CATERPILLAR'S REVERSE MOHAWK

air bellows drive-thru art museum

 

 

Recent news is full of abuse, all kinds of abuse. Haven't had elder-abuse yet, so it's probably next. The nuttiest is the three "black" brothers who kept three white sweet-things locked up and chained in slavery conditions. What's crazy is recognizing that these are just the ones caught. I don't even want to ask how many uncaught. The black man credited with rescuing the three girls by helping one get out, his interviews went "viral" and fun to listen to. He talks straight. He talks so straight the home town tv station interviewer backed away from him and got off air fast when black man said he'd seen a young white girl run into the arms of a black man. He said that told him something wasn't right. The local tv interviewer panicked and started pulling the mic away from him and signed off in a hurry. The taboo subject for tv correctness, the origin and same as "political" correctness, is race. Or maybe it is one step further than that, bypassing denial. A white man with mic from the white world of denial with a black man from the black world where the people can't afford to live their lives in denial. Then MSNBC had the talking head Anderson Cooper interview him again. This time they let him roll. They could edit out whatever they don't want, reduce it to a few sentences the program director approves. I feel like his pop appeal is the truth he speaks. He is not bound by PC, spoke it clear and colorfully. Give the reward money to the girls, he has a regular paycheck, and don't call him a hero.

air bellows drive-thru art museum

Just off the phone with a friend who talks in terms of they, them, people, everybody, nobody, sweeping generalizations, abstractions and slang, punctuating with the occasional, "y'know what I mean?" to which I most often reply, "No." He can change subjects mid sentence and it takes a few more sentences for me to realize he'd switched tracks. Then I say, "Who is they?" Or, "You're not going to get EVERYBODY to do anything but ingest and evacuate. Of course not everybody understands what you understand." In our conversations I ask him at some point why it is necessary for everybody to think like he thinks. I tell him that if everybody did whatever his mass conformity wish may be at any moment, there would be nothing special about it. If everybody smoked reefer, there would be nothing cool about it. Then not smoking reefer would be cool. Missionary zeal about everything that comes up wears me out. One rage was that SCIENCE used to say one thing, now it says another. He wants an apology from SCIENCE for the backward science he got from Jr Hi. I, of fleeting rational mind, felt compelled to point out that SCIENCE, a word misused unto abstraction where it has no meaning but as a word on a spelling test, is a one-step-at-a-time progression. It took the step that was disproven by the next step to get to the present finding, itself another step. I even felt compelled to add that science does not "foresee" anything. The discipline of science is to counter the presumption of foresight. 

air bellows drive-thru art museum

 

 

His social life has been bars since he was old enough to lie about his age to get in. When we talk, I feel like we have a pitcher of beer on the table between us, soakin up the suds and him on a soapbox. It's all right. He is someone I took an interest in when he was a kid, bouncing off the walls, watching television every awake minute possible, mom's luggage carried from husband to husband, then boyfriend to boyfriend, then her own house her mother provided, the basement the teenage boy's room. I paid attention to him when he was a kid, which no one else did. When he spoke to me or wanted to tell me something, I didn't go on doing what I was doing as if not even a gnat flew by. I heard what he had to say. For me, that's just what I do. I've never known how not to listen when somebody talks to me. Now he's in his forties and among my closest friends. Again, just for being good to a kid. I understood the world of his grief and was able to give him some perspective, his situation seen third person, from afar, outside self. I have a feeling it is a past-life association that draws on us, different circumstances this time around, different horoscopes than before, different personalities, different everything, souls the same as before, after a period of cosmic rest for mind and soul.

 

caterpillar lioness behind bars

 

 

Looked at the clock and it was almost 2. I'd wanted to take Caterpillar to the vet to get the knots on her back shaved. This meant getting her in the cat cage to carry her in the car to the vet. She  sang to me all the way, one note, MIAO, over and over all the way to the vet, punctuated by a loud angry yelling it. I sang along with her, using my voice to comfort her, knowing she hates confinement that is not by choice. She can curl up in a small box looking like a nautilus shell and sleep, but when I put her in a big box with a cage door on it, carry her outside the house to the car, put her on the seat, she knows she aint gonna like whatever is next. She knew where we were going, the only place she'd ever been put in the cage and car to be taken to. Erin shaved her back. It's a reverse Mohawk. I wanted her to have her unmatted hair along her sides, legs, belly, neck and tail, allowing her the fur she can get to for grooming. She's not a cat that can twist into a knot to groom her back. Another Maine Coon I once knew had been shaved all over. She hated it, was in a perpetual foul mood until it was about an inch long.

 

the road home

 

 

Caterpillar has not let on like she has any problem with her back shaved. She knows the clippers cut off that old matted hair she really did not like. She acts like she feels better. She's been outside looking at the birds since our return home, happy for a sunny day. She's no longer a bird killer, so they are free and she is free to look at the flying candy bars with memories, knowing the flavor of each one. She twitches her lip, her whiskers wiggle, she squeaks. In her non-violent years she stretches out on the ground like a gray rock and watches. She's too lazy now that she's just turned 16 this week. Her eyes don't look old and she doesn't have any disabilities. She sleeps nearly all the time, which old cats do. I like to keep her fed as much as she likes to eat. At end of day I put leftovers out for the first possum to find it. I like my "peaceable kingdom" with the birds flying free, squirrels running up and down the tree trunks and the lion lying picturesque among the ferns and wild violets, looking to hurt no one, feeling good with that burden of knots lifted from her back.

 

spring in the mountains

   

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