The Love for the Familiar

At the Bird Sanctuary this late afternoon: a tufted titmouse, an eastern towhee, a cardinal. A woman was also sighted coming down the path and when she got in asking range asked me what I saw. I told her. At the moment there was a cardinal not twenty feet away feeding. He was adorned in his red regal splendor. I alerted her to it. She said: "I have one in my backyard." The tone and her unwillingness to even cast a crumb of a look its way, seemed to say: It is a common enough bird and I am frankly dulled to death by its very presence. Do you wish to provoke a yawn from which I might never recover?

Yes, I suppose Shakespeare is right: familiarity breeds contempt. But I will fight for the love of the familiar and cultivate joy for the familiar dandelion as well as the exotic orchid, the common pigeon as well as the hooded warbler. For indeed they were all made exquisitely by an artist that takes great care in his work. May nothing ever grow so common that I lose an appreciation for its startling magnificence.