This is one of the possible [[assignments for memoir]] you can choose. (T1: Communication) In Meerkat Skool’s menagerie of metaphorical denizens, a pigeon is a common, simple, unassuming but (if you look at it in the right light) wildly unique and beautiful creature. Each pigeon carries exactly one memory. Here’s a little poem I wrote in 2018 about pigeons: > pigeons carry my wisdom > gulls skirl about and hunt for flashy fish, but > pigeons carry my wisdom > corvids stern of heart impel me towards my destiny, but > pigeons carry my wisdom > laughing finches titillate and flower my mornings with fifelike trills, but > pigeons carry my wisdom > back and forth between the warring cities of my youth and now > mouth full of common nouns, this homely bird, perhaps most commonplace on earth, bobs and shuffles past my bedroom curtain, > asks: do you remember this one, dad? > if i say no, that pigeon’s dead. > when all the pigeons die, so dead am i; > put all of them and me > inside a box > and turn us into worms > and seeds and flecks and bits > to feed more pigeons If you wish, you could start collecting pigeons. You know those moments when a curiously vivid, specific, tenacious memory pops into your mind? A moment, often from many years in the past, that flashes out unbidden from the darkness, seemingly at random? Some quirk of experience that you don’t know *why* you remember, but that somehow never completely goes away? Whenever you get one of those, write it down. It doesn’t have to be a long description—just a few words will do. If it’s a true pigeon, those few words will be all it takes to remind you of exactly what it was, the next time you revisit them. Make a google doc or a folder of text files or a stack of cards with one pigeon on each—it doesn’t matter how you do it. It doesn’t matter what they “mean.” Just collect them. Then, every now and then or on a schedule if you wish, go back and pick one pigeon at random, and use it as a prompt to start writing. Start with whatever that pigeon makes you think of, and just keep going until you reach a word count (I like 750 as a starting point, but YMMV) or a time limit. See where it takes you. This is but one of many ways to play with the idea of [[memoir]]. As an actual “assignment,” this one may be better to do after you’ve been collecting pigeons for a while, but consider using one of your pigeons as a prompt for some memory-based writing. Interesting thing about pigeons: once you start to look for patterns (in the rings around their eyes, in the shimmer of their wings), you may notice that a lot of them—at least the memory kind—are intimately connected with either love or shame (or both). Mark Helprin said as much in [*Winter’s Tale*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter's_Tale_(novel)) but I can’t remember the exact quote right now. Here’s an additional bit of text about pigeons, from the unusually warm fall of 2025: > I have been neglecting the fake pigeons (for reasons) and today the real pigeons appeared (on Water Street) to remind me that I need them, whether real or fake or neither or both. Someone rode his bike right through their klatsch and they swooped towards me, missing my face by inches, moving me thru them [[the current that flows through|effortlessly as molecules of air]], then burst across the street and alighted on nearby buildings, combining, recombining, drawing crazy elegance in the air, and that’s exactly what my memories do, how our thoughts work.