passer domesticus
Passer Domesticus by debgrant
Dear Sir,
I know you are a Sir. I looked you up. You are dead now. Your obituary was splendid. Your life was long. People loved you. Your accomplishments are storied and shiny with medals. Your books never out of print but revered, revised and lauded. You recorded, studied, photographed, illustrated, mapped birds.
I am writing to you to take umbrage with one of your descriptions. Taking umbrage of a dead man’s work is arguably a waste of time. It is my time and I take umbrage with those who waste their time critiquing my life. The classic definition of umbrage is annoyance. The archaic definition of umbrage is casting a shadow. Your definition of a house sparrow cast a shadow on my otherwise bright morning during which I was visited by a house sparrow.
Your definition of a house sparrow that outlived you reads like this:
House Sparrow. passer domesticus. Familiar to everyone. Sooty city birds often bear a poor resemblance to clean country males with the black throat, white cheeks, chestnut nap. Females and young lack the black throat, have a dingy breast and dull-eye stripe. Less musical than a house finch.
My God, man. Life is hard enough without being deemed unremarkable. House. common. Not unique. Sooty, city, poor, dingy, dull, lacking music. You may be remarkable, kind Sir, but you have profited off the oldest and laziest human activity in the book: Identification by comparison. The Haves compared to the Have Nots. With the stroke of a pen, a uniquely and precisely created and replicated bird is condemned to not as good as…
not as bright as…
not as colorful as…
not even as sparrow as…
My God, man. I have my struggles with God too. I take umbrage with God often and have from time to time poked the Presence to see if it is dead. However, at this writing, I lean toward a Spirit very much alive which is working in your favor. According to another often-reprinted text, God is identified as knowing every sparrow in the air or on the ground. Because, dear Sir, they are well and truly made, intended for delight alone, living in the sun without the shadows of comparison. This, I hope, brings you solace because so were you, passer domesticus, so were you.
Have a nice day. Rest in Peace.
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