Amadeus

They say some birds sing just for the hell of it. The birds sing simply because it makes them happy. Sure, many have a mating call necessity, but this only explains certain sounds. Truth is, a lot of bird singing has no evolutionary rationale behind it, according to your top bird brains (Cornell University Ornithology Lab).

Lying in bed recently, thinking about this, I caught the dawn chirping of a cardinal out my bedroom window and concluded this fella was having a good day right out of the chute. He wasn't calling for a mate. He had one back at the nest. I've seen them together in our back yard. The guy was just happy. I looked out the window and spotted him in the Linden tree staring off toward another magenta sunrise coming up over downtown St Paul.

I pushed open the window and yelled, "Don't have to work today, eh?"

He turned and said, "Don't have much going on at all, actually."

God, what a life. All that and he's pretty too. More than pretty, he's the prettiest of them all. The blue jay gives him a run for his money but the blue jay's bitter. I don't know what's stuck in that guy's craw but he has an attitude that won't quit. Don't take my word for it, talk to the experts (Cornell University Ornithology Lab).

And not only is the cardinal pretty, stress free, and gifted with fine pipes, when he finishes singing, he gets to do something the rest of us only attempt in our dreams; he gets to fly. It almost seems unfair.

I said to him, "Going to hit the friendly skies later on?"

"Indeed," he replied. "After I wrap up the singing."

"Pretty much singing and flying then today, eh?"

"That's about it," he said.

My jealousy rose. Tell me this guy's got a natural predator of some kind, someone to potentially muck up his day. Someone other than my overweight ragdoll cat who stares longingly at those red feathers but couldn't catch a bird if it were road kill on a spit.

"I'm going downtown this morning to pay a fine for disturbing the peace," I told the cardinal.

"We don't know about those things," he said. "We do as we please."

"Yeah, well I tried to do as I pleased last night and my neighbor complained about the loud music my band was playing. So I'm bringing her a bottle of wine later today to kind of smooth things over."

"As cardinals, I can't say we get any complaints to speak of."

Now he was just getting cocky. Pouring it on solely to stick it to me. I'd take the blue jay's overt nastiness over this passive aggressive b.s. Who does this guy think he is?

"Well, your life expectancy isn't anything to write home about," I blurted out.

That was petty. What followed was a long silence. I'm sure the line sounded a bit out of left field. Frankly, I don't know what got into me. Jealousy over a bird? Clearly it was time to splash cold water on my face, make coffee and get on with the day.

But then he started singing. He again began producing those pleasurable notes of varying tempo and meter. Suddenly I had empathy for Salieri, hearing Mozart for the first time, in Peter Shaffer's play, Amadeus.  Not that I was going to allow myself the jealous rage that drove that troubled Italian to the bug house. But I understood how small he had felt, how he came to call himself the patron saint of mediocrity after failing to come close to Mozart's genius.

The deceptive simplicity of that cardinal's call, the beauty in the clarity, the unadulterated purity, the richness in the tone, the joy, the living joy in every note. I listened the way Salieri listened, well aware I was hearing the voice of God, well aware it was sweeter than anything I could ever produce.

No, I wasn't going to let envy do to me what it did to Salieri. It was time to just appreciate that some creatures on this planet have it made. And some have to get up, clean their ears, unclog a toilet and go pay fines.

Throughout that day I heard the cardinal's song off and on, louder and more distinct than any competitors in the neighborhood. I didn't really want to be a cardinal, I concluded. At least I didn't think so. I just didn't want to be me on this particular day, and the cardinal probably never had a day when he thought such a thing.

In the evening the red bird was the last one singing before the neighborhood went dark. I know that I wasn't blaring anything anymore. I went to sleep thinking about my neighbor, and the bottle of wine she took from me, how she looked at it, determining if it was a fair trade for a disrupted evening. I thought about the cardinal who knew no disruptions, and I thought about the long line at the violations bureau at City Hall and the woman there who told me I couldn't pay with a credit card and would have to come back on another day when I had cash or a check to cover my fine.

And I thought about Salieri. He wanted a life he could not have. The seemingly pleasant existence he was given wasn't enough for him. So he ended his days mumbling incoherently in a crude asylum, far, far from the beauty of those notes that had first told him there are finer things in this world than himself.