"P" is for Pigeon

Dr. Promilla Bazmatti Coen, Head of the Pataphysical Research Division here at the Red Ignatz Society was kind enough to forward me these notes for her current work-in-progress: an upcoming entry to the society’s Pataphysical Dictionary. This entry "P is for Pigeon" was inspired by a piece of recent mail art we’ve received, which, incidentally, inspired my own hand-painted "pigeon envelope" posted on 27 July. Here is an excerpt from Dr. Coen’s dense, inscrutable, but more or less, partially illuminating article.

P is for Pigeon

Dr. Promilla Bazmatti Coen

Alfred Jarry Chair of Pataphysical Research

Imaginative History Division

RED IGNATZ SOCIETY

…the pigeon is one of the world’s most mysterious birds, its origins unclear and not entirely consistent with known theories of evolution; it may be of extraterrestrial origin. Infamous for its uncanny powers of psychic persuasion and its ability to predict future events, it has been utilized since the beginning of the nuclear age by quantum physicists in determining wave-particle fluctuations and remains the most reliable known method of determining such fluctuations in and out of the laboratory. For years prior the pigeon's distinctive head-bob was an ornithological mystery. It was Erwin Schrodinger who at last solved the enigma. The pigeon, he determined, is simply observing: particle-wave, particle-wave. Shrodinger famously quipped to his fellow scientists, "Is the cat alive or dead? At any given moment, only the damn bird knows for sure."

The fissionable material in one pigeon is enough to obliterate a city the size of Amarillo and did, in fact, do so on April 12, 1961, though a duplicate Amarillo was built a few miles away in preparation to disguise this catastrophe from the public. The pigeon is known to trigger aneurysms and seizures in epileptics and other similarly susceptible individuals at distances of up to two-hundred-seventy-five yards and there is credible evidence that this was the method used in several (failed) attempts orchestrated by Laventry Beria  (unsubstantiated) on the life of Josef Stalin before he died, ostensibly of a stroke, in 1953.

The pigeon’s affinity for statues has been well-known since the days of the earliest pharaohs and thus it’s designation as the “stone bird” whose origin is the moon (see G.I. Gurdjieff). As such, the pigeon has always been considered a funerary bird, a messenger between the living and the dead, and recordings of its distinctive cooing played back at variable speeds have revealed instances of what are today considered genuine communications with the deceased. In popular culture, the bird has often been portrayed in film as a favorite of boxers (ie. Marlon Brando in “On the Waterfront”) who are depicted as cultivating them in tender moments housed in homemade rooftop coops and this has led to real-life boxers such as Mike Tyson doing the same, keeping pigeons as a hobby. In literature there is ample evidence to suggest that it was the pigeon, not the raven, that was the true subject of Poe’s most famous poem. Dr. H.A. Palynsomowitz suggests the substitution of the raven for the pigeon was intentionally meant to mislead and Poe was under dire telepathic orders from the bird itself to do so. Still the poet left hints as to the true identity of the “bird of ill-omen.” Aside from intertextual clues too specialized to go into here, Dr. Palynsomowitz notes that one can find the letters necessary to spell the word “pigeon” in the name Edgar Allan Poe, a statistical anomaly. The missing “i” Dr. Palynsomowitz argues—to what degree of persuasiveness I leave it to the reader to decide—can be assumed for who else would be writing the poem than I, Edgar Allan Poe. See also: “The Purloined Letter,” which Dr. Palynsomowitz suggests can be both a missive, but also, quite literally, a letter in the alphabet, in this case, that missing “i.” Is it really beyond the pale of possibility, as Dr. Palynsomowitz argues, to accept the fact that it was a pigeon, not Poe himself, who wrote all the works, poems and tales, previously attributed to Poe and that Poe himself merely took telepathic dictation from the bird. The evidence we are inclined to conclude is mounting, if not yet conclusive. (We could go on but leave the interested reader to pursue the matter further by consulting Dr. Palynsomowitz’s work directly. Unfortunately, it still awaits translation into English.) Pigeon racing continues to be a popular underground sport to this day with the birds flying distances of several thousand miles or more and wagers as large as several million dollars on a single race not uncommon. Human sacrifices have been known to be offered to increase a bird’s racing prowess. Of course, it hardly bears re-mentioning that the so-called “homing pigeon’ was the first military drone and it is now established knowledge that several pigeons were used to target Hitler’s bunker and may, in fact, be the cause of the final demoralization that convinced the Fuhrer to commit suicide, if not killing him outright.