And it’s only the giving

That makes you what you are

~Ian Anderson

I've been accused of spending too much time pondering.

Maybe that's why I love that song. "Wond'ring Aloud" by Jethro Tull... So much of Ian Anderson's lyrics have always resonated with me on the deepest levels. There are other lyricists who get me like that; Peter Gabriel immediately comes to mind.

I remember as an adolescent I couldn't get out of bed in the morning. With a nervous system designed for nurturing and kindness, I couldn't face the slings & arrows of my darwinistic high school.

I tried starting my day with "Skating Away (On The Thin Ice Of A New Day)" by  Tull... It worked the first few days... and then it just reminded me why I didn't fit.

You were bred for humanity

And sold to society

Yeah, that summed it up. It really did feel that everything was too damn real and in the present tense. And that bit about the stage and the audience... that hit.

Then there was Thick As A Brick -- with my musical tastes, you would think I came of age in 1973 but this was 1995.... Thick As A Brick was a roadmap. 
So many gems in there. Ian got it.

The poet lifts his pen, while the soldier sheaths his sword…

It was the music of a human being too sensitive for the hyper-capitalistic dog-eat-waste-plunder-dog-world of Late 20th/21st Century Western "civilization."

But "Wond'ring Aloud," that's Ian speaking directly to my heart.

Wond’ring aloud, will the years treat us well…

And he recounts a moment of tender love.

We are our own saviors…

Just a moment of spilt crumbs from toast and a shared chuckle over a minor mistake between two soulmates.

And it’s only the giving

That makes you what you are

I'm typing this while on my sofa -- a love-seat, actually -- as my best friend, my wife, sits to my left sipping coffee and reading something on her tablet. Khruangbin is in concert on the TV -- just a chill vibe as we enjoy this "lazy" Sunday of co-regulation, parallel play, togetherness, love.

The Paradox of Giving
Giving is selfish.
Giving is selfless.

Both sentences are true. That is the beauty.

I've been wanting to befriend a crow.

I saw that humans have been able to form bonds with crows and other members of the corvid family of birds by giving them certain treats.

I've spent a large chunk of my life alienated from my own nature. Making a conscious decision to form a bond with something in actual nature is a huge step for me.

So I did what I do: I dove into the rabbit hole and learned a good deal about corvids, specifically that crows and blue jays are common to my neighborhood and that they would be a good place to start.

I read that if you place peanuts, raw and in the shell, in the same general area at the same general time every day, the corvids will start to notice. Blue jays will take the peanuts right off a deckpost; crows need a longer runway, so spread theirs on the lawn where they can see the lay of the land.

On December 26, 2025, the day after Xmas, I played Santa to my corvid community and placed peanuts on two deckposts and tossed a few out onto the lawn.

The blue jays came immediately.

I wish I could fully convey the shear joy I felt knowing that I put something out as an offering to a different species and that it took the offering.

In the weeks since, I have been keeping to a fairly regular offering schedule, and haven’t missed a day. It’s hard to get a count of the jays, since they move about so much, but my wife counted at least nine different jays at one point.

Some mornings when I go out to the deck, they show themselves. They’re less and less skittish. I like to think they see me as a friend.

To date, I have not yet seen any crows. I’ve read that they take longer, scoping the scene from afar, using the jays as scouts to make sure it’s not a trap. I’ll be thrilled if they visit, but either way, I’m so delighted by the backyard bird sanctuary that’s developing here.

There’s a pair of red-bellied woodpeckers, a male and female, who I swear to god are part of this blue jay family. They hang out with them, show up and grab from the peanut stash right alongside the jays. It’s a hoot. (No owls yet that we’ve seen, but my wife heard one Friday night, speaking of hoots.)

I guess it’s a hoot to see them in co-hoots 🙂

Then there’s the male and female cardinal who join in. Sometimes they’re the first to greet me in the morning.

Cardinals have special meaning in my life. Grandma Rose loved cardinals and I often think that they’re a sign from her. I call the male and female who visit “Rose and Dan,” after my beloved grandparents.

And this brings me to giving. There’s something about giving, unselfishly giving, that gives back to me and I want it selfishly.

I’m selfish for the feeling I get from giving.

Now look, I’m not Gandhi. I’m not renouncing all my earthly property and giving all away. The selfishly materialistic nature of giving is that I give what I’m comfortable parting with, I suppose. Perhaps it’s easier to give when the giving isn’t as much of a sacrifice. And lord knows I know enough people with judeo-christian guilt to have imprinted on me the erroneous belief that giving is only valuable if it hurts the giver a tiny bit. It’s that zero-sum capitalist work ethic creeping in.

But maybe that’s the problem. Maybe we’re all so enmeshed in scarcity that we complicate lovingkindness and commodify it.

So I feed my birds and get joy from watching them pick through the peanuts, make their silly noises, and fly free and beautiful.

And it reminds me of teaching. In teaching, you put out peanuts in the hopes that the corvids in the desks take them, investigate them, store them for future nourishment. Sometimes, like a clever crow, they bring you trinkets of appreciation that remind you that you’re making a difference. But more often than not, you just have to watch them fly away and hope that the nourishment you provided will be enough.

And it reminds me of my wife. She gives me friendship, hope, love, coffee, hugs, understanding… and I soak it up like a flower in sunlight. And when I can make a dinner that she finds especially delightful, when I can get up from the loveseat and say, “D’ya need anything?” and she smiles back and hands me her water bottle for a refill or asks me to bring her a handful of nuts or pretzels, I feel selfishly, magnificently gorgeous.

So I feed my birds and get joy from watching them pick through the peanuts, make their silly noises, and fly free and beautiful.