Some Thoughts About A Cardinal
Here is a relentlessness that must be resisted.
Pisticci, Italy 2016
On most mornings I can spot a red cardinal outside my new back window. As I write these words, he’s there right now, just beyond the railing of my terrace, where he’s posed on a branch with his chest puffed outward, the bigshot dictator of his territory. He’s taken up a comfortable residence in the general area just beyond my window; mostly in that close tree, occasionally perched on the terrace railing. Although he sometimes flies away for what appear to be urgent adventures, he’s almost always within view. My address is a bit more precise, but it seems that we both live on the third floor.
I’ve seen a few female cardinals, too, though they seem a bit suspicious of him, based on how quickly they flee from his call. With his fiery red coat, he does look ridiculous in the gray and dark of December, and perhaps that’s the problem. I don’t know what he thinks, but he’s not exactly camouflaged. He’s forever the overdressed bright red dot outside my window. In the darkness of winter the male cardinal has the appearance of being perpetually caught wearing a tuxedo to a barbecue.
Watching him and his solitary, unanswered calls is a free pleasure, one removed from the excitement of the city around me; firetrucks and ambulances and police sirens whirl and echo from far away, but I watch as the red cardinal maintains his stoical, almost blithe attitude, more concerned with the next gust of wind, with the lack of female cardinals in our neighborhood, than in the trivialities of nearby humans.
A few years ago, during the spring months, I found myself living in Bucharest within view of the Dâmbovița, the languid river that divides the city. My desk overlooked a narrow part of this channel, right before it twisted into the heart of the city. Amid all the commotion and hustle and importance of the city center was a family of ducks, quite indifferent to the seriousness of those hurrying around them.
From my window I watched the adult ducks take regular, orderly laps, at nearly the same time every morning, until, suddenly, the two ducks became a dozen ducks, and the orderliness turned chaotic. While people on both banks of the Dâmbovița hustled past, tiny ducklings struggled forward in obvious strain, just learning to paddle ahead at their parent’s pace, which seemed, from my vantage, a bit inconsiderate for their tiny webbed feet.
Two busy streets run parallel to the Dâmbovița, but the entire duck family ignored the constant traffic and sporadic horns; several bridges crossed the water within my view, and they were almost always gridlocked, but the ducks simply took cavalier swims on the open water underneath; and I also watched as an endless parade of workers and politicians and students exited from buses along the water and headed to offices or the nearby medical school, a procession that the ducks found irrelevant; in the distance, I saw the Palace of Parliament, gigantic, obnoxious, either blocking the sun in winter or providing a nice shadow in summer, but always uninteresting to the ducks.
For all their insouciance about being in the center of a capital city and surrounded by government buildings, there’s a fair amount of invisible stress to duckling life. Watching the family each morning prompted me to research them a little, and I learned that few ducklings make the full journey to adulthood; most are eaten by predators or fail some basic test or simply fall behind. Sure enough I watched as the dozen ducklings became ten, then eight, until without warning just two or three were left. The parents still took the same laps, and still corralled the survivors onward, with seeming disregard to the dwindling numbers.
Adolescent ducks have clear longings to fly, but the visceral need to flap their wings comes much earlier than the actual ability, so I watched a week of forceful liftoffs and hard crashes before anything close to actual flight occurred. Yet, once that came, the still youthful ducks revealed their inner Kerouac: once they fly, they soar away from home, never to return.
I couldn’t find a similar family of birds to consistently watch when I stayed in Brazil for an extended period, though the country has stolen nearly all the gaudy species. A large chunk of the world’s birds reside in Brazil and they seem perfectly content to stay. Although that includes some of the most exotic and colorful and unbelievable birds, what I discovered, right in the heart of São Paulo, came with an understated name that didn’t fit its vivid greens, the plain parakeet. Even in the city center I found these birds easy to spot; I simply had to tilt my chin upward, just above the bustling crowds and music and excitement of São Paulo, to uncover a hidden community of these birds. Always in large flocks, they looked busy, even gossipy, forever caught by some drama in the plain parakeet world—uninterested in even the most fashionable people down below.
On more than one occasion, my glance upward caused someone else to stop, peer to the sky, and then discover that I had merely spotted some plain parakeets, which is not typically a bird worth noticing in Brazil. Nearly anywhere else on Earth, these birds would be admired for their brilliant green coats, but spotting a flashy bird in Brazil is as surprising as spotting a famous actor in Hollywood.
Plain parakeets don’t mind the neglect, though, and neither do the ducks in Bucharest, nor does the cardinal just outside my window, who hasn’t yet, incidentally, found a suitable reason to move. All of these birds have their own interests and regard humans as a most unworthy subject of contemplation. Perhaps that’s part of the appeal: an indifference to whether you watch, behavior that doesn’t change if you do.
On the table before me I have the latest economic news, some signals about potential treaties between states, reports on unusual troop movements, unnerving military buildups, the latest pandemic updates. Reading each of these stories has its effect, however infinitesimal; anywhere from a frown to the more noticeable boiling of blood. To enjoy the pleasures of a Cardinal isn’t to deny these realities—that should be clear—even though many people insist on having the problems of the time encompass every moment. To look elsewhere, or to smile at a small pleasure, this mindset believes, is to dismiss hard reality, but that is a relentlessness that must be resisted. Look to the Cardinal—his eyes now locked on something curious in the distance—and remain unperturbed.
Read More
