The darned rat was almost as big as he is. I heard a weird 'thud, plop, thud, splat, thud thud thud' out on the verandah and went to look.
There he was, my intrepid little killer tossing the grey carcass up and over, forward and back, skitter it along the tiles and sit on it as if you've lost it, jump up "Oh! what's this?" and start it all again.
I left him to it. The rat was dead. The cat was king of this tiny jungle.
When I went back later I almost felt sorry for the rat, its tiny paws, like hands clasped in prayer, its head thrown back, no doubt the hallmark of a broken neck, and then I saw the teeth all stained and poised to rend like needle daggers in the dark.
Sympathy fled. I grabbed it by its scaly tail and hurled it to the open lot where either dogs or ants will eat it.
If Furball wants a rat, he will have to catch another.
until last night, some twenty six years later when Fate has swung her laughing loom and woven him back in to the tapestry of my life. Oh, this is not someone I fancied, although he was attractive. Back in the day I was knotted inextricably in the worst decision of my life that burned up the decade of my twenties for the most part and this man was a see you at the parties, dance and sing with wave a merry farewll until the next time kind of guy.
Then last night speaking to the woman who may have found a home for Furball, our business concluded she said "hold on, there's someone wants to talk to you." and this rich voice that plucked at memory said "where have you been all of my life" I said, "oh, here and there like everyone, and who are you?"
A long conversation, he now married, confides his old passion (secret) for me, his desire (also secret) to marry me, although I suspect that bed me would be more accurate. Oh well, it was fun to have a moment of remembering my heyday when I was so totally unvailable that men had crushes from a distance on me.
I cannot help but wonder if someone had evinced an open interest if it might have broken through the spell that suspended me in pain as if I was a fly strayed on to resin slowly dying and becoming a jewel to be mounted and displayed in all the nicest places.
Strangely, I have no regrets for that dark time that twisted me, carved memories that took an age to fade and heal; bottom line it was my choices that forged the chains and when I made the choice they fell away as easily as feathers on a baby's breath and I learned many lessons I will not have to sit through any more.
So it is nice to know I was desired, have lived in memory across a gulf of years without the slightest contact. Perhaps I should order up a headstone that says "They never spoke, but they remembered her forever"
I have walked myself into a commitment. Not entirely unwillingly but some casual words spoken have been jumped upon and are being waved like a banner and a call to action.
Its all about the cats. I have an opportunity perhaps, to rehome Furball, essential as I plan to travel this year for myself (the CS MO meet) and will also have at least two business trips. There is no one else to rely upon to feed him and he would not flourish in a cage.
In the course of that conversation with a shelter that does not take cats - indeed offering refuge for cats is not high on any of the three possible places, one won't take them, one crams them in a room, all shapes and sizes together, and number three euthanises after 10 days- anyway, after speaking about Furball I mentioned the feral cats who visit me for breakfast.
The lady I was speaking with mentioned their spay and neuter program where they will help to cut down on the increasing feral cat population but the cats must be returned to the original habitat. I thought it sounded like a good idea and said so. I also said that I was willing to help in any way I could.
Last evening I received a follow up phone call, explaining to me how careful I need to be putting these cats into cages and saying the clinic will be alerted to expect me complete with cats to be fixed. The procedures may be put on the shelter's bill although they would be grateful for any help I can give in that department as well.
So suddenly I am committed to drive to the other end of the island by nine a.m. tomorrow to pick up cat traps and cages for my breakfast guests.
It is early morning now, and I feel a little sulky at the prospect of fighting the morning traffic tomorrow instead of my usual cunning 'miss everybody' timing and as so many people operate on Bajan time there is no guarantee that what I arrive for will be ready when I arrive, although the quick action to neuter the cat colony is reassuring on that point.
No doubt I will feel more humane and warm and fuzzy after I eat. The transition to eating again has some unforeseen challenges, it had not occurred to me that my sparkling empty digestive system did not contain a vacuum and that the advent of food would automatically shift the resident air along to make room.
I also had not realised that I would not particularly feel like eating. I miss the euphoria that overcame me on the third day, it is fading, just a little, as the body gets too busy to be carefree in quite the same way.
On the plus side (there is always a plus side) I can tell the difference between thirst and hunger and although I get sleepy at the appropriate time I have lost the dragging tiredness that used to turn the earth to mud about my ankles, and my joints don't hurt at all!
The other reason for my 'grumpy frog' morning feelings is I worked yesterday and will again today. I love my job but I did not really want to spend my whole weekend recording and editing. Also, by the time I record some hundred or so "Words of Love" from across the ages my voice will be a shadow in my throat.
Tough old life. Doing exactly what I choose to do, living the life I have created for myself and indulging in the inestimable luxury of bitching for a few minutes because my comfort level is being pushed again.
And in the background I am laughing at myself because I invite all this. I love it while I live it and while I may sulk a moment here or there the smile inside could light the world if there was a way to tap its power.
Now if only I could say to someone "Pull my finger!"
Birdsong is a counterpoint to the nasal whine of weedwhackers somewhere to the east . The oboe tones of wood doves a slow drone beneath the skitter of lightly brushed cymbals that sparrows make in their excited chat about the latest worm. The blackbirds, well, they caw. A raucous blare of sound that adds a discord to the mix and makes it textured.
Hot peppermint fights with the raw reek of feral cats, an arrogance on my back porch that will give way to bleach, and I rush to squeeze a lemon in the pan I used to simmer grouper for those same feline foggers. My own scent this morning is warm, just slightly spicy, none of the curious scents of cleansing and redemption that the fast gifted me with, and the morning itself smells damp and cool.
There is the hazy feel of water to the air, slow moving as it tastes my skin, slides a point of light across my shoulder, moving clouds apart to drench the world in colour as light comes and the morningsong moves from intermittent solos to a chorus, magic harmonies in a waterfall of notes that all alone would grate upon the ear.
I feel light, fragile translucent creature that lets the world pass through, catching fragments of dreams in the links between the spaces open so wide I find it insupportable...and yet support it easily because I do not lose myself in this eerie dissolution, I am always at the centre, pinpoint or boulder, sometimes mountain depending on the needs of the moment.
Strange fey time this morning, with knowing close behind my eyes, mouth full of words that have the answer while fingers stumble in their increasing numbness to paint a canvas that cannot be painted, cannot be seen, a symphony that sings in silence yet resonates through out existence. The aching knowledge that I do know and have forsaken waiting for me to let go and embrace lifesong.
Chilled grapefruit flowers into flavour in the warmth of my mouth. Tastebuds delight in the change from lemon, from lime, and teeth marvel at the sensation of pulverising pulp to smithereens between their grnding surfaces,
Yesterday I started moving through the process of breaking my fast. A process, because although my mouth informs me cheerfully it could handle bacon, sausages and eggs with fried bread and fried tomato on the side, my dormant digestive system might well curl up and die under such an assault.
And, a touch sadly, I suspect my momentary craving is just that. Momentary because the thought is followed by a mental revulsion so strong it is hard to believe it occurred in my brain. Likewise the thought of steak and onions, each rare and crispy in their turn pales in appeal before the image of a perfectly poached salmon fillet dressed in dill with a supporting cast of multi hued vegetables spiced with garlic and a touch of curry.
Right now the bitter bite of citrus lines my throat and makes my mouth water, the juices starting to flow, the system waking up and stretching, just a little sullen at being disturbed from so rare a rest.
Two days on fruit and juices, then vegetable broth until I graduate to brown rice, all organic for the moment, while I chart my nutritional course anew uncluttered by the habits of the last two years gathered so easily in the benign neglect of diet in the face of work and massive changes in my life.
Until now I have merely suffered through two days of raging hunger; I never knew the total experience and beauty of letting food go long enough to still the engine, let it rest. I am a skeptic, not buying into rapture till I taste it for myself and I tasted the fullness of life in the emptyness I imposed upon my system.
A dramatic increase in energy, joint pain gone, and a deep abiding joy that bubbles up from some inner wellspring I have not tapped in quite some time. In fact I remember the last time I felt this joy, five years ago in winter, in New York.
I had just launched myself in a two footed jump to splash in a huge, slushy puddle, shrieking with laughter and hollering at my two friends " 'Ware water!" I could see their faces half-stunned in disbelief, half laughing at the madness of it all and for a moment I was just there, suspended, inches from the surface and all was right with the world.
Fasting is still not something I would undertake lightly, I needed to listen to the messages my body sent; pay attention to the progress and the changes, all along marvelling at the miracle we are, this organism that knows how to live without our help, but I will make it part of my life, spring and autumn as the ancients did because the last ten days have shown me that I can be there again.
With all right in my world.
Each day begins. It has a middle and an end like any good story. In the confines of time between dawn and sunset (really only half the day's allotted twenty four hour span assuming twelve hours of daylight for the purpose of this comment) humankind can work wonders of creation or destruction.
We tend to think of destruction as a 'large scale' word, denoting wars and governments and those of power. Sometimes we need to look closer to home. At what we do or do not do. We need to take account and see how we add up in the destructive stakes today.
Did we return a greeting or did we push blindly by? Did we take time to answer a young'uns question, asked for the umpteenth time but driven by the needs of the young to be in context, to be in territory they know, or did we tell them more or less sharply to be quiet, or even to 'shut up'? Did we respond to a smile? When a loving hand brushed through our hair or over the curve of our behind did we smile and say "Later" or did we snap "Not now!"?
How many little knife slashes have we dealt to the fabric of our lives from dawn to sunset? To strangers, family members, co-workers? how many to ourselves? The look in the mirror accompanied by the internal thought "You stupid ...you fat...you ugly..you boring...you unlucky...." the unwitting stumble on the stairs that elicits a harsh 'you clumsy idiot' instead of a pause and internal check to see your precious self is all intact.
We slash away, unthinking, and then in the darkness huddle close about our wounds and wonder why our life has the taste of ashes and despair. Why we are alone, unsought, unloved. We cry and pray, lamenting our misfortune, blaming the world and sometimes even though we don't believe, a god we think is failing in its job.
What can we do? Poor powerless naked apes abandoned here to conjure with rocks and metals. We can look around, return favours, ignore insults and look into the mirror at the miracle we are, no matter how far from our ideal, and we can offer first to love ourselves thus opening the door to loving others.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
It is our judgment as we look that catalogues the world.
Night falls, day breaks, where do these phrases originate? Is it that day "breaks" the hold that night has on the sky, the world - at least one hemisphere at time?
Is night gathered in a little ball high up in space waiting for release at sunset? Where does it fall from? Space?
I watch the onset of the day most mornings, circadian rhythms deep in tune with the movement of Apollo in the east so that I wake just as the sky is paling, night retreating, gathering her skirts of dark about her, folding up the tent that has made home for the stars and sliding off, a slow dilution into light the only thing that marks her passing.
For me, the sun is inextricable from day; the entrance in the east a burning spear of light heralded by banners of pink, of lavender, a gaudy show of power as the golden touch brings colour back into the world, multi-hued midas banishing the gentle greys and subtleties of nightime with a blare of pageantry and pomp.
I love the night. Its gentle songs and lullabies creating magics I am blind to in the brazen light of day; the night is time suspended, no hot golden orb ticking across the sky marking all our moments with a shadow now long, now short, now long again, inexorable momentum to the future measured in the steady turn of east to west.
Night is constant , whirling in one place, kaliedoscope not metronome, giving time to hold the wonders of the world inside your heart. To drink your fill of them and even overflow and capture moments of the magic in a phrase or two sometimes.
At least I hope so.
I am very ambivalent about housework. It is one of the more frustrating things in life, like eating, you cannot do it once and for all and have done with it . Yet there is the instant gratification of seeing a change.
Washing the car, on the other hand, is a task I love. I invariably get soaked and filthy doing it and throw myself into it with such gusto that I sweat enough to leave salt crystals on my skin as the sun evaporates the moisture.
Today I washed and polished and reorganised the boot, all my essential fluids neatly boxed, the air compressor, the jack and various tools, the useful funnels for guiding those essential fluids where they belong, the neat bulb thing for topping up the battery cells, spare light bulbs, spare fuses, all in one place and the spare as clean as the tyres on the car.
I, of course, am wilted and sweaty but happy. just cooling down a bit so I can give myself a thorough skin brushing before my shower and also replacing the water I have poured into the air.
I have decided to push the limits of my fast today and just drink water, no juices. I checked in with a doctor friend first to see just how much damage I could do and the answer was none. Apparently one can fast until there is a deep feeling of hunger at which point it is time to return to eating as that is the point that fasting becomes starving, a condition that leads to death.
Anyway, one day on water alone is not going to do me any harm and I am curious to see if I can do it. It is eight days since I have had solid food and I feel remarkable. It is actually a bit of a struggle to come and write here because my spirit tugs me outside, it wants to interact with nature and with people but the writing too is part of the discipline.
Naming the things I do and feel gives me full ownership and responsibility, grounding me firmly in who and what I am. By midweek my joints stopped aching and the dragging tiredness I have lived with for years was gone completely.
Of course I had a pounding headache and my mouth tasted like something had crawled in there and died but that passed by the fifth day and now my gums are clinging tightly to my teeth, no bleeding when I floss. Many trigger points that were too sensitive to touch are painless while others have subsided enough for me to work them and release the tensions I am holding.
I have become simplified. happy, sad, angry, tired. No overtones just simple recognisable feelings that flow in and out, not staying long, just ripples on a deep abiding sense of...nothing is the only word that fits. A good nothing. Cloud drifting nothing. Stream babbling nothing. the closest I can get to defining it - hampered somewhat by the fact that I am not particularly bothered if I cannot define it - is that I have no opinions, no judgment, no commentary in my head. just nothing.
Kind of like my whole digestive system lots of nothing!
Right this moment it feels as though life is a spiral and I can look back across the curves down to the very centre, the moment where I ceased being a possibility and became a reality.
An unintended unexpected reality - my parents wedding night was cursed or blessed depending on the point of view with faulty contraception and nine months later to the day I made my first annoyong mark upon the world.
Looking back across the coils and convolutions I have turned life into I realise the amazing joke that life plays. For each year I live I seem to relinquish some bedrock certainty. I know so much less now than I did when I was born, a squirming yellow bundle - I was jaundiced - who contained the answer to the meaning of life. And promptly forgot it when I began to talk.
So many things I knew for certain, would have fought and sacrificed over have become mere possibilities in a world filled with different paths to take, different decisions to make.
My studies of philosophy no longer enthrall me, do not capture me in impassioned rhetoric and long late night discussions because when all is said and down and we pick our bleeding selves up of the floor of some sawdust strewn after hours bar it is all theory. All opinion.
Oh, I have my favorites of course and I read Epictetus and Aurelius with great joy and rich enjoyment as I read Suzuki, Russell, Schopenhauer or Zeek. And some will mutter to themselves that these are not all philosophers and that surety will make me smile. I used to have it myself, but no more.
In fact I think the spiral is inverted in my life. It starts on some farflung wide unimaginable curve and tunnels down through layer after layer of perception to the singularity of truth that I will know without a doubt in the moment that I expire.
From know it all to know nothing to completion. An admirable path. I am beginning to suspect fasting holds surprising secrets in its emptiness. Nothing in, everything out, tabula rasa all over again.
I really am enjoying this.
being the only poster in a thread the OP does not respond to? Oh heck I know it is all about ego but just because I play nice does not mean I don't have one!
I have also become quite good at predicting which of my poems are likely to slide off the page without a comment. It took a while to realize it is less a comment on the quality of the writing and more about the content. I understand, but there is more to me than dawns and sunsets, love songs, and my philosophy is not the kind that batters at the big questions, what is life, why are we here. It really doesn't exercise my mind that much.
I am here. I get on with it. I have little questions like what happens to a thought when if flits across my mind and disappears, apparently forever? Does it recycle and sneak out later in some other guise? Does it suffers as it dies? Does it have a feeling of its own about being fleeting?
And why, when I can hold something so clearly in my mind's eye are there times when my hand cannot see what my eye does? Cannot translate the impulses I am sending down the nerves into what I WANT to draw?
Why after years of attempting to fast, for various reasons, and eating after six or seven hours am I suddenly able to transcend hunger, what makes this attempt to give my system rest and time for healing different from the last twenty times I tried and did not make it?
looking back I have to laugh, because i never actually cared that I "failed". I gave it my best shot and if that was only six hours so be it. I am not inclined to suffering as a way of life. Tried it and gave it up, the only time I have ever been bored. Although a part of me looks on in half admiring wonder at the convolutions souls can put themselves through.
They must be having fun on some level or they would find a door out of themselves. That's what I learned, the door is always there, sometimes it has a really huge sign on it too, saying you can change this. Problem is, it takes work. Sometimes a lot of nasty tedious painful work.
After the first 24 hours on a fast, the pain of hunger goes away. The pain of withdrawal from caffeine starts in but that washes away with water. And the body is amazing! It processes stuff so thoroughly and efficiently when I don't get in its way. I thought I would feel weak but no, I am actually bursting with energy. And perhaps a little more in tune with the inner workings of body mind and spirit than is normally comfortable.
So I felt like bitching and I did and it felt good. Life is. I embrace it with my arms wide open as often as I can. And when I die, as die we all must, they can put upon my headstone, "She wasn't much for the big questions, but she lived!"
Every now and then my ease with words collapses. They cease to rise, pure hydrogen balloons of concept and conjecture, to bounce impatiently against my fingertips or lips, seeking exit to the larger world to see how they stand up when touched by air, by light, by alien persective that has not sprung within the corners of my mind.
Today my head is dumb. All cluttered with the leaking brakes that set a christmas tree of lights to blinking on my dashboard; peripheral neuropathy sings and has its increasing way with opposites, both numbness and exquisite pain residing in the confines of my skin.
I keep looking down to see the bracelets that I do not wear and yet can feel encircling my wrist, my ankle. My fingers stutter more each day across the keys and fear flowers as I wonder if the lack of feeling on the left side of my lips heralds a drastic slackness that will take articulation from my voice.
The laws of attraction operate, so I believe, so when I ponder why I have brought failing brakes into my life I need to look at what avenues they open to me. Time spent at the mechanic. Certain knowledge that I will not fix this with some minutes spent with Google and some pliers. A pathway to a new car, to time spent at home.
The shutting down of sensation combined with exacerbated sensitivity to touch is more difficult. I cannot see the subtleties beyond the instinctive fear of failing organs, fear of losing my autonomy, my drive, my forward motion while I have so many plans in various stages of design, conception, near completion.
And now my words feel laboured, granite blocks I'm heaving to the surface from some outdated subterranean mine that drips and gleams with phosphorescent life forms not meant for human eyes. I'm like a redirected synapse, firing out of sequence, sputtering across the lawn of my day half lit, but still not burning with the true and steady flame I know as mine.
The stranger knocking at my door is me without a map to this part of my journey and in my head I hear the unknown voice of Joko Beck say learn your ABC's. Time to repot, time to push the edges out and find and be A Bigger Container. Why does it always hurt to grow?
I always feel a vague sense of dismay when I come to the blog section and realise that I will have back to back entries if I blog. Unless someone posts before I finish typing, which happens far less frequently here than in the forums.
The main reason I have never understood the popularity of the one above threads. Unless it was a slow time, it is entirely possible that my comment would be juxtaposed to a profile that would not fit my preferences and could create a misunderstanding. It is always unfortunate if one person is joking and the other is serious.
Day is dawning on uncertainty. A new, inexperienced, cabinet will be formally sworn in by Friday. The DLP have appeared to have internal leadership problems over the last two years. Indeed the party leader actually crossed the floor and joined the BLP.
They accepted him and placed him high in the ranks, which I think contributed in a small way to last night's defeat at the polls. The voters viewed him as a traitor; a party that rewards a perceived traitor with high office takes on a taint that exacerbates the human restlessness that builds when one party is in power for a long time.
The highway reconstruction project has been dragging on for years and proposes to spend about USD 60 M to add flyovers to our land scape. Completion was promised to coincide with Cricket World Cup last April, a venture supposed to bring a great deal of money and positive energy to the region.
The West Indies team played very badly and the government was left with a hugely expensive stadium, disastrously underattended matches marred by ludicrous security and rules about foodstuffs etc. which interfered with the way we bajans enjoy our game of cricket.
From the public's point of view, it bombed. Additionally many people went into debt adding rooms to their houses to reap the benefits of renting space to the enormous influx of people forecast to be attending. Instead locals were taking cruises between the islands at heavily discounted rates so the cruise ships were not travelling completely empty back and forth through the Caribbean.
My neighbours paid for six less than the price of one regular ticket, ten days on board with all meals, all amenities. Hotels sat empty, as did many of the luxury rental villas, as regulars stayed away in droves; expecting Barbados and its services to be overrun with beer guzzling sports fans.
There was a perception that our government mislead us, failed us and spent our money poorly. The highways are still unfinished, a daily reminder of promises not kept.
When your leaders seem to be failing you, the feeling that something needs to change becomes overpowering for many. In a democracy we can, and did, vote them out. If a government allows the many to become discontented and untrusting and the many hold the power to vote the government has, figuratively, shot itself in the foot.
In Barbados the people have spoken and many politicians who were brash and self important yesterday have lost their seat; have been voted out by their constituents who complain they haven't seen their candidate in the last five years.
I have always thought that the relationship between our leaders and the populace is like a marriage. And just as in matters of the heart, true and open communication is essential. Promises must be kept, and the energy of the relationship must not be allowed to stagnate or take on the flavour of complacence. Transparency has to be more than just a catch phrase. Or someone will start thinking about divorce.
bajanblue Blog (295)