Our Amazing Bodies

Everyone gets hangnails. It's is a part of the human experience.
 So are other things that are just as benign and unpleasant,

such as ear crud.

Then there are things that people don't talk about alot. They are more to do with excreta, and as such might be best left alone, so here is just a hint such things.

ROSIE'S HOME

She is just skin and bones, but she appears to be no worse for wear. Our canvassing paid off...

While doing so last evening, a neighbor in E building said he laid out a little bed and some food and water on Monday night because he'd heard from a neighbor about a missing black cat. On Tuesday morning he checked his patio, and sure enough there lie a little black cat, but she took off as soon as he opened up the patio door. I gave him my phone and apartment numbers, just in case she decided to come back

A couple hours later he was buzzing our door to tell us that his neighbor on the 2nd floor had a stray black cat in his apartment! Sam and I were so excited... we hurried over there, knocked on 210, and there before us was Not Rosie.

But the neighbor did not want this cat, so I consented to taking her. She was a huge, meaty black cat with white belly and neck. She felt pregnant to me.... it was clear she was a very loved and well-fed cat, and I knew someone would be missing her. I figured we could give her shelter and put up signs, maybe even take her to the Dumb Friends League.

As we were leaving their building to go to ours, the Good Samaritan who'd gotten the whole ball rolling told me the little black cat he returned to his porch! At that moment, the fat black cat who'd been such a lover became violent, scratched my arm, struggled and got free. We went over to look at this new black cat, and there before us was Rosie.

She's been too out of her mind with fear to let anyone approach her, but it took just a minute or so of cooing and quietly calling her name before she allowed me to grab her by the scruff of the neck and hold her. I could feel her skeleton through her dirty fur. She was silent on the walk to our building. The only time she made a sound was when we got on the elevator, and then she yowled like I was skinning her. We unlocked our door, put her down, and she was HOME.

Minky was so happy to see Rosie. Minky has not eaten the canned tuna we prepared for Rosie. Rosie spent the night stuck like glue to me, and once her belly was full enough, she took her place under covers and slept.

This morning she is perhaps more docile, and certainly more hungry than usual, but I think she'll be fine. The biggest change is that this once aloof cat now refuses to leave my arms.

I should have made more of an effort to locate this sweet cat. At least with her home I can forgive myself my laissez-faire approach to this wonderful creature's fate. As atonement, I vow to make no disparaging comments about her awful tuna farts.

This sign maker is either really stupid or really weird.

Spring, Seasons and Mortality

Spring is definitely here. The six-story tree just outside our door is more green than brown, all the little finches have returned, and somehow sunlight is now less an intrusion than a blessing. The earth is waking up. 

Two or three years ago I entered a profound existential phase, but just as spring has returned to our patch of Earth, so spring has returned to my spirit. I cannot say my soul has rediscovered spring, because I see the soul as Spring, and as The Spring, but the spirit, that's a horse of a different color. 

My spirit, the tiny spark of my soul currently inhabiting this flesh, was shocked into a crisis of sorts when it became more and more plain to me that I would not have time to realize all of my dreams, and worse, that many of the dreams I once held so dear no longer held my interest.

I was working Hospice at the time, so I was routinely exposed to people younger than me dead in the beds, having finally succumbed to cancer or some other shitty end. I began to think about what would happen to me if I got a death sentence disease: where would I live if I couldn't pay rent, and what would happen to my son?

Gosh, what a madcap time for my friends and family.

As time passed, I got used to the spectre of my grave. You see, I don't say "the grave" because I have always been supremely comfortable with the thought of death, and have always viewed it as a good thing, as going home, going someplace exciting and familiar and maddeningly out of my reach, yet I began to realize I held death as an abstraction. Once it became a cellular reality, it was my grave, my tombstone, my loved ones grieving, not just me going on my Final Joyride.

And now I am on the other side of that dark time. I don't think about the turbans I might need to find online to cover my bald head. I don't consider catastrophe. Neither do I see my life as endless, and this reality is neither a relief nor a cause for alarm. It just is what it is.

Really, the only important thing I have taken from those years wrestling with mid-life shock and awe is that I have wasted a lot of time. I didn't spend enough time doing things that I remember well. I spent too much of my time metaphorically covering up in a warm blanket, protected and warm and neutral.

So with spring comes rebirth, and as spring approached this year I didn't spend any time considering that my seasons are numbered, that I have just so many springs left. Jesus, what a waste of angst. Nope, I just have been more willing to do stuff that I can remember clearly. Physical stuff, stuff that engages all of my senses, not just my head.

And I made this my desktop picture, because it's just the kind of thing that a person devoted to laughing out loud once a day needs to see at this time of year.

Happy Spring, everybody. Spring's happy too,

Rosie

So, my neighbor has seen Rosie, our cat who fell from our 3rd floor balcony 3 weeks ago.... he told us about the weekend sitings yesterday, and we spent the evening calling for her. We saw her dart from the bushes in front of 'E' Building to the undercarriage of a huge-ass truck parked across the street.

We laid on the grass next to the truck and left food out for her. Sam sang a beautiful song for her while we lay there in the sun. Then we said a little prayer for her and went back inside for the night.

After seeing the dismembered bird wings scattered around the grounds, I wondered if Rosie would even consent to be an indoor cat again. Scampering in the wild is what a cat like Rosie was hard-wired for.


I stood where Rosie would have landed after falling off the balcony. Good God, what a drop. Standing there I shivered, wondering how in the hell any animal could survive such a thing.....



I like the thought of a cat always landing on their feet. I think when all is said and done, most of we humans have the same capacity.

What do you think?