Poetry

“Implicit in poetry is the notion that we are deepened by heartbreaks, that we are not so much diminished as enlarged by grief, by our refusal to vanish — to let others vanish — without leaving a verbal record. Poetry is a stubborn art.”

-- Edward Hirsch, "How to Read a Poem: And Fall in Love with Poetry"

Miss Stay

Whoa, Miss Stay is back on the guest list! She was gone for over a month, and I figured she finally outgrew my Saturday night porn posts. Here I am happy with my tail wagging wildly away. Isn't it sad how low our expectations can go? A couple of years ago I was upset that she would not comment, but now it is enough just to see her lovely avatar gracing my guest list, and to know that she has some interest in my blog. She, it may be recalled, is a bona fide hottie, a foxy Aussie, the sexy stuff of any boy's wet dreams, and she even liked to post sexy pics of herself, though I suppose she is now fading away into her thirties. Who knows, maybe she even has a kid of her own in tow by now.

I am surprised she bothers to blog at all. She still posts occasionally at her Tumblr, but it is as though she just feels a need to keep the torch burning, like she is not sure she wants to drop this part of her life behind her - so she keeps a light on, so to speak. This behavior plays with my first assumptions when I came into the blogging life in the spring of 2003, that the beautiful people would tend not to waste their precious youth behind a keyboard, that e-life cannot compare to real life when you have the face and body that brings the boom to the room. Well, I now know that this is not really true, as there is a lot of time in the day to do a lot of things, and a pretty girl can appreciate the freedom of talking to guys without worrying about being pawed, roofied, and worse. The main point here, I suppose, is that LiveJournal is more dead than live, and I am not a pretty white boy, and I ought to know that this is just never going to be very fun for me ever again.

Cats

I'm reading, standing up as usual. Ash is lying down at my feet, and Coco comes over and lies down next to us. I can't resist. I put the book aside and reach down with both hands. "Double belly-rubs! Double-play! I've made a double-play!" They meow and wave their paws about.

Cats and Storms

A nasty storm crashed over us a couple of nights ago. It was a particularly rude surprise, since we were supposed to be coming out of this rainy spell, but I guess Mother Nature had some unfinished business to take care of and doesn't want to be taken for granted. The lightning was so bad that the night would flash into day - night, day, on, off, night, day, like a decent horror film. I marvel that the electricity didn't go out, which usually flickers out with just a harsh wind and a hint of drizzle, or sometimes when it just feels like it. At one point, I am pretty sure we even received some hail. It would have been a nerve wracking night for me if the cats had been caught outside in it, but they have been in practically for the whole week and were still inside. And the storm lasted hour unto hour. And it was still wintry cold.

One surprising note about Coco: in the midst of this apocalyptic din, she still longed to go outside, yowling at the kitchen sliding-glass door, which disturbs me a little. Only she was this way. Even Sammy knows how to appreciate a solid port in a violent, thrashing storm, despite his general aversion to being housebound like a domesticated pet, like something owned. It would seem that Coco has fixed in her heart a safer place than this house. Perhaps underneath someone's shed? But really? How can our house not be her first retreat, her safe place, with anything else being only a very distant, distant second place? I am fairly convinced that the only thing we will ever get from cats is heartbreak, and I think that goes double for calico cats.