How a Hummingbird Saved my
Life (a generally true story)
By Bill Schaeffer
In the early 90’s I was
working for CST Entertainment doing colorization. I’d worked there for over five years and had
managed to be promoted to the Art Department as a designer. The equipment was slow and the software
was primitive, but it was still fun and challenging to get a project approved.
On this particular day, I was
working on colorizing a Beatles video clip for a big retrospective video
release. It was Monday morning and I
was in a foul mood, having argued with my Mother on the phone the night before. My
task was to organize initial designs for presentation to the client. This frequently involved changing the
artist’s designs and making them consistent and workable. Crowd scenes were the worst, because of all
the details.
The clip we were working on
was the first trans-Atlantic broadcast where the Beatles played “All You Need
Is Love” and Mick Jagger was in the audience.
The producer wanted to colorize the segment for the video release and it
was extremely difficult because of the poor transfer quality. The initial video was recorded on an
obsolete video format that was transferred through several generations of
format conversions. The image was of
a crowd and there was ghosting and ringing and very soft edges. The initial designs were done by R. G.
-- a talented artist and designer, but
occasionally inconsistent and sloppy with the details. On this crowd scene, his work seemed all
confused and I was having an extremely difficult time straightening it
out.
I shared the art studio with
another work station and the art team frequently used the room as a lounge when
there were no clients. The whole crew
was in this morning and they were talking about supernatural events. I was in no mood to hear supposedly true “ghost
stories” and “mystical coincidences”, but what could I do? The more I tried to figure out the design
problems, the louder people were talking about demons and angels and ghosts and
secret powers. This was very annoying.
One woman said she had been chased
by a demon her whole life, until she got married. Another said she saw angels when she conceived
her son, and had a vision of heaven once after a revival meeting. A man said that wherever he went, electrical
devices turned off. Now I was really
getting annoyed, because I find that happens to me also. Street lights especially, seem to turn off
when I pass by them.
As they continued to talk
about these strange and disturbing events, I was having more difficulty
concentrating. I was really tired of
the work and wanted to do something else.
I was already stiff and tense and it was only 10 AM. I moved my chair and went to adjust my
monitor, when all of a sudden the computer crashed. It was all I could do to remain calm and
relaxed.
Strangely, the computer
crashed in a way I have never seen before or since. We were working on SGI Indigo workstations
and there was a typical way the software, or machine failed. On this occasion the computer did not do
that. Instead, the screen went black
and there was a purple rectangle in the center of the screen. The purple color was not solid however and
was really a “writhing and boiling” collection of noise and sine wave curves
that looked generally purple. No one
else knew what it was or how to fix it.
“Great! Now I have lost all my work.” I said. This was not a good day.
With tremendous personal
discipline, I slowly got up and calmly walked out of the room. We were on the third floor and there was a
walkway overlooking a large atrium courtyard filled with prehistoric plants and
trees. It was very nice and one of the
few nice things about working at that site.
I stood leaning on the railing and just stared at the green plants. I was furious, drained, tired, and wanted
to be anywhere else on earth doing almost anything else imaginable. I was angry and depressed and just stood
there; leaning on the rail, teeth
clenched, looking at the plants and trees.
And then, while I was angrily
ruminating on my unfair fate, I noticed something phenomenal. A little Hummingbird was hovering right in
front of my face -- about eight inches in front of the bridge of my nose. He was silently hovering and just
looking me in the eyes it seemed. All of a sudden all the tenseness and anger
left my body. I was relaxed and calm
and nothing really mattered. A thought
occurred to me, “You do not have to be here today. You can do anything you want. You can just leave if you want.”
The Hummingbird continued to
hover silently in front of me as I savored the relaxed peace and resolution I
now felt. It was a beautiful Spring
morning and the sun was shining warm and the air was cool and fresh. Of course, in Los Angeles, many days seem
like beautiful Spring days, but this really was a nice Spring day. I stood there motionless for a while and
eventually the bird flew off.
Calmly, I went back into the
design studio and told everyone that I didn’t feel well and I was going home
sick. I don’t even remember what I did
the rest of the day, or the next; because I called in sick the next day
also. But I’m sure I enjoyed it more
than working on that computer. My coworkers finished the work for me and they did a great job. I felt bad about dumping it, but what can
be done?
Eventually I got another job
and the company was bought out and everyone else has moved on, also. The clip looks good and I was glad to be
some small part of it, but from that day on, whenever I see a Hummingbird, I
take it as a good sign. I try to relax and savor the moment, and remind
myself that, “You do not have to do anything that you do not want to do.”
“And no one else needs to do
so, either.”
Addendum:
About ten years later, I
broke my leg in a bicycle accident and the recovery was long and tedious. The first time I felt I could walk well
enough, I took a hike in the Santa Monica mountains. This was sometime in September 2002. At one point on the way up the hill, when I
was getting tired and winded, I though I would stop under the shade of a tree
in the path and rest.
It was a small gnarled tree
with a nice spread of foliage that described the suggestion of a dome. As I rested under the canopy, and looked up
at the tree and sky and canyon, I noticed that there was a Hummingbird,
silently hovering in the space in the branches. And then I noticed another Hummingbird, and
another. “How odd,” I thought; because
Hummingbirds are not particularly social creatures.
There must have been fifteen
or twenty Hummingbirds all silently hovering in the spaces between the
leaves. They were all evenly spaced on
the edge of the tree. It was as if the
Hummingbirds were hovering in an equally spaced globe formation that perfectly
fit the size of the tree.
I do not remember the
Hummingbirds flying off.
I sat and looked at them for
quite a while, and then got up and continued to the waterfall at the top of the
trail. When I came back down the
trail, I couldn’t remember which tree it was where I saw the Hummingbirds, and
didn’t see them again on that hike.
Addendum, the second:
Upon writing the above
account, I realize that it was on, or shortly after the above described hike,
that I decided to record “Piano Christmas.”
About a month later, I recorded the music that was released later that
year. One track from that CD, “Jingle
Bells,” was licensed by Hallmark Cards three years later for a musical
Christmas Card.
A couple days after that
recording session, I decided to quit drinking (for mostly unrelated
reasons). After drinking nearly every
night for almost 18 years, I stopped.
As of this writing, I haven’t
drank alcohol in almost five and a half years.
Who knows if these events are
related? I am not even sure myself,
but it is a curious little story, and the Hummingbird is still an extraordinary
little bird.
Copyright (c) 2008, 2014 Wm Schaeffer
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