Yesterday, waiting in suburban New Jersey for a train,  I looked up and saw the scene below on the telephone wire looming right above the train platform. I knew that the birds would disperse as soon as the train arrived, and in fact the lights of the train were getting close. I quickly snapped this photo.

It’s not that I needed any proof of Alfred Hitchcock’s brilliance. But yet again I was reminded that — for me at least — there has never been a filmmaker who so skillfully and insidiously plays with my fears, anxieties, and obsessions, not to mention leaving  haunting, mental residue that lasts for decades.

It was Tuesday, September 19, 2017. And, just for a moment, I felt like I was living in the village of Bodega Bay, California depicted in Hitchcock’s The Birds

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