On most mornings I can spot a red cardinal outside my back window. As I write these words, he’s there now, just beyond the railing of my terrace, his chest puffed outward, the bigshot dictator of his territory. He’s taken up a comfortable residence in the area just beyond my window, mostly in a nearby tree, occasionally perched on the terrace railing, and I can’t help but read his pose as confident and calm and pretty much indifferent to human activity. Of course he does sometimes fly away for what appears to be urgent cardinal adventures, yet he’s almost always within view. Both of us seem to live on the third floor, though my address is just a bit more precise.
I’ve seen a few female cardinals, too, but they seem a tad suspicious of him, considering how quickly they flee from his call. With his fiery red coat, he does, I admit, look ridiculous and not at all camouflaged for the grays and blacks of mid-December, and perhaps that’s the problem. He’s forever the overdressed bright red dot outside my window, 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 in the distance, but the red cardinal persists in his stoical, almost blithe attitude, more concerned with the next gust of wind, with the disturbing lack of female cardinals in our neighborhood, than in the trivialities of the 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 city’s heart. Amid all the commotion and hustle and importance of the city center was a family of ducks, utterly indifferent to the seriousness and the stress of those hurrying past.
From my window I could see 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, the tiny ducklings struggled forward in obvious strain, determined to paddle at their parent’s pace, which seemed, from my vantage, more than inconsiderate based on the smallness of the ducklings.
For all their insouciance about living in the center of a capital city and surrounded by government buildings—the Palace of Parliament in the distance, gigantic, obnoxious; politicians and bureaucrats always sprinting past—there’s a fair amount of stress to duckling life. I’ve learned that few ducklings cope with the trials of duck childhood and pass all the youthful exams—most of them fall behind and end up, well, as somebody’s lunch. And sure enough I watched over the days as the dozen ducklings became ten, then eight, until, without any warning, the parents had a small family of two or three. Those parents corralled the survivors onward with seeming disregard to the dwindling numbers and with what appeared to be a rather steely stoicism.
Adolescent ducks have a clear longing to fly, though the visceral need to flap their wings comes before they have the ability to fly, so I did see a week of forceful liftoffs and hard crashes before anything close to flight occurred. Yet, once that moment arrived, the still youthful ducks revealed their inner Kerouac: once they flew, they soared away from home, never to return.
I couldn’t find a similar family of birds to watch consistently when I stayed in Brazil for an extended period, even though the country has stolen nearly all of the gaudy species. A large chunk of the world’s birds reside in Brazil and those birds seem perfectly content to stay. What I discovered, right in the heart of São Paulo, however, came with an understated name that didn’t fit its vivid greens: The Plain Parakeet. Only in the saturated, stunning atmosphere of Brazilian colors, in fact, could an electric green be described as plain. Even in the city center I found these birds easy to spot. I simply had to tilt my head upward, just above the bustling crowds and music and excitement of São Paulo, to uncover a hidden community. Always in large flocks, always looking 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 triggered someone to stop, peer into the sky, and then discover that I had merely spotted a few 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, stories about the reverberations of ongoing protests, reports on opposition groups in faraway states, information about unnerving military buildups, research about the cataclysmic potential of our latest technologies. Reading each of these stories has its influence, however infinitesimal, and that measures from a simple 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 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.