(Colorado Spring Marriott at dawn. Photo Socotra.)

I put the Kindle aside. I had been reading e-Book version of Black Swan, not the psycho-sexual story of the film with Natalie Portman, but the theory advanced by Nassim Taleb that describes the impact of low-probability but extremely high impact events on societies. I had talked to an extremely intelligent government official the day before, and she had been put on the task of looking at some of the unlikely but really scary things that could go wrong- or right, for that matter.

You know, things like the Internet, or 9/11 or the Japanese Tsunami.

I put the e-reader down and looked around for my smokes. You cannot smoke in the rooms anymore. There is a note that says they will charge you $250 bucks to “Recover” the room if you do. So I go downstairs like a good boy, and was just waiting for Tammy to open up the coffee bar at six and get a jolt of caffeine.

They were kicking the crap out of Andrew Jackson on the streaming audio of National Public Radio. I listened with dull senses just coming awake as the sun edged the rim of the hills to the east.

Apparently someone was taking the 7th President’s insistence on balancing the budget and paying off the national debt as a teaching point in the current mess. The point was that Jackson’s bursting land bubble resulted in a profound and long depression.

The upshot was that somehow the incredible debt that looms over us is “business as usual,” since no subsequent Chief Executive ever seriously contemplated paying off the Treasury IOU’s we sell to interested investors. I gathered that we should take the shortfall in the budget as an appropriate course of action.

Maybe it is, and I am obsessing. But I cannot help think we are being treated as idiots and fools. Where is H. L Menken when we need him?

I shrugged into my moccasins and made preparations to head to the lobby to get a vente coffee and see if I could shrug off the feeling of impending dread. Tammy is a busty young lady from Texas, and is perky enough to make me think that maybe things were OK after all.

I added some half-and-half and three yellows packs of fake sugar and went out front to burn the first couple smokes of the day.

I was not surprised to see that the Magpies were back. They fled the area when the Springs Police and the Secret Service were camped out on the lot when the First Ladies were in residence. The birds are members of the Crow family (Corvidae) and are large birds. Not like the human versions of Raven and Magpie who are in my life. These guys are the real deal, the complete avian package. Glittering black eyes, stark black and white feathers with a hint of iridescence in the long elegant tail.

Interestingly, Magpies are the only non-mammals that are known to recognize themselves in the mirror, which I am not sure we do anymore. We have an image of ourselves that is one thing, and have gained the ability to see that in the mirror when the reality is really quite different.

They are noisy creatures, too, like us. Perhaps all the cacophony is the Magpie equivalent of bad-feather-day mirror shock. To be fair, not all cultures find the Magpie’s vocal habits so offensive. In China, the squawk of a Magpie is a sign of good fortune. And they are certainly having a better feather day than we are.

The birds pecked on scraps of snacks the officers left behind from the surveillance detail. Magpies are omnivorous. They feed mainly on the ground, eating a wide range of food, including such tasty morsels as beetles, seeds, berries, small mammals, small birds and their eggs, nestlings and even reptiles. If I had a beak that functional and large, I might consider taking that up.

I lit a smoke, and inhaled the fumes. It could be the altitude, since I am more accustomed to sea-level activities, or it could have been the time of day, half night and half day, I don’t know. But one of the birds walked up to me on his stilt-like leg. The magpie turned a dark eye to me, cocking his head.

“Morning,” I said. “How are things in bird land?”

I was not particularly surprised when he responded. I have noticed the fabric of reality to be fraying a bit since the bouts of vertigo began.

“Awk,” said he bird. “Better than in yours.”

(Even though Magpies are often seen in large groups, they are solitary nesters, forming large dome-like nests high up in trees. These lofty perches offer them a better perch from which to thrown down insults on the inconsiderate humans like me puffing outside the building.)

“What do you mean?” I asked in surprised. “You mean the budget mess? Things are going to be fine. All the folks back in Washington are getting right on it.”

“You fool,” rasped the magpie. “The budget cannot be balanced by the democratic process. That is because there are three distinct groups, none crazy, and each is acting rationally according to their own best interests.

The first of these is composed of the clients of the welfare state, who vote to obtain as many benefits as they can; the second is the taxpayers, who vote to pay as little as they can; and the last and smallest group is made up of the politicians, who can only get elected by appeasing both groups through deficit spending.”

“So, there is like no good answer without some sort of a Black Swan event that galvanizes everything in a new direction?”

The magpie looked at me with an unswerving gaze. “Of course the dark swan. Sooner or later this house of cards will collapse.  There are no good options.”

I took a sip of Starbucks and looked down at the bird.  “I’m wagering that DC will do enough to kick the can down the street, maybe all the way to 2018 or 2020.  I’d expect the smart guys will trot out Bernanke and some of the IMF folks to bless whatever Potemkin Village construct they’ll be touting as the solution to the crisis.”

The white-and-black bird launched from the pavement and beat the air with his wings. He spoke over his shoulder as he began to gain ground over the blacktop. “Ten years from now at the latest, the world economy will have been so restructured that America will no longer be able to run a game of three-card monte with your greenbacks.”

I watched the bird soar up over the brown dirt of the hill below the Marriott. I decided to make a note when I got back up to the room.

Note to self: “Sell city condo, lay in stock of dry-goods at farm. Actions to be complete NLT 2016. Hope for no more talking magpies or Black Swans.”

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com