Watching himself brush his teeth in the mirror was how he used to close the day at the office. He'd then leave the bathroom, go back to the office, collect his jacket and hat, and lock it up. Now that business has picked up, hours have been shifted. Murray Clavier now worked the eight to four-thirty shift instead of the relaxed eleven to seven-thirty. Murray did not take this hour shifting too well.
Now that he was part of the inner city rush hour, traffic jams frequent his mind. Traveling was a pleasure, now it's a pain. He could listen to the first half of a Tchaikovsky piece on the way to work and finish it on the way home. Now he listened to all but the final two minutes of the piece. Everything but the crescendo took up his journey to work.
After work, Murray listened to the Russian composer for the first two minutes and rolled down his window to find harmony and euphony in the traffic jam. The various honks and beeps of automobile horns and the droning motors of busses were too chaotic to form a formidable piece of symphonia urbania. Within a week, Murray paid closer attention to the subtle background of coughing pedestrians, splashing water, and chirping birds. Birds? Birds! All this time, he never thought of birds living in the metropolis. This awakened Murray to the sparse but various trees within the downtown area. Among everything metal, glass, and concrete was something breathing with leaves of green. It was spectacular!
The city seemed to be humanity's billboard of civilization with Mother Nature accidentally spilling some of her green paint on it as she was passing to paint her Appalachian Mountains canvas.
Murray Clavier felt like a wildman and this scared him. He did not want to become one of the Hippies. He missed that train by over thirty years. He also didn't want to become a lunatic raving in Central Park.
Murray wanted to sit in a tree; it was the closest thing he could get to a forest.
During a lunch break one day, he passed by a tree on the way to McDonald's. The color of green and the chirp of a sparrow hidden in the foliage enveloped his mind. For a brief moment, a hallucination of a congregation of maple trees swaying to a Seals & Crofts song put a smile of relief on his face. Soon the smile was wiped away by the grease of a seeping McRib. A napkin with the albino golden arches tried to bring back the smile, but it only absorbed the grease off his face.
As he passed the tree on his way back to work, he was tempted to climb it. He unbuttoned his suit jacket, put his foot to the trunk of the tree, and looked up at a piece of gum a couple of inches away from his fingers. He figured it was better than piss and finished his day at the job.
That night, dreams of tree sitting lingered in his mind. Right before he sat in an oak tree that grew so fast that he could see the whole city get smaller and smaller as the tree grew. Then the cloud weft passed and took him away to the Black Forest where his kingdom of Ewoks waited for him. When he began to act out Return of the Jedi, his alarm clock woke him up.
To be friendlier to his trees, Murray carpooled to work that day with his neighbor who worked three blocks away for a publishing agency. His day went by smoothly mainly because he spotted about three trees on the way to Taco Bell. After his workday was done, he started his three-block walk to the publishing agency. The urge to climb and sit in a tree took over his mind and within a block, Murray, briefcase in lap, found himself perched in a tree. Relaxation hit him instantly when he noticed that everyone passing by him in that try was obsessed with going somewhere. Murray was where he wanted to be, and he found it humorous that no one else wanted to be there.
No one wanted to be there until a cardinal built a nest on the branch above him. Could it be love? How could such a bird trust a person, who sat just a couple inches below, not to bother it?
The day Murray totally forgot about his job, he built himself a nest to cushion his seat. That was also the day one of the city crazies pointed out Murray's delirium. One would expect him to become more self-conscious, but he already was. Mr. Clavier wanted to sit in a nest forever.
A couple of days later, Laurie (a co-worker) found Murray in his nest. "Whatever are you doing, Murray? Mr. Cuthbert's been trying to call you for days. If you don't come in today, you'll probably be out of a job."
If Murray came in that day, he'd be out of his tree. Luckily, he still had common sense in his brain. He just misplaced it until Laurie found it for him. Anyway, he needed money to build a better nest in perhaps a better tree.
For the next couple weeks, Murray contemplated the best nest while behind his desk at work. Astonishingly enough, he got all his work done punctually. Mr. Cuthbert was amazed and brought him back to his regular salary. That was such great news to Murray that the greatest idea for a nest came to him: an ostrich nest.
The Bronx Zoo did not seem appealing for an ostrich nest, besides it might be fake. He must get an ostrich nest from where most ostrich nests are: Africa. This called for another week's paycheck and a week's vacation. The paycheck part was easy, but when Murray asked Mr. Cuthbert for the vacation, he was told to lose that part of his memory. Murray liked his memory and he liked his nests, so he quit and charted a flight to the Central African Republic.
When he got to the capital city of Bangui, he asked directions to the nearest ostrich field. There he ran into Dr. Pillsbury who specialized in ostriches, but unfortunately not their nests. He was more interested in their necks and trachea. Together they rode a couple hundred miles to a huge stretch of land littered with grasses and ostriches. They both were in heaven.
The difficulty for Murray was to reach the throne of heaven -- the largest ostrich nest in the field. Dr. Pillsbury had no difficulty as he sat in his antiquated Jeep and surveyed the grassland for ostrich necks. Hopefully his intention was not a new recipe for soup. As Pillsbury scouted the land, he watched Murray peaking at the nests. He hoped Murray's intention was not to filch the nest and take the eggs. Luckily ostriches know how to defend themselves.
Murray found this out when he found his golden treasure, and nest big enough for two people to sit in. "Hey!" he yelled. "Dr. Pillsbury would you like to join me?"
Damn it, thought the biologist, he's going to spook the birds and put them in the defensive. Dr. Pillsbury wouldn't join Murray in egg-lifting anyway, he told himself.
Pushing the eggs out of the nest, Murray prepared a nice spot for him to sit. As he looked ahead, he saw a speeding ostrich head in his direction. An ordinary ostrich looks freaky enough, but an angry ostrich looks frighteningly deplorable.
Murray lost his senses and thought this battle for the nest was a test to get to heaven. By all means, Murray wanted to go to heaven. When he roosted on the almighty ostrich nest, Murray's ultimate goal was accomplished and he let the ugly big bird peck him to death.
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