Catplicity is a wrongful act by one or more felines. Mind you, it’s probably acceptable in the cat’s purrview, but these actions often antagonize people sharing the home with the cats. Such actions can include willfully knocking items like jewelry, pills, and pens to the floor, tipping over glasses of water, or stealing food.
Today’s Theme Music
Here’s a Friday two-fer.
I’d planned for a celebratory song today but this one dominated one of my dreams last night. “When the Levee Breaks” is an old blues song. I became familiar with it through Led Zeppelin’s cover of it in nineteen seventy-one.
In my dream, it was my wake-up song, playing every day on my radio at seven in the morning. I know this because I was explaining that to other people. I told them, I’d begun doing that in June, so I’d been doing it for a year. During that time, I’d found a new shortcut, I explained. While explaining that, I pointed out a window at a new white concrete highway that was alongside a shoreline. The sky was so blue and the sun was so bright, it awed you into silence. Vehicles were on the road. It looked like typical commuter traffic.
We joked a while about hearing that song everyday. I know it was “When the Levee Breaks” because one other asked, “What is that song?” Then he answered himself as I answered him, “”When the Levee Breaks,” by Led Zeppelin.” He nodded, laughing along as we spoke. He said, “It’s a good song. I don’t know if I’d want to hear it all the time.” I answered, “I only hear it in the morning.” He replied, “Well, even that might be too much, if it’s every day.”
I awoke from that and the other two remembered dreams feeling like a dark cloud had been lifted. You decide, though: will hearing this song every morning be too much?
The Keys
Head wobbling, he looked left and right as much as he could without tipping himself out of his chair. Near immobility was one indignity. It was the least.
“Matthew, do you want a drink?” the man asked him.
He was a pleasant enough man, white and ginger-haired. but otherwise anonymous in Matthew’s world view. He’d been introduced. Matthew hadn’t cared to hear, remember and store his name.
The man was offering a straw and glass. Matthew despised straws. Children drank from straws; he was an adult. He was a man. “No, thank you,” he said. His once sonorous voice chirped, slouched and broke through the three words. He wished he could close his ears and not hear himself any longer. “Where are my keys?” That voice sickened him.
“What do you need your keys for, Matthew?”
What fucking business is that of yours, Matthew thought. “Where are they?”
“Don’t worry, they’re right here.” The man brought him his keys, holding them so they dangled in front of Matthew, like he was a cat or a baby, and the man wanted was playing with him. “Do you plan on taking a ride?”
Fuck you. Forcing his will into movement, Matthew reached for his keys. The limb and hand trembled. His shoulder, elbow and wrist issued warning pains. Reaching for the keys took long seconds, something once done easily and without stress. When his fingers closed on them, Matthew wanted to close his eyes and rest. Tears welled up. Others would think it was pain or sadness. Only he knew it was anger.
Chatting, the man wiped Matthew’s eyes. Matthew didn’t care. He closed his fist on his keys and then closed his eyes. He had his keys. Time to die.
His journey could now begin.
Catedge
A catedge is an extremely slender cat, one that appears so thin, they seem to be flat and one-dimensional. It’s said that their structure allows catedges to walk through cracks in time and space, so they can appear almost anywhere, at anytime. They’re often ginger, tabby, or black and white, and will awe you with their graceful jumping and walking.
Belief
Cool air was blowing up, testimony to the conditions up there, a momentary comfort for Skinner. That’s the same, he thought, but it’s different. Nothing was ever exactly the same.
Tanker asked, “What are you thinking? Let’s go.”
Skinner knew this was no different from other times. That’s the theory. The clouds looked so damn thin, though. He doesn’t see how they can support him, even though they always had before. But he always had his Dad or Mom with him to walk the clouds. Their presence was encouraging and reassuring.
He stepped out out the few final feet from the cliff side toward the oh so ordinary appearing clouds. They looked like the same kind of clouds he’d walked with his parents. It’s just that his parents weren’t here.
“We won’t always be here to do this with you, Skinner,” his father had said just a few days before, in a place very much like this one, but different.
Shifting sounds behind him made Skinner look back at Tanker. Tanker had composed himself for a long wait and was looking bored and tired. “You take your time, Skinner. Do what you need to do.”
Skinner remembered his father speaking. “You can take your time, but that’s part of the test. The test isn’t just about walking on the clouds, but your belief and confidence that you can do it. You know you can. You’ve done it with me. Other matters will be in your head, too. You’ll know that everyone is watching. You’ll know it’s a test. You’ll know it. I know you’ll know it because I was there. I was tested for my belief, too. I know what was in my head then, and you’re just like me. You, me, and your grandfathers, we’re all the same, so I know what’s in your head, Skinner. Believe me, I know.”
A sharper wind knifed over Skinner’s face. He turned back toward the clouds. White and gray, and lined by sunlight, they were pretty. Some thinned, parting ways. Clouds are always saying hello and good-bye. The separation exposed the creek running through the park below, and the trees. If he didn’t believe, he would crash right through these clouds and down through the tree branches, into the hard green and brown earth below. Maybe he’d land in the water. Maybe he’d land on one of the big granite boulders. Maybe he would live.
But he believed.
He stepped off onto the cloud.
Today’s Theme Music
…and some days, you get up, and you’re in this mood, you’re like…possessed by this restlessness, and you think, “All I want to do is have some fun. Is that too much to ask?”
Here’s Sheryl Crow singing about it. Really, it’s like an essay on a day at the bar, the car wash, and the people who are there. From nineteen ninety-four, “All I Wanna Do.”
Less Is More
Yes, get ready, friends and family who hate it when I go political. They would rather I don’t, and I try not to, but here we fucking go again – will this carousel ever end?
The tRump WH Budget Chief, Mick Mulvaney, is singing about how great the tRump budget is. Why, they’re enabling and empowering people by taking money away from their greedy little hands.
Mulvaney added: “We don’t want to measure compassion by the number of programs we have and the number of people on them — true compassion is the number of people we want to try to get off of those programs and get back in charge of their own lives.”
Sure, those people who need the safety net aren’t working because of anything except their own damn weak wills and lazy nature. That’s why they’re poor, hungry and sick, or why they need aid from the rest of us. If they need more money, they should work two or three more jobs while going back to school and getting a better education. Taking away the social net will put them back on their feet!
Yea, verily, I was exposed to that hypocritical crap in the military and corporate life. “We must do more with less!” “We must give one hundred and ten percent!” Yes, tell me, how do you get one hundred and ten percent out of your mind and body? Can you drink one hundred and ten percent of a glass of water? How do you eat one hundred and ten percent of that bowl of soup? You can’t, can you? So, with your logic, tell me, where does that extra magic ten percent come from? Nowhere but your feeble, feeble brain.
Yet, strangely, of course, the wealthy must be given more. Why, giving them more will help them help others more! Funny, how their logic changes when it’s applied to their own class, isn’t it?
Ironically, too, when it comes to military spending, more is better. More military spending gives us greater protection. Why doesn’t the less is better logic work in that situation?
Mulvaney must be a good Christian. Seems like it’s always Christians in this modern era who claim that helping the poor is contrary to the Bible. When searching out more information on the Mick, I found out this about him:
As it turns out, Mulvaney has faced questions regarding his payment (or non-payment, as the case may be) of taxes before. In 2013, a blogger discovered that Mick Mulvaney had owed thousands of dollars in back taxes for as long as five years. The website wonkette.com picked up the story, but it barely made a ripple during the negotiations for raising the debt ceiling.
Mulvaney is nothing if not consistent, advocating for the country not to pay its bills while he neglects paying his own.
Sickening, sickening, sickening. Mulvaney, and the White House administration and the agenda he represents, has no morals, compassion or empathy.
Today’s Theme Music
The stream has shifted. Into the flow comes an all-time favorite by a little band called Derek and the Dominoes, with help from a guy named Duane Allman. Eric Clapton and Jim Gordon wrote the song, “Layla,” as a love ballad about Eric’s love for George Harrison’s wife, Patty Boyd. Duane entered the picture and changed the song to its more familiar rock sound.
Back in those days, I didn’t know about the confusion arising over the name of the group. I knew when I heard the song, I loved it and sought it out. I thought it was Eric Clapton playing, but if it was this guy, Derek, I didn’t care. Being a slow witted animal, I eventually grasped that it was Eric playing and singing, with help from the great Duane Allman – which explains the similarity to the Allman Brothers’ music of that period, right? It all eventually came together.
To me, this is a triumphant, feel-good song that ignites my creative energies. Pick up your air guitar. Time to jam.
The Light At the End of the Tunnel
“How’s it going?” a friend asked. “Is there a light at the end of the tunnel?”
He was asking about my novel in progress. Like many people, he was speaking cliche-ese. I’m not in a tunnel, and I’m not looking for a light when I’m writing a novel. I once may have thought that way, but I’ve changed. The light would mean there’s hope ahead.
I’m enjoying the writing journey, so there’s no need for a light. The process can sometimes rival a clogged toilet’s mess, but it’s well damn lit.
“What will you do after you’re done?” Bill asked. “Will you write another?”
It’s a question from outside the circle of writers, and again, is common in cliche-land. Bizarre, to me. In sports, the assumption is that you’re going to keep going as long as body, will and team allows. Likewise, that’s how it seems to go in performing arts like acting and singing. Why, then, assume that a writer will be one and done?
After our pleasantries, I walked on but stayed with the topic in thought. I have a novel in progress and two in the wings. Five more, perhaps more than that, have a first draft completed, and require editing, revising and publishing. I don’t know when I’ll give them the attention they deserve. I’ve begun to think that I’ll work on them if I don’t have anything to write.
It’s peculiar to think that there can be a time when I don’t have anything to write. Reading others always stimulates my writing desires, as does watching television and movies, traveling, conversations with friends, and the news. On any given day, I think, “Oh, I can write a novel about that,” or, “That can be the start to a good novel.”
The only permanent elements of life are change and uncertainty, though. Maybe death, too; it depends on your philosophy. I can’t predict that I’ll write until my death or that I’ll always have story ideas. I don’t know what’ll happen to my brain and my body, or our society. But, basically, I’m not in a tunnel, looking for a light. I’m on a plain of light, following the words.
Time to write like crazy – or edit and revise (like crazy?) – at least one more time.
The Odd Couple On the Front Porch
Pepper, on the left, terrifies the other cats, yowling and swatting at them without provocation or hesitation. Belonging to a neighbor, she enjoys our front porch. Tucker is an unrepentant fighter who terrorizes the other cats in the neighborhood. But these two cozy up on the front porch, stretching out and sleeping in peace, or sitting beside one another, a comfortable couple who the other cats carefully avoid.
I don’t know why WP insists on putting two photos in. During editing, there’s only one, but Preview or Publish, and two appear. The entire post was published and deleted. The original photo was deleted from the library and added back in. Yet, WP persists on putting two in there. I guess the God of Technology is messing with me.
Michael Seidel, writer 