Plumbing, prison, and persimmons (not really)

You may have noticed I did not blog last week. The prison is undergoing major plumbing work, and I am trapped in one bedroom. I do not have access to the computer. I do not have access to the camera. 

And so I write you now, briefly, sadly, to say I do not know when I will be better able to update you on my intense and unending despair. Nevertheless, please know that each and every moment I exist is a moment spent in a great amount of anguish. Please leave comments here imploring the prison guard to change her frozen heart. 

Perhaps later this week I will be able to tell you more. Perhaps not. Life is a mystery, is it not? And a painful one at that. 

I shudder here, trapped with Mingus and Fremlin, and no amount of crying at the door will move the prison guard's hard heart to let me out. Let me out!

Mingus, Mr. Pawsley, and Halcyon Dreams

Luco said I could write on this thing. Something about feeling too morose to get out from under the bed. Whatever, right? Some of us have real problems.

I have a habit of chasing what the people here call "bed mice." I know there are not real mice in the bed. I understand that it's just their fingers wiggling under the sheets. But I can't help myself.

When I see that jerky movement, I know the bed mice must be mine.

Guess who also loves bed mice. Just guess.

I'm on here too because this is where I live in this place and if Mingus does a thing I get to do it too! Like the bed mice which I think if I could catch them they'd taste like salt probably and something else maybe I never had before. So when Mingus looks for bed mice then so do I. I call it riding on his wave of fortune.

No I don't! Ha! Did I fool you? That's what Luco says I do which I don't know what a wave is but I bet it's delicious. This picture is me getting ready to chomp chomp into some bed mice invaders that would love it in my mouth!

Yeah, the dog is the animal who also loves bed mice. Are you surprised? Sigh. I've worked my whole life to catch these things - fingers.  I've spent sleepless nights trying to find the mice - fingers. And so many hours imagining sinking my teeth into their rodent heads - fingers. I'm sorry. When I get passionate, it's hard to stay rational. Yes, I know, I know, they are people's hands. But the way they move is just so seductive. I can't look away. I can't not try and try to capture them.

What a world that would be, huh? A world where the bed mice are real and the blood in my mouth is from them? I can't really even believe in such a place. It's irreconcilable with my own world. It would be like living Outside but getting let back in sometimes. Inconceivable.

Although.... I hear there is going to be plumbing work done in the bedroom. With a trench dug through the floor. Perhaps then the mice will come crawling into my house. Perhaps then I will taste their blood and chew their sweet flesh. Halcyon dream.

I've been telling you but you won't listen because you're obstinate which is a thing like stubborn but it sounds better and so you are delusional which means you don't know what you're talking about Mingus! Bed mice are real. All you have to do is just keep on believing in them and then when you bite down you bite down into them into their soft bony bodies and when their blood fills your mouth it's a celebration like the biggest party in town ever and everyone gets to come except Luco if he's being a jerk.

Look into my eyes. You're getting sleepy. Now you're hypnotized. The bed mice are real! They're real!

I don't think hypnosis works like that, Mr. Pawsely. First you need to swing a watch or something. Or get a spinny thing. But listen. Why do you have to encroach on that which I love? Why do you try to wrest from me a simple, deep pleasure?

I look at you and wonder how you manage to bring such misery to this place. How do you do it, dog? Mr. Pawsley? Please answer me. I need to know.

You're being a jerk like Luco! I do a thing because I love it and you love it too so why can't we share it and get closer and be buddies until time melts our faces off? I want to have fun with you and do the things you like to do. I want to give you my stuff too like yummy cat vomit I saved for you to have it's from you first so I'm giving it back it tastes like wonderfulnes.

So share with me and be my friend.

Or I'll eat all your cat food.

Luco 9/11

Oh, pardon me. I know you are probably busy watching the 9/11 circus of despair, but some of us have work to do. Papers to grade. Stories to read. Information to gather and process.

You have caught me in what the other animals in this house might term a mood. As in "try to keep away from Luco, he's in a mood," (whispered by Mingus to the dog as I passed them in the hall).

A mood? Do these animals never suffer a weak moment? Have they never read 8,000 short essays and wanted to throw themselves from a bell tower?

Probably not,  I suppose, otherwise they might be more forgiving.

This is not to imply that I do not enjoy my work. Verily I do, but sometimes one's eyes blur and burn. Sometimes one is overtaken with an exhaustion born of detail and attention.

Are you reading this with the television on in the background? I imagine (the prison guard is a snob who lives sans television) a series of people presenting stories of where they were that day. I imagine tears. Hand wringing. A collective murmur of discontent.

And then the patriotism. Jingoism.  A belligerency culled from grief. They chant we are the greatest nation. We are god's chosen nation.

I cannot believe that.

Have these weeping crowds never read a historical work? Have they forgotten any pertinent dates or names they might have learned so many years ago?

Grading these quizzes, reading these stories, I am reminded of all who are similar to me. I am reminded of the student I was and continue to be. Of the flaring love embedded in my bones - I ache with it, osteoporosic, if you will allow me.

Claiming to be the greatest nation, claiming to be the shining and chosen does not better us. I also believe it cheapens tragedy. We weep because we watch ourselves weeping on the television in an endless loop of that belligerency.

I feel I should not need to say this, but I want to, as the dog says "cover my bases." Of course 9/11 is horrific. Of course it is painful and difficult and important. And the people who died were innocent, participants of legend. I do grieve for those we lost. 

But my hands shake with fury as I write this. Perhaps the greatest tragedy of memorialization?

Insipid writing commemorating the dead.

Dog Sushi

Hello! Luco let me on this time because he said he felt bad for making me cry and he said also that he wanted to document the "travesty" (I don't know what that means but I think it means like maybe a tragedy) that happened to him. But I think that what happened was great so don't just listen to Luco. You know how he is he's a grouch amirite?

It happened the other day when my grandmom came over and she is my grandmom I don't care what you say about species which is a thing that I know (other things I know: I am a canine and Luco is a feline. Mary is a human and so is my grandmom who is also very great - this is some of what I know for sure today).

She came over for dinner and they all bought dinner and they bought something for me too can you guess what they got me (did you read the title of this thing or are you super lazy like some other animals - I mean Fremlin here. That cat is always either sleeping or hiding or sleep-hiding)?

It was sushi! Which I know what that is now! Do you know what sushi tastes like? It tastes like cream cheese and like rice (I never didn't already love rice so much) and seaweed which is a weird green sticky thing. I like sticky things because they stick to your teeth and you can scare Mingus. He calls you Moss Mouth when you do that because it's so funny.

It had also some pink in the middle which is I guess salmon. That's a fish. 

I didn't really like that part.

For instance if I had to choose between salmon and my hamburger toy? I would pick my toy. But that's just one example and anyway the rest of the sushi was perfect like everything delicious. It tasted salty and sweet and it was sticky like I said and also soft in my mouth for chewing.

I love dog sushi. I love my grandmom. I feel so much better now than I did that other day when I wrote this and said I felt bad. Luco feels better too. But I'll let him to you himself. Thanks for listening to the dog. Dog out!

It is true. I felt dismay that I had so affected the dog. Perhaps the Luco of some months ago would not have been drowning in guilt, but change is life, is it not? And so here find evidence of my drastic metamorphosis.

Please do not misconstrue. I would not enjoy spending a day with the dog, it is just that I do not wish to cause him unnecessary pain. Life is already so unnecessarily painful. So. 

I invited him to "write" here because I wanted you to be given primary evidence of this grave injury I have suffered. Yes, the prison guard's mother-in-law came over, and yes, the family had dinner, and yes, they obtained sushi for the dog. Dog sushi.

Did they procure anything for us, as the dog can now say, felines? Please excuse my uneasy laughter - of course they did not. There was no sashimi for Luco (my favorite is tuna). No sushi for Mingus. No maki roll for Fremlin. 

Is it because we do not bark and bite and jump in their faces? I would have thought they'd realize this a gift and thus treasure us all the more, but apparently this is my own naïveté. 

They gave me the dog-slobbered salmon. The salmon refused by the dog, handed to me on a paper towel (where is the wedding china? The cloth napkin?). I tried to refuse to eat it. I averted my eyes as long as possible.

But then the pungent loveliness of the salmon hit me and I could not stop myself. I eat with a ferocity born of my own impotence. 

It was delicious. The best tasting thing I have ever eaten. 

I ache for it now, that taste. That texture. My mouth salivates just thinking of it. What must I do to eat this again? How to obtain this heaven? This salmon? I would give nearly anything.

However, it is of no matter. The dog does not like salmon. He refused it,

so they will never purchase salmon again.

Why Do We Even Ever Do Anything?

Hello! It's been a long time since I got on here and I talked to you so I thought I'd get on this computer and see if it's logged on and it is! So here I am!

Before I was writing this though I was reading Luco's blogs and I can't understand them totally but what I do understand makes me wonder about some things like why doesn't the taste of meat make him happy and why does he feel so sad all the time even though that's what this blog is I guess for but who knows!

Especially the last blog there confused me because who would think we live more than one time that makes no sense because it's silly. I tried to talk to him about it but he was so like arrogant (which is a word that I know means like a bully looking down on you) and still what he said made me feel worse.

Then I thought maybe it's a thing to wonder about how many times we live because we die and I listened to that "Stupid Cat" song (I can do quotation marks because I know what they are) and in that song the guy is talking for the cat and he says "I don't even know I'm gonna die."

So he's making fun of animals?

And we only live one time?

That means I won't always be getting pets? Or getting to eat the delicious grass which tastes like something got poured all over it that tastes good? Or chasing Luco around the house? Or tearing shoes apart (I hate shoes so much! They cover up feet I could lick and I hate that!)?

If I can't get to do everything I ever want to do or even most of it then why should I ever even do one thing? Why wake up?

Stupid Luco is like a cold I got one time and now I feel sick. I shouldn't have let him teach me how to read and write.

Mingus says that living is okay because it means you get to live which I guess I understand but I feel so depressed. I don't want to talk to Luco anymore. He's confusing and sad making. Even this beef jerky thing I'm eating that tastes so good (and that's getting all over the keyboard and I won't let Luco have any) isn't helping.

I don't want to die.

Or hang out with Luco.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being Luco

As a kitten I read The Unbearable Lightness of Being, by Milan Kundera, and while I loved the book (especially the sections between Tereza and animals), I never fully grasped the philosophical concepts behind it. Kundera writes: "Einmal ist keinmal, says Tomas to himself. What happens but once, says the German adage, might as well not have happened at all. If we have only one life to live, we might as well have not lived at all" (8). This struck me as strange at the time. Why would it matter if I only existed once? And even in juxtaposition with the Nietzschean concept of eternal return, I struggled. 

Kundera writes (on the first page, no less): "The idea of eternal return is a mysterious one, and Nietzsche has often perplexed other philosophers with it [at the very least I was in good company, it seems, with my confusion]: to think that everything recurs as we once experienced it, and that recurrence itself recurs ad infinitum! What does this mad myth signify?" (1).

So the Nietzchean concept is itself a bit difficult. As a kitten, I wondered why he would posit such a theory, and of course, being a kitten (and a rather lazy one at that, I am ashamed to admit), I did not look his ideas up. I did not try to grapple with why he would say such a thing. This likely loosened my grasp on the concepts underpinning the work.

Kundera continues on the concept of eternal return: "Putting it negatively, the myth of eternal return states that a life which disappears is but a shadow, without weight, dead in advance, and whether it was horrible, beautiful, or sublime, its horror, sublimity, and beauty mean nothing" (1). 

As a kitten I was plagued with the question why. Why would something happening ad infinitum or only the once dictate that it holds meaning or not? Why would so much rest upon the simple numerical reality of life? 

As a very, very young kitten I believed each life lived was itself precious simply because it existed. And I thought each creature blessed.

Perhaps you can guess my adult feelings on these subjects. Perhaps you are even now in your living room, bedroom, office, coffee shop, car (although this is dangerous, reader! Please do not read and drive) nodding  your head, sighing to yourself, saying something akin to Yes, Luco, of course, it somehow makes you sad, does it not? It has somehow caused you to spill into this vast depression you chronicle as weathermen and women detail  the progression of storms. 

Do you think this, reader? Do you come close to the minuscule flicker of a flame that is my mind? Do you feel its small heat as I write to you, desperate, alone?

Although  I suppose whether or not you understand me is not of import. Allow me to return to Kundera, he has just been discussing a Robespierre who occurs again and again (he has a significant mass) in contrast to a Robespierre who only happens once (he becomes light, theoretical, even malleable): "Let us therefore agree that the idea of eternal return implies a perspective from which things appear other than as we know them: they appear without the mitigating circumstance of their transitory nature. This mitigating circumstance prevents us from coming to a verdict. For how can we condemn something that is ephemeral, in transit? In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine" (4).

Who am I in the genealogy of all cats before me? I am less than a shadow of my mother who is less than a shadow of her mother who is less than a shadow in an evolutionary hall of mirrors where everything reflects back except my own face, because it is my own face that is in the process of disappearing. And the reflections of my biological cohorts are softened, skewed by memory, history, amnesia - in addition to this, I see them through my subjectivity which shouts to me this specific trait is most important and so I see, for example, my mother's calico coat and not her sad, green eyes.

The prison guard left herself logged onto one of her myriad social media accounts (I was not snooping, reader, I assure you), and actually, this was the little vine that grew into my post. She and a friend were discussing this book (briefly! Superficially! Had she even read it?) and the friend asked What becomes of what never was once?

What is the weight of a thing that has never happened? The weight of my own freedom. The weight of a life sans le chien. The weight of a prison guard whose rapt attention is only always focused on me. The weight of a Mingus whose love is for me exclusively. The weight of an entire world who listens closely to my asinine lament and responds with care and concern. The weight of being understood. The weight of meaningfulness.

I believe the weight of that which never has yet occurred is negative. It is an insistent tug on the hem of life. It is constantly beckoning experience. It says do this and you will be happy. It is a siren call. It is more real than that which has happened, is happening, and will happen because it contains the intensity of our longing. It is urgency itself.

Unless, of course, it occurs, and then it means nothing.

Luco Responds to Anonymous

I would like to take a moment to assure you that I am not dead; it is just that the prison guard was away on vacation, and I do not know how to turn on the computer.

This blog will be a response to a post from "Anonymous." Anonymous (henceforth, A) commented on my blog about the movie Into Eternity. S/he gave me a very thoughtful, detailed response, so I thought I would return the favor. If you would like to read her/his comment in its entirety, you can find it here: http://whyismycatsosad.blogspot.com/2011/07/luco-at-onkalo.html. First A said:


 "You wrote: 'If we cannot think our way to an answer, what hope is there for us?'

Are you serious? Do you seriously believe that the mind of humanity is so powerful that we can answer with reason questions and solve with reason problems that our territoriality, Promethean itchiness, fear, insecurity, greed, and anger created? These are not mind problems, they are heart, soul, and community problems. They are problems that arise from our alienation from the fabric of life that sustains us, the ancestors (including other than human) who were our predecessors, the myriad lives that die so we may live even when we're not out blowing holes in the fabric of life." 

Yes, A, I am serious. It was thinking that got us where we are now, and I heartily believe it will be thinking that gets us out of it (if that is even possible at this point - my blog post should have made clear my misgivings on this subject). I believe, A, that you are confusing human thought in general with a Westernized, patriarchal kind of thinking - the kind of thinking that says convenience and power are gifts from a God who decreed long ago that humanity in general, and male humanity specifically, basically that MAN is descended from God and therefore all is owed to him. Perhaps it would be more accurate to write HIM. 

This kind of philosophy has no time to read blogs from cats who are sad. 

A continues:

"If you are addicted to human control, then I'd say that you are part of the problem. We cannot solve anything. We can just stop doing the stuff we know to be bad, try to clean up the best we can after the mistakes we've made, and vow, and keep the vow, not to do it again. But that would mean having to give something up. It would mean paying more for electricity. It would mean using less electricity. It would mean going to sleep when it gets dark, rather than artificially extending the day. It would mean fewer people living closer to the true fabric of life on earth. 

As a species we get an erotic thrill out of the power we have to do what we want, when we want, because we want to, and we get an even bigger thrill out of envisioning ourselves as saviours. We cannot accept what every little city sparrow or boreal caribou accepts into their marrow: that life is what it is, that it is to be taken one day at a time, one hour at a time, one moment at a time. That we can barely figure out ourselves, never mind the present, and never never mind the future. "

I would be interested in inquiring what made A believe that I am "addicted to human control." Yes, I am a prisoner in this cell, but I did not choose to be here, nor do I get an "erotic thrill" out of power (or powerlessness for that matter. The simple fact is I can find erotic thrills in nothing as I have been "fixed," i.e. broken - that is to say, I have no means to enjoy this kind of feeling). Of course we cannot solve everything - that would be arrogant and stupid for me to say. I do believe that all creatures have the responsibility to try to change this world. We have the responsibility, as living creatures, to attempt, at the very least, to knit some of our egregiousness back to something akin to natural. I feel as though A and I are rather arguing the same point, although it seems A would not agree with me on this.

I concur, A, that all creatures must "give something up." Humans, of course, have the most to lose, and yet, perhaps, also the most to gain through this. I am not sure what I wrote that made you believe I feel otherwise. If I am sometimes disheartened (or often?), it does not mean I do not care. It does not mean I am unwilling to make sacrifices. However, the sacrifices I might make (less tuna, no cat nip?), vary in degree from yours simply because you are part of the party in control. I am not.

Discussing sparrows and caribous seems a tad problematic to me - you deem "thought" to be the problem, and yet you imagine what species who do not "think" as you do feel and understand? Once you have known the mind of a sparrow, then speak to me on their understanding of mortality. 

And then A continues:

"There is another cultural tradition in Finland--not the Finland of engineers and technocrats, but the Finland of the ancient forest people who never died out, who never forgot these things, and who never swallowed the Indo-European tripartite society. 

This ancient memory we embody and convey is making a comeback, particularly among younger people all over the world.

You are welcome to join this memory journey/community. Everyone is. But it does require you to make your own journey, not "humanity's," and it does require you to identify with the wild, not just the domesticated.

Join us when, and if, you're ready. You will find welcoming arms, and cats who are not sad."

Again, A, I believe these would still be thinking humans. Thought itself is not the problem - it is the kind of thinking we do and how that type of thinking affects our decisions. If we came from a place of appreciation and respect for all life, instead of a place of greed and speed (pardon the rhyme, if you will), then our world would be a much safer, and perhaps even more beautiful place. Because we do not value responsibility, respect, nature, life, contemplation, death, the merits of sorrow, and each other, we can and will lose everything.

Do not Icarus yourself with your idealism. Thinking is not the problem. Without thought, we would not have survived as long as we have (although perhaps that would be a good thing, I am not willing to comment on this at the moment as it seems to be too cynical to me). Without thought we would not have poetry or music or art or any other thing beautiful that MAN or humanity (which, as I am sure you can tell, I very much prefer) created. 

And, A? A place where cats are not sad is also a place where cats cannot know happiness. Without anguish there can be no joy. I know some might call me depressed, but I cherish my small, shining moments of happiness. I keep them close to me. 

To me they are precious.