Technicolor or tasty would capture the imagination.

She looked at me as if she was George Bush and I was an AWOL document. "All right," she said after several moments, seeming incredibly put upon for someone who otherwise had nothing to do.

"All right? You can call someone to help?"

She made a vague noise; against all evidence, I chose to interpret this as affirmation that she would not rest until she found someone to take care of that tragic bird. Relieved, I went for that chocolate-chip cookie, my heavenly reward for selfless behavior.

Back at the gate, I couldn't help but notice that the bird was still there and that nobody else was. I crumbled part of my cookie onto the polished floor, but it sulked on a high windowsill and wouldn't come down to eat. Until my train came at long last, we faced each other, the bird and I, over that inadequate pile of crumbs. Neither of us moved until I escaped through the heavy door, down the crowded stairs that led to the underground platform, and the bird turned back to the window and looked out at the sky.