Anyone poking about in newspapers or on the Internet lately might have come across a couple of essays expressing a view that seems to pop up seductively in public discourse whenever the weather turns warm. Like a view of cool woods from the window of a stuffy classroom in spring, this idea offers the deeply restful allure of zero intellectual content. It is probably not just a coincidence that both essays were published May 1, when thoughts of summer really begin to stir in the Northern Hemisphere.
The first was by Mr. Lance Morrow, who writes a major weekly essay for Time magazine and also a shorter "Web-only" essay for Time's online site every other day. (No wonder he succumbs to the temptation to put his mind into neutral once in a while.) Early on May 1, Mr. Morrow was sitting in his study at his farm in upstate New York, doubtless cudgeling his brain for the day's essay topic, when a cardinal suddenly flew at the window, beating its wings against the pane in an effort to get in, not once but repeatedly, evidently confused by the sunrise reflected in the glass. Mr. Morrow watched, fascinated, for a while and then was struck by a stray literary memory. "I think," he wrote, "of the wonderful couplet at the beginning of Nabokov's 'Pale Fire': 'I was the shadow of the waxwing slain/ By the false azure in the windowpane.' "
With that, he has his metaphor -- and his essay. After a few beautiful little paragraphs describing the agitated bird's "failure to get through to the other dimension," he concludes, "I flick on the television set. Suddenly the world comes beating its wings against that windowpane as well: Elian and Hillary and all the rest of the day's agitation trying to get in, . . . beating its wings against the window of the brain. False azure, indeed." It is perfectly done, a tiny addition to the great tradition of disengagement, Mr. Morrow's notion of "the day's agitation" taking its place beside St. Thomas Aquinas' deathbed dismissal of the world: "It's all straw."