99 Stories of God

37. The Brain

Even though our suspicions are usually aroused by those people who profess too much interest in saving the environment, people who harvest the water and the sun and so forth and maintain steaming mulch piles and kitchen gardens, we do on occasion visit the Lancasters, because oddly enough they give very pleasant cocktail parties. They had made quite a lush oasis around their home and were proud of the variety of wildlife that was attracted to it. They were also of the belief that birds wanted their privacy, and they strove to provide the illusion of privacy so that even with all the feeders and tree guilds provided, the birds were as invisible as God when we went over to visit the Lancasters for cocktails at dusk.

Our houseguest, who had been responsible for Victoria Secret’s water bra marketing fiasco of the decade before but still pulled down a good salary in retail, was astonished that the Lancasters would put up bird feeders where no one — neither the Lancasters nor the guests they were ostensibly entertaining— could see the birds. She said it was contrary to the very wiring of the modern brain, even the altruistic part of the brain. In her position of analyzing consumers’ habits and decisions, she took pleasure in attending seminars on the brain. She did grant, however, that there was a great deal about the brain and consumers’ buying and leisure habits — particularly consumers who owned their own homes — that she did not know. That was why hers was such a fascinating field.