the cardinal
...
Take a glance out of the window. What is there to behold? Stop the process of housework for Long enough to see the baby bird peering at you. Head cocked to one end, very interested in the shiny dishes--functionality aside. This gray nimble fuzzball would’ve been left uncategorized in the accounting of my mind, had it not been for a glimmer behind it that shocked the monotony away. An award-winning interior designer once wrote that every room needs either a speck, or dollop, or a whole piece that flaunts the color Red. It rescues every room from the dull. As is true in the sparse and frayed cottonwood. Where the male cardinal hops from branch to branch. A majestic kind of Red seldom found in nature. Making it the only bird I can regrettably identify. Peering down at me, clinging to a haphazard standard of cleanliness, was a baby cardinal under the watchful eye of Red and maternal worry. A family of three. One glance away. Vanished. And something within me knew why. Flight training. The helicoptering parents gave it away. Running outside with my dish towel still hung over my shoulder, I watched this baby bird go from stringed lights to its home on the cottonwood to the edge of the rooftop. Followed diligently by mom and dad like a pair of F-22s protecting a payload. The peering, the color, the family angst, it screamed of a design. One that I was familiar with in my own habitat. And yet, as much as I was drawn into it and could spell out the beauty, it felt impossible to forcefully stir up the sense of wonderment. Fixating harder wasn’t cutting through the core. The veil didn’t have an opening that day. This is an insecure place where I have found myself: Able to objectively identify beauty without feeling its movement course through my chest and create a lump in my throat. A nostalgic childhood trait where wonder wasn’t as much on command as it was common. The adult days of this are different. Acting now as an invitation at random, only noticeable if I am willing to look out the window. I’ve found the readiness to be invited into childlike wonder qualitatively more transforming than the feeling of wonder itself. Sometimes the rare invitation surpasses expectation and the beauty takes flight in my soul as it ought to, but not today. Today felt more like training, and that is just okay.


https://open.substack.com/pub/ekstasismagazine/p/what-should-remain-hidden?r=3mmtew&utm_medium=ios
A beautifully succinct article. Really honing in on what I was describing in my last post, except in a much better way.
Love this Bud! But I need to get you hooked on birdwatching. To my mind it’s one of the most important things you can do