Post by Lizzy Burnam 🐞 - Takahē

Takahē

2y

“Today I learned that Nikola Tesla fell in love with a pigeon” 🕊️⚡️

Wasn’t digging the prompt for today so I wrote about my new favorite fun fact!

#napowrimo #poetry #poets #napowrimo2023 #writers #writersofthefediverse #poetsofmastodon @poets @writers @writing @writingcommunity

Today I learned that Nikola Tesla fell in love with a pigeon She was the light of his life: one of thousands, a pigeon pure-white as a lightning bolt with gray-tipped wings as if dipped in ash. He believed they understood each other, an electric current of impossible love beating back and forth between them. I suppose not even a genius is immune to the irrationality of love. He was, after all, another soul seeking purpose in a world that refused him. At night, he took long walks to find her, and find her he always did, a beacon of peace in the cruel and waning days of his career. This is a man who declined to accept the Nobel prize alongside Edison; who discovered the frequency of the earth- heard the planet sing like a ringing bell and saw the future's precise geometry crystallize in his mind; who understood from birth the symmetry of breath and sky. In the final weeks of his life, Tesla was struck by a taxi cab and couldn't walk to his pigeon, so he left the window open for her

and waited. Later, she flew in and died in his arms. He said: "Up to that time I knew with a certainty that I would complete my work, no matter how ambitious my program, but when that something went out of my life I knew my life's work was finished." It's one of many strange and spectacular stories of the scientist's life, a testament to the wide spectrum of the progressive utility of madness. The walls we build, the wires we're bound by, the wildness inseparable from the civilized self. Both pigeons and people play their part, as do the smallest bolts and washers in holding together the meat and skeletons of great machines. Yet, all the fundamental laws of the universe can be reduced to one: To remain sane in this world is to live without love. And so, a pocketful of birdseed.

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original