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11 June, 1998
At home sitting in the computer chair, I stare out at the grayness of the day and ponder. My thoughts skipping from here to there, ephemeral things which neither stay nor go but simply pass through over and over again. The cat comes in as she pleases, threads her lithe body between my ankles, wanting to be scritched or fed or whatever it is which passes through her little cat-brain. I will not claim to know what it is that a cat thinks. These things are quite beyond my capacity. Of course, I do wonder if cats can hold a grudge, if they remember long enough for that. You see moving her litter box resulted in quite a mess, so I put it back and the mess has stopped. Specifically the messes on the bed where I put my feet and head to sleep. Discovering the damp spots yesterday afternoon when I came home to take a much-needed nap was exceedingly unpleasant. Her choice of placement was interesting though, on my side of the bed, precisely where my feet slip naturally under the covers. It's as if she knew that was where I was going to lie down and she had a point to make. Other than that she's a perfectly nice cat. Really. Gray day. Gray, gray, gray day. The humidity is increasing in short increments, from dry and cold a few days ago, easing into cold and damp and soon, no doubt, hot and humid. It can't stay like New England here forever. It's just not the way of things. It will get humid and I will have to close the windows and turn the A/C back on in order to breathe, much as I don't want to. Much as I would rather keep the windows open wide to fresh breezes and summer smells and the songs of the birds. I'm playing a song again ad nauseum. I should be out there doing things -- picking up the place. But I'm not. I'm here again, typing away, tap-tap-tap. Seriously, I shouldn't come in here at all if I want to get anything done. It's like a vortex this machine, these web sites, sucking me and holding me here, just tweaking one last thing forever. I'd take a walk actually, but it's so ... gray ... out that I don't want to. I want to hide my face in the covers and not resurface until night falls. I wonder sometimes what the birds are thinking too. Whether their thoughts go at all beyond the boundaries of the present moment. If the remember yesterday. If they would have stories to tell me if I asked them, if I could speak their language. The pair of doves who roost in the lower branches of the tree right outside the window, might tell me of long nights cuddled together for warmth, of how many eggs were in the last hatching, of growing old slowly fast. The red cardinal who flits about in the upper branches might tell me of his conquests, with his fierce eye and cheeky call, he is a dashing figure, but I've yet to see him attract a single female and it is already June. And my plants ... do they have slow dreams these young herbs, pushing up from underground? What might they say about the earth and the sun and the wind and water held deep in sprawling roots? I can only imagine in a human framework, limited by who and what I am. As always, grafting human symbolism onto the experience of creatures outside of my scope of understanding. Of course the same thing happens with other people too, the reaching out to understand, but only being able to through the veil of one's own experience, one's own life. So what does that mean about the relationship between each being, or better yet between a being and the essence of who they are? And what does that say about knowing people? Can you ever really know anyone? And how lonely it can be ... inside your own head ... |
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