THERE IS NO RIGHT

Yes, it is shocking. But that was on my head this morning as I woke up. Seriously. Emmylou Irene Patsy Clownpaws is a complete maniac. I've had young cats before, however, I do not recall them as being quite so aggressive and self-centered. As my friend Michael Baker observed back in the kitchen at Margaret Smith's house on LeRoy in Berkeley, "Cats are just pigs with cat suits on."

She really is a pig. No boundaries, no limits, it's all "Mine! Mine! Mine!" and then "Gimme more!"

I have mentioned my friend KaHug who has been working these many long years on a memoir-ish piece about her father who was a spook in Miami and Cuba in the real spy days. I've know KaHug since 1985 or 86 and we've talked about it all that time. Over the years, I have spent a fair amount of time giving her suggestions and support.

Anywho, I picked up a book from the library about writing memoirs, as I try to read five or six of them per year. This one, Tell Me True: Memoir, History, and Writing A Life, begins with an essay by Fenton Johnson. I had never heard of him, but I quite like his mind.

"The great memoirists do not conceal their uncertainties but use them as another tool for making art. They work both from empirically, historically verifiable fact and from the art of constructing and handing on the best possible stories."

"Memoir is by definition a vehicle for subjectivity. The label gives notice to readers that they are entering the funhouse of individual memory, in which a great deal of the pleasure derives from the entry the writing affords into the writer's deepest consciousness. And paradoxically it is through subjectivity that one best gains access to truth, the enduring, timeless wisdom that enables us to have and to keep faith in ourselves and each other ..."

Okay. Now massively distracted. I will leave this tonight with a quote that M (wizofmoz) shared and I think it is good an ending as I am going to see tonight:

Keep going and going. There is no destination. If the day of your death is unknown, then do everything for the sake of doing, in case that day is tomorrow. Everything is like everything else, when talking in generalizations. There is NO RIGHT as it is written, but only as a way that produces less strife. Earnestness and belief are not always present, sometimes you have to continue on because you’ve been going for so long, because there’s nothing else to do.  And sometimes you have to do differently, because to do the same because that’s how it’s always been done, is not enough reason to do it again.  STRENGTH is not conviction, but knowing when to apply it.  There is no glory waiting, no glory in an end.  There is no judgment other than your community, the era you live, your conscience.  When you’re gone, you’re gone. If you leave something behind to help others then good, but if you’re never able to get it together, then that’s how it goes.  It will all be forgotten or reinterpreted anyway.  So be happy.  The only limit to pleasure is the amount of joy you can let yourself feel, that you can share with others.  There is no perfection.  Nothing has any inherent or permanent value.  Every day, every life, every action, everything is its own reward.

— Paul Madonna, All Over Coffee

A much more civilized creature in the morning.