I stared long into the abyss. I may still be inside it, and perhaps the words below will only faintly resonate with you as though from a person trapped beneath the surface of the ground. In a well far off down the esplanade…a catch all for storm water which is somehow sealed from the ocean such that the tides don’t periodically fill it with brine. While you walk along at a peaceful clip considering whether a soft pretzel or perhaps some cotton candy fixes your disposition.
I cannot change you, not with the best or worst of my actions. I will not, upon summoning all my force or concentrating all my energy or even by devising the most brilliant of plans change the way you do things in this world. I will not, regardless of how important it may be to me, afflict you with a bee that forces you to raise your bonnet or stamp on it repeatedly.
It will not force you to do so. Your liberty is your own liberty to take.
I cannot describe to you why — much like a cat sitting in a bathtub waiting for water to magically appear in front of her paws — stepping back from the place you are currently making full in the absence of considered motion is undoubtedly the best choice you have available. I cannot be blamed if you opt not to do so, because I know the way a faucet works as I do a stopper. I cannot not feel the compulsion to turn knobs I know full well are there, and I realize to my core you will get very wet if I’m not considerate in the turning of those knobs. It is not the fault of me.
I have merely been paying attention.
In point of fact, I took a loan out on my very life in an effort to pay attention with every last coin that I could — never realizing, of course, that doing so was equivalent to staring into the noonday sun. I have nothing else but this now, yet far from a cry for sympathy I say this to illustrate the fact of my satisfaction: I would not have had it any other way than just this one.
Perhaps it was that driver. Yes, the race car driver. Who espoused the belief…what was it again? I’m caught between the desire to look it up — to get it precisely — and to remain fixed here until I figure it out without doing so. A stubbornness I see in you.
You want so badly to figure all of this out. You want to know the reasons why we do the things we do, why things are the way they are.
You are so sad the way you approach this, though. You don’t give it your all. You save a bit of vigilance out to make sure no one ‘slips in’ a sequence of words to help you understand what you’re doing wrong. You do so love learning. We all so love learning!
“Life is not measured in years alone,” or so said the driver. “It cannot be tragic dying doing the thing you love because achievement is a measure by which life takes its meaning.”
We are cats, both you and I. We know not the slightest bit more than where our food and water dish are, and how to hit the box occasionally. Nothing more than this.
We are not the deciders, and the stories we tell ourselves are stories to lend nervous energy or soothing relief to our poorly used imaginations. We know nothing, we are ineffectual, the efforts of mankind are for naught but the amusement of someone other than we. The true residents of this place.
We are cats, nothing more.
I see Diana sitting there, as adorable as can be. Sitting under the faucet wondering when the water will come. Sitting patiently there with her front paws set together just an inch from the drain.
“Where is my water?” she seems to ask. I could cry it’s so adorable, this midget cat I found on the corner of a house at a child’s birthday party more than a decade ago. Lying in the sun near a drainpipe which wasn’t currently doing anything but occupying space until different times came along. In some stones which another moment deflected rainwater instead of collecting sunlight to make the back of a kitten a happier back should she be a careful enough hunter to find them. I could not do anything but what I did: I gently picked her up and I have not let her go since then.
This cat…such a cat is she I’ve never experienced her like. A cat which would seemingly jump to the moon if a piece of lint fell on the ground next to her without being expected to do so. A cat who for all the world had everything figured out. A cat who was a danger to herself so obviously that my wife — when such a drainpipe was in place to direct the flow of my thoughts and energies in a seemingly productive direction — glared her best “I hope you know what you’re doing” glare when first I deliberately let Diana outside.
“I cannot do this to her life.” I said. She must be allowed to live.
I had fears. I don’t have them now. I might die, but now that I’ve seen this world I’m quite okay with that. I expect things will change for the better, and though no person can provably see the future, I have seen enough to know the lot of the people I’ve come across haven’t the foggiest idea what it’s going to look like.
No more than Diana does, sitting there innocently waiting for the water to appear.
It is coming. I swear on my life it is coming and coming in such measure that most will remain astonished for the rest of their lives. There is magic here.
I have witnessed it firsthand.
