From time to time, our good friend rumpydog issues a blog poetry challenge. The form this time was haiku.
Haiku is an ancient Japanese discipline – a seventeen-syllable poetic sketch, in three phrases of five, seven, and five syllables. The general idea, also, is that there’s a “kiru,” the concept of a “cut,” somewhere in there, to separate two elements that have been juxtaposed.
Can you find the kiru?
White cat sleeps on sill
Gray cat slumbers in East Bed
Quiet here. For now.
Let it never be said that my boys leave things alone to stagnate. They do like their routine – they are cats, after all – but the beds situation is still in flux.
Fang looks pleased that Bugs isn’t taking his head off, as is usually the case when he strains Bugs’s patience to the limit. Bugs may look a tad (just a tad?) resentful — but really he’s just very sleepy.
You would think for sure, though, that separation of head from body would be the result with Fang’s interpretation of the bed theme here.
Here’s another variation: The Leg Over.
Even so, some sleep was – amazingly enough – accomplished.
But the spillover effect became somewhat worrying.
And in the end, Top Cat keeps solo command of Long Bed.
The next sleep cycle, one of my favorite things happened. I’m on the computer and here comes Bugs. That memory-foam pillow you see, above and below, is Bugs’s favorite biscuit-making site. He worked that pillow for a spell and then settled down with his back against my leg.
The tail! That tail! Perfection. I want to paint with it. Well — maybe not.
What a body has to go through, to get some sleep around here.
On this Mother’s Day, this mother is complete. She needs nothing more.
Wait a minute. Did I just say that? Can I really be Jewish, and say something like that??
If you don’t know the culture well enough to know that “happy” and “mother” do NOT go together, perhaps this might give you some idea: The other day a dear friend and I practically split a gut laughing about my friend’s idea for a bumper sticker – hope she doesn’t mind my appropriating her brilliance here, and she’s not even Jewish – it goes:
“Think you’re having a good day? It’s not as good as it could have been.”
But it’s true and I’m not ashamed to admit it. I’m a Jewish mother AND I’m happy. Here’s what gives, with the disconcerting happy:
Kids who play freely and well. The housework can go hang.
One kid who’s growing more and more capable of gentleness and delicacy and nobility.
One kid who’s still curious as heck, and so cute with it all.
Two kids who are smart enough and generous enough to learn to coexist (ridden-herd-over watched-over by Ma and also the little sculpture-guardian over there at the right). Those who’ve been following the Battle of The Beds lately, you can share in a mother’s “kvell” at this one. And if you don’t know from “kvell,” look it up in the Yinglish Dictionary and also enjoy the joke – and check out “nachas” too, be sure to listen to that one, all here.
The unutterable sweetness of a sleeping baby –
And of a tired baby who won’t go to sleep because he’s afraid he’ll miss something –
– and who falls out anyway in the end.
Happy Mother’s Day. To all moms of all kinds.
I was on the phone this morning with a professional whose job it is to save me from myself. He was suggesting to me that there is such a thing as a “strong” person.
Poor man. I must be quite the challenge. I insisted on pursuing the theme some of us have been discussing here in prior posts; i.e., that we really are quite frail and vulnerable beings. Anybody can be taken out, at any moment, by a mere tiny virus or some other biological disaster or being hit by a bus or suchlike.
So my professional and I compromised. An aspiration I am willing to live with is: I would like to feel myself becoming more and more adaptable, while acting in a manner that is true to my integrity.
As we were debating this proposition, Bugsy woke up from Long Bed in the bedroom. He has this way of ambulating and vocalizing, when he’s just woken up, which sounds a whole lot like complaining – a kind of rusty grouchy voice. “Dadgummit ma would you mind doing something about this rain already?”
At such times his mission seems to be to express himself fully, and then find another, more hospitable place to deposit himself.
Now my team of home-improvement-inclined friends, and I as a devoted mom who wants only the best for her kids, have gone to considerable lengths to accommodate a whole host of depository options. Each and every setting is expressly designed to put one feline hiney in one bed at a time.
Like, for instance from the other day, Long Bed and Short Bed in the bedroom. In the living room, this is the way it’s supposed to be:
It has happened like this, however, maybe like once, just enough to get this one picture. This morning it was not like this. It was what’s become the usual: Fang in Top Shelf.
Now this is a situation that really pushes Bugs’s buttons – because Bugs owns Top Shelf. In the pre-Fang good old days, it’s where he used to live for 23.5 hours of the day. Here’s a representative example:
So while my advisor and I were haggling on the phone about “strong” v. “adaptable with integrity,” Bugs creaked in complaining. He looked up at Top Shelf. He complained some more. He disdained Bottom Shelf. Fang or no Fang, he jumped up into position to achieve Top Shelf. He waited there, complaining some more.
He then gave it up – adaptability! – and repaired to the bed in the East Window instead. Integrity! Rest must be persevered-with!
But all this palaver roused Fangie. Now Fangie is not one to spend 23.5 hours in Top Shelf. Not if there’s any action to be had. Bugs awake means there’s action to be had. So here comes Fangie, hurtling down from the heights game on.
Bugs, however, has repaired to the East Window bed. That only fits one feline.
To Fangie this is of no concern. Up he hops, into East Bed and pretty much onto Bugs.
Here we have Cat Mash-up.
But did it end in tears? Not hardly. We are adaptable!
Here’s Bugs after the brief mash-up. Retaining solo splendor in East Bed.
Here’s Fang after mash-up. Game on Fangie.
Adaptability with integrity. It’s working for us!
Bugs: For pete’s sake, Bean, it’s 3:09 Monday morning. Have you lost what little was left of your mind?
Bean: Bugs, you have no heart at all. Aren’t you excited?
Bugs: Please. [exits room, with dignity]
Bean: Peeps, I appeal to you. Just look what that genius Katie did! And look here, at Katnip Lounge! Can you believe this blogosphere??
[thinks] What else can I say? I must say something more.
Fang: Put your hands where I can see them and step away from the computer. You know what I can, and believe me I will, do to this computer cord. There will be no damage to person or property, if you will just close the computer. Do it. Do it now. Do it quietly. No. Don’t say goodbye. Don’t say another thing. The computer. Close it. Don’t make me stop this car. [lowers head]
::Blink. Out.::
Something really obvious dawned on me recently.
I think I join most of the rest of our species in having figured out, at some point in my own developmental odyssey (very odd issey, I should say) that although sensory input comes from “out there,” and we actually receive it only “in here,” most of us can usually tell the difference.
I say “usually” because I am, and have been for as long as I can remember, somewhat burdened with tinnitus – ringing in the ears. That, I’m finally clear, comes from “in here.” Though I did wonder at one point whether it was EMF static from the power lines – or whether I was receiving Mars in my fillings. That would be out there for sure.
But when I had myself checked by an otolaryngologist (that word – “otolaryngologist” – how my logorreehick heart sings) he said, with disarming simplicity, “That’s what ears do. They hear things.” Would that we logorreehicks could be that succinct.
Anyway, my point. Differentiating between what goes on in here and out there.
Physically it seems I’m usually up to the challenge. Emotionally, though, it’s a different story. And when I get confused like that, I actually get sick. Physically sick, I mean. My emotions tell me all is not well, and voilà. Don’t feel well. Am actually not well. Very not well. Start showing marked, dramatic, and undeniable symptoms of physical unwellness. I’ll spare you the details.
I tried to explain this interesting theory to Bugs.
He is such a nice boy.
Bugs struggles to stay awake.
Many thanks to Glogirly and Katie for their extraordinary patience in holding Bean’s hand, as she labored long and hard to figure out how to accomplish this nifty gif. image. I hope they think all that work was worth it. The Bean does. Bugs isn’t so sure.
Today my usual weekly visit to one of my dearest friends was especially tasty. I love this friend. She is a botanist by training who, with her physician husband, shower me with all things important in life – extraordinary friendship above all, plus greens from the garden, eggs from the chickens, medical care in time of dire need, and homegrown strawberries the likes of which beggar description. No photographs – the berries are a distant dream.
My friend told me she got ahold of five seeds of a chinquapin tree. She’s just planted the seedlings on her property. The cinquapin is a species of American chestnut that teeters on the brink of extinction, having been all but wiped out by blight that struck in 1904. Wikipedia says that within forty years, the near-four billion-strong population in North America was devastated; only a few clumps of trees remained in California and the Pacific Northwest.
Here’s what the bark looks like. Amazing, no?
That’s my friend. To the rescue, healing what’s been almost lost. Trees. And me.
My friend has two phenomenal sons. One had a hand in making a video I want to share with you. This video is of another member of the family, Sasha. Sasha is a conscientious and helpful cat. You can see why in the video.
I’m very excited about this young man. He is a truly extraordinary cartoonist. I hope to be getting together with him very soon, maybe even this Sunday, to do what little I can to help him get started with his own blog. I will let you know when his blog is up. I dearly hope he will make some cartoons of cats. But no matter what he chooses to draw, mark my words, we need to give him due props and recognition right now. This guy is going places. I for one want to be able to say, years hence or maybe tomorrow, “Ah, but I knew him when. We could tell he was a genius, even at such a tender age.” (He’s just finishing the fifth grade.)
Please put your paws together for my dear friends – and Sasha the conscientious and helpful cat. Look closely for the little note at the end. The video is mom’s, I think; the song is the son’s addition – and I’m thinking the note at the end is his too. It has that witty twist I think I recognize. Click here to enjoy. Remember. We knew him when.
