I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Owls + existentialism
Hello friends,
Two years ago, I heard a call. I was in my classic *bing* awake-at-3am-for-no-real-reason zone, trying to calm back down. Through the supportive foam of my ear plugs I heard something.
I hastily plucked the dayglo foam capsules from my ears
I heard it again. Could it be?
An owl.
Unfamiliar with owls, but well versed in middle-of-the-night Google rabbit holes, I blearily searched and quickly identified the guy’s sound.
A Great Horned Owl, up at 3am just like me.
Although apparently they’re common in southern California, I couldn’t recall a time I’d heard the special hoot or seen one. So it felt auspicious. Anything can be auspicious when you need it to. That’s OK, I love that.
A year earlier my husband and I were camping in Montana. High on gummies, we stumbled upon a birds of prey demo put on by a local bird shelter, which was the best thing that could have happened to us. I’ll have to check with him, but I believe it remains one of the best things that’s ever happened to us.
First of all, birds of prey are fucking magnificent. Gorgeous, fast, efficient, focused, and deadly. Like Halle Berry in “Die Another Day.”
They had a Great Horned Owl there, of course. To say they’re a grounded bird sounds funny because they’re stunning fliers. In fact an owl is so stealthy swift that you cannot hear them coming. You’ll just feel the ruffle of your bangs and know that they just swooped by. If you’re a mouse, your skeleton will end up in a pellet being clumsily dissected by second graders before you can say boo. Owls are so stealthy swift that NASA is working on owl-inspired aircrafts.
But owls are grounded in that they’re planted and badass and wise. Goals, for sure. Side note, if you love owls or want to love owls, check out my friend Maggie Owsley’s highly niche Substack about the findings of her owl box camera.
My son, who’s 15 months old, can tell you what an owl says if you ask him. He offers a small, melodic “hoo hoo,” pursing his lips with care and pride. It’s his newest animal sound, meaning it’s his second (after a lion’s roar).
We read animal books and offer animal sounds to him at an obnoxious frequency. It’s totally unhinged. And owls of all sorts seem to be in virtually every book we read — even the ones that aren’t animal books! My husband made the excellent point that if you’re a toddler in this world, you’re likely to think that owls are everywhere. But then you end up waiting 39 years to be awakened in the middle of the night by an auspicious sign: the first real hoot you’ve ever heard.
The genius of a knock-knock joke hinges on its simplicity paired with the element of surprise. Before ring cameras or text messages, someone just knocked at your door and you legitimately didn’t know who it was until you got to the door.
Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Hoo.
Who hoo?
What’s it like to be an owl?
Damn, what *is* it like to be an owl?
So grounded, so popular, so elusive, so stealth.
I can’t wait to tell my son this knock-knock joke when he enters the knock-knock joke stage of life. I can’t wait to ask him what he thinks it’s like to be an owl? What do you think?
This particular knock-knock joke knocks it out of the park because it veers unexpectedly into a deep pool of existentialism. It challenges your perceptions of your identity (did you even know you were an owl?) and lures you into articulation that suggests you are something else all together. Fucking brilliant.
Never not one to take things a little darker or too far, I submit this knock-knock joke for consideration:
Knock knock.
Who’s there?
No body knows.
No body knows who?
No body knows who anyone really is, including themselves.
:-)
I greatly enjoyed this delightful essay about our human desire to be known and seen, which gently questions the assumption that we can be known and seen:
“You may feel that you’re unknown because of your nature, your circumstances, or your story. But the feeling itself, for all its intuitiveness, conceals some strangeness. What, exactly, is there to know? And who are you, anyway?”
The author points to the existential malaise of Konstantin Levin in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. Levin has a loving wife and happy life, but still feels isolated and lonely which erodes the sense of meaning in his life.
This is perhaps one of the most universal experiences we as humans have, but which also feels the most singular (by design, when you’re lonely it is near impossible to remember you’re not the only one…). I don’t think that loneliness or isolation is the quite the same thing as a yearning to be seen and understood (and feeling of being unseen)— but they probably form a quite cozy Venn diagram.
Loneliness is now regularly referred to as “an epidemic” yet we are more visible and seen via the internet than ever before. We have new confusing “selves” to perform and contend with and new parasocial relationships to navigate. (on the topic of loneliness, check out one of my favorite podcasts The Lonely Hour by my friend Julia Bainbridge)
These are such palpable and powerful experiences, yet how do we reconcile that with the knowledge — if you believe such things — that the self, the ego, the “you” that stands before you in the mirror is nothing essential but just a collection of conditions, experiences, perceptions, and memories.
I imagine it’s hardest to be a Buddhist and a Leo, who accepts the fundamental truth that there is no “self” yet wants (like all of us, but more so) to be seen, loved, admired, and missed. I’m not a Leo, but I do also find it hard to reconcile my understanding of no self with my fundamental yearning to be seen.
I read Anna Karenina the summer before 6th grade, on a beach in Rhode Island. I loved the density and darkness of it. The furs. The grim landscape! At that time, and for a good deal of time after, I was myself tormented by hoo-hoo I was. I found myself haunted by all the “whos” I was not, which is itself a heavy affliction. Watch out for it!
It wouldn’t be long before I’d seriously consider changing my very common name from Jessica, the most popular girls’ name in the US in 1983, to “Faye,” in honor of Morgan la Fay the powerful and enchanting priestess of the Arthurian Legend. While I wanted badly to be seen, I somehow wanted badly to become someone who likely never existed at all.
This here-and-not-here vibe is really what sticks with me. The concept of no self, which is fundamental in Hinduism as well as Buddhism, is really just a rejection of the idea that we have a distinct and unchanging identity.
I think we can all pretty much get on board with that, right?
We’re here and we’re not here, all at the same time. That’s the surprise and delight of it.
In the many games of peek-a-boo I play with my son, his enjoyment comes from the variance of being gone and being there. If you leave and you just stay gone — if you don’t exist at all — that sucks. That’s not funny, that’s sad. or rather it just becomes nothing at all. And if you’re always there and never leave, that’s comfortable but doesn’t allow for max delight. How can we miss you? How can we remember you? How can we gab about you or anticipate your return? How can we know you in new ways?
I haven’t heard or seen that guy (I mean the Great Horned Owl) since that night a few years ago. It seems we’re in a prolonged game of peek-a-boo. He’s probably waiting for me to return just as I’m waiting for him to, and when we see or hear each other again it will be affirming and wonderful.
EDIT: This just in. You’ll never believe it. Last night, while drifting off to sleep what do I hear but a long lost Hoo-hoo-hooo hoooo hoooot! After two years, auspiciously, on the night before he got published, my guy was back. Peek-a-boo! Amazing.
Such a dad joke 😆 - Who hoo?
Lovelovelove this!