WE MAY MISS OUR STAR(S)

It’s in the silences that it hurts you the most. When you open the front door and no one scampers or waddles down the hallway to say hello, glad you are home, can you put some fresh water and ice in my bowl, please? Food would be okay.

A long drink of ice water was one of Tupelo's last pleasures on this plane. 

That was Monday. Now it is Wednesday, a rainy, rainy Wednesday. I woke up to Cooder fur in my face and that incomparable purr softly massaging my brain. Even Emmylou was curled up at my feet, although I think that was a sweet Greenies hangover as I had inadvertently left off the lid of the jar I keep them in. I think she and Cooder just fed like vampires while I was deep in REM. 

On another similar note, a few nights ago, I awoke to a gentle crash. Emmylou had pulled down the jar, spilled it, and was hoovering up as many Greenies as she could as fast as she could. I considered letting her graze, but I did not want to risk waking up to regurgitated Greenies.

And now it is Friday. Instead of birds and traffic, there is the enthusiastic, jazzrhythmic chirrrping of crickets, punctuated now and then by the dissonant clink of Emmylou's bird bell. After almost three weeks here, Cooder has joined us in the family room for quite a bit of the day. I do not know what to ascribe Cooder's general sociability, but perhaps with the family and Albert gone (he was loaned out to dog-deprived relatives nearby), she felt she had the safe latitude to re-acquaint herself with the capacious Allview Manor. 

We three did have a most delicious nap, deserved by me as I have not been sleeping all that well and was up and productive at 7:00. Cooder slept contentedly on my heart and solar plexus while Emmylou took the hitherto unknown position between my ankles and shins. It was a cat pile. And I will say that I had a couple of hours of veritable contentment with no immediate wish to be anyone or anywhere else. I felt very lucky to be safe, quiet, and in the company of two excellent feline companions. 

And is this a nigglety-and-higgley-hie ramble. (Jane Austen would not approve.) With the family in absentia, I have been able to clear the floor in my room (no one needs the hallway) to vacuum and to make proper sorting piles. And to that I needs return, after having effected (correct me if that should have been "affected" some slight organizational changes in the kitchen. 

A week of mourning Tupelo and Robin Williams. Although I found many of Robin's film roles objectionable, I did not find his performances so. He was beyond wonderful in The Birdcage. His masculine/feminine appeal was astounding. What a performance. And to all reports and in all first, and second-hand experiences of the man, I cannot say I ever heard a negative word about him. I knew his pain, having been pretty damn close on more than one occasion, and my sorrow is for that searing solitude and torment. No one can be with you there. And although I was not really a fan, I did have a love for Robin Williams.

I always post this William Stafford poem as a tribute to those who have left us. Tupelo, Robin, Lauren, Michael Brown, those caught up in Israel and Gaza, I, for one am thinking of you. 

A RITUAL TO READ TO EACH OTHER

If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider--
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give--yes or no, or maybe--
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep. 

William Stafford

In better news, Jason and Monsterwood hit their Kickstarter goal. For all of you who contributed thank you. And I think you still have time if you are interested. 

Miss those crazy whiskers.

SUNDAY NOT A FUNDAY

Though the results might have been less than stellar or even lackluster, I did to push myself to write that last post. This phase of my life is all about pushing myself, so some progress/productivity occurred. 

In the last couple of days, I have had some substantial telephone chats with folks I needed to connect with. My mom and I had a most interesting chat yesterday afternoon about responsibility, something we are both pushing ourselves on. One would not think would be in such synchronicity with one's aged parent on such a topic, but there you go. 

Days later. Saturday night/Sunday morning in the wee small hours.

I started this before the post about Tupelo, but he deserved and warranted a post all to himself. But I can't sleep and I don't like it. My sleep cycles have been off for a few days now, staying up too late, sleeping in.

This morning, however, I slept in because Cooder was all cuddly and purry. I woke up with her nose touching my nose, which was quite sweet. I did have to move a bit so that I could breathe. Her companionship seems ever more precious as I know her "time ain't long..." although there is nothing new wrong with her that I know of. She seems quite comfortable, mostly staying in my room with forays to the bathroom where she prefers to drink water. She doesn't try to get into the tub here, but as it is an old clawfoot, it is not all that easy. The litter box is here with us so that she doesn't have to go all the way down to the basement. 

I had the tristesse about Tupie today. Other friends have a lot coming down on them, too, so maybe that staid my enthusiasm. I listened to another show I didn't go to, this one with The Campbell Brothers Sacred Steel Band and Cassandra Wilson. It was just so lovely to lie on the bed with Cooder and Emmylou and listen.

Tupelo's passing is a big milestone for me, too. He has been a part of my life for almost 20 years. I am so glad that JV brought him out to Holbrook for the last six weeks. Tupie and Emmylou became friends, sharing an evening rove around the garden, both at the door to get out. I am surprised that Tupie declined so rapidly, or so it seemed to me. When I left less than two weeks ago, he still seemed to be digging life.

But as JV is also experiencing the sale and transfer of his familial home, perhaps Tupelo senses it is time for JV to move on in other ways. Animals can be so perceptive and tuned in to their humans. Of course, this does not make anything any easier and I continue to tear up, off and on. 

AS SWEET AS

You can take all the tea in China

Put it in a big brown bag for me

Sail right around the seven oceans

Drop it straight into the deep blue sea

She's as sweet as tupelo honey

She's an angel of the first degree

She's as sweet as tupelo honey

Just like honey from the bee

I didn't realize Cassandra Wilson was singing THAT song, in a particularly heartfelt and soulful way, until I started to tear up. 

That was our song, mine and Tupelo's, as I drove across the old Oakland-Bay Bridge in 1998, cradling that purring orange kitty in my right arm. It was hard to use the stick shift, but we managed. He was so sweet and so happy to have been rescued. 

I was adopting another cat at the ASCPA in San Francisco. Paloma had to stay in the kennel until she was spayed, but I was visiting her when I heard some kind of crazy cat din from the row over. Someone was meowing for his life. And there he was, a red tabby loud as anything. There was quite a long description of how he came to be there written on the card on his cage. He had been found off a freeway in a duct-taped box with no air holes. He was covered in grease, the remnants of which still made him sticky. And now he was hoping to be adopted. 

I had a cat at home and one on the way, and I needed the landlord's permission for another. I went back to the office and connived someone to adopt him for me. After all he had been through, I could not let him die. I didn't know what I was going to do with him, but he deserved another chance. 

They called him Pyro because he was so red. But it was his sweetness that stood out to me, so I named him Tupelo after the song. His purr was mighty and incomparable.

He bonded with my friend JV who was living on my living room floor while JV worked on What Dreams May Come and The Matrix. JV and Tupelo became a fast pair. Tupelo moved to San Francisco with JV and then became an East Coast cat. Along the way, a few years back now, he developed diabetes. JV and MM took good care of him, making sure he got his insulin shots twice a day. Tupie was in the hospital quite a few times in the last several years, but, somehow, he managed to pull through.

But there is no pulling through old age, when the body breaks down. 

Tomorrow Tupelo will be shuffling off this mortal coil. I am going down to Brooklyn to say goodbye and to be there for JV. 

Tupelo is one of the finest cats I have ever known. He was such a good friend and companion to JV, and JV reciprocated. Tupelo was A CAT among cats. 

Love is love. And this is love. 


And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest, my dear friend.

SALMAGONDIS

Requisite cat nap snap.

I had a very restless and not satisfactorily productive day. Which is not to say that it was a bad day at all, but my motivation and resolve flagged somewhat. I did get some quality hang-time with Cooder, however.

Perhaps I was disappointed that I did not go into Manhattan to see a free concert with Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell at Lincoln Center. It was kind of rainy and threatening, and after my drenching last summer at Celebrate Brooklyn, I didn’t want to sit through that again for almost anyone. But also because I felt, given my straitened circumstances, that I shouldn’t spend the money to get there. So, while the decision was a good and responsible one, I was maybe sad. 

On the plus side, the A sisters are back from their cross-country drive and year in Arizona for AKA. M&J and Albert are just delighted to have them back. There is a lot of love and joy and positive buzz in the house, which is lovely and fun. Yesterday, when they arrived back was crazy punishing warm, so all we gals put Albert in the car and went to awalk at the reservoir, the first time I have been since I returned. Afterwards we ran out of shady bike trail,  we made the trek up to Kent to get more of that great gelato I had purchased at the Farmer's Market. Much yum. I had sea salt caramel, scary good. We bought some pistachio for J, but ate quite a bit of it. Pistachio might be the best flavor. I might have to try it with the sea salt caramel.

I should to sleep as it is late. My new assignment from Sociative (the site will actually tell you more about it) is more time consuming than the last couple. I had an interesting chat with ECA and a friend, both recent college graduates, who have quite a resistance to social media. I was quite surprised as media, social and otherwise, would have us believe that all youngsters LOVE it. ECA remarked that it was a challenge for her as this focus on social media happened just as she was hitting the job market. 

In other news, before it got crazy hot, I made some damn fine pizzas. Eh. Cooder is importuning me for you-know-what and I should make an attempt at sleep.

One of my friends said this looked like the surface of the sun.

Oh, and one more thing. Jason R has a Kickstarter going to raise funds to get out a graphic novel of Monsterwood. Should you want to check it out, here's the link.

(The French word "salmagondis" means a hodgepodge or mix of widely disparate things.)