So What About Love?

Valentine's Day ~ chocolate, flowers, loooooove. But what for those of us abandoned by Cupid this, or every, year? What for those with passions burning, but a restraining order in place? Alone no more, nursing old grudges and broken hearts, Valentine's Day can have new meaning! Not flowers, but feathers! No intimate dinner for two, but a flash mob armed with pillows and pent up ~and goose down~ emotion, venting wildly, bursting with joy, frivolity, and life-long issues with holidays invented to sell cards, candy, and self-loathing.

photo credits: Aimee L. (yelp), al bar (flickr)

Gap Term: MidLife (part 1)

Eight weeks ago, we departed Italy for HomeLeave, recently informed that we will be staying there for the duration. So, we must find ways to make our place, to build a satisfying life there. With this in mind, I am touring my homeland with an eye toward the possibilities for that life. Italy, not being my place, my people, nor my identity, will never be home without conscious effort to make it so. And not just the effort to do it, but to determine what that means. Few of the default settings there ~beginning with the landlord's grandmother's cast-off furniture in our flat and ending with frightful fashion and la bella figura on the street~ are anything I'd choose. But default settings remain until someone decides what would better suit. Without exposure to the rest of the world, it's easy to have creativity stifled, to forget originality and individualism, to become mired in the status quo.

So now, it is a smorgasbord of forgotten wonders to be back in San Francisco, to see people's self-expression, to feel the freedom to be whomever and however one wants to be. . . let your freak flag fly! A friend commented, and I marveled, over how anyone can wear anything here and probably find a group which fits like a glove ~leather, fingerless, or silk. Many places are full of people unlike those in other places, but San Francisco is full of all those people and more. Chutney and I held a micro-BurningMan in Via Poggi; why not a San Franciscan colony at Lerici? I will never fit in, will always be la straniera. La straniera the better!

Maybe SantaConItalia is far in the future, but it sure was fun here! Imagine roving hoards of Santas all over the City, with a few Grinches and the odd elf thrown in. Santas on the subway; Santas in bars; Santas cropping up everywhere! Here is the Duboce Park stop of the Haight group of SantaCon 2008. R to L: Renata Foucre, her friend Santa, and myself. This group was on its way to Union Square to meet up with the other 2 groups of Santas. Non-Santa people's reactions were the best. They would see one Santa, "Pff, so what?" Then the magnitude would begin to sink in. Perplexity would give way to smiles, laughter, and pointing.

A Chapter Closes

For 18 years, they were my constant companions, my first consideration, my beloved responsibility. Life was built around the framework of their needs. That framework has disappeared; life has lost its shape and strength to stand upright.

Not long after agonizing over leaving ChutneyWordsworth here with friends during HomeLeave, I knew no one could give the obsessive care I lavished on him. And the best itinerary for us came on Lufthansa, the only airline to allow animals in the cabin flying trans-Atlantic. So, the little old well-traveled man would go with us. At least then, no matter what, we would be together. He always enjoyed new places and would be seeing old friends.

But so soon after that he began to fade more quickly than ever. I prayed fiercely, continually, that he would be comfortable and not suffer, that I might be spared that decision one time. He was the thirstiest thing, and even as his appetite continued to decrease, what he did eat stayed down. That is surely a blessing to the renal patient. But every day he was thinner, even when there seemed nothing left to lose, and more frail yet still getting around.

Then one Wednesday, when I returned home, he mustered the strength and will to zip out the door between my feet. I scooped him up and brought him in; we both knew. But I would never let him go find a cold, dark corner to leave this world alone. He would have a hospice ~ heating pad and water bowl on the couch, sandbox and unwanted food on the floor. Even Thursday evening, he was conscious when I bid him "goodnight" and moved himself from blanket to heater. I slept on the other couch. At about 2:00, I heard a little hitch in his breathing. He hadn't moved. His eyes were open, but unseeing. The tenseness which had filled his little body for the last couple of days was exchanged for limpness. He was never one for laps, so I stroked him and rubbed his ears, talking and singing to him. Maybe he knew or maybe he was already crossing the Bridge. But 15 minutes later, he gave just a few little sounds, his jaw relaxed, one paw twitched, I felt the strangest buzzing go through his ears, and my little old man, reaching the end of his excellent life, walked out of mine. It was as peaceful as I had asked for, just him and me alone, at home. Apparently no pain, no fear. I miss him like my own heart, but God is good. He knows how much we can bear, what will make us stronger, and what will only break us.

When it was Mango's time to go, as much as she left gaping holes in her wake, Wordsworth was there to take up the mantle of "home is where the cat is." He still held down a cat's space on the bed, demanded my attention for cherished rituals, required primary position in any plans to be made. Life maintained its central character of being inhabited by cats. Suddenly, it is no longer bounded and supported and tied to my furry little wards. When my mother died, it felt as though someone had pulled up one tent stake, letting the canvas whip in the wind; the weather roared through. Now the tent is gone. The weather isn't roaring, but the overwhelming silent presence of options leaves me gasping, grasping for the anchor of those small creatures to show me the safe edge of boundaries.

But now is a season to embrace those options. After providing a lifetime for those I first took in, before I start over and give myself to a new generation who will need a roof and kibble and love, I will mourn and escape and become strengthened again. Some time unencumbered to travel with my husband, and perhaps discover a bit more of who I am, apart from being one owned by cats.

Senior Moments

My sweet little baby boy cat is 16. That makes him an approximately ninety year old man. So, for that, he's been remarkably well. Three years ago he was diagnosed with chronic renal failure, a slow but incurable degeneration of the kidneys. It seemed like the beginning of the end. But minding his diet has kept his blood values reasonably stable. We lost Mango so unexpectedly to cancer before his condition began to change at all. The equivalent of fifteen years has passed for him since then and now is taking a little bit more of him away from me every day.

But life with a senior cat is quiet and gentle. He doesn't break things anymore. I do worry about him breaking a hip. He doesn't chew things up, but I wouldn't mind if he ate more. He sleeps even longer than young cats do, waking up to adjust his old bones or to go out and inspect the balcony, to sit in the sun. His little walnut brain is getting tired, too. He stops between rooms as though he's forgotten where he was going. He wants to be near me more than he used to. When he wakes up and I'm in another room, he calls out and comes looking for me. Any tender touch moves him to purring. He used to be more reserved. The aging process and a low protein diet are causing the flesh to melt from his frame. He's just a fur bag of bones and "Meh!" now. Until a few weeks ago, his movement and activity were unaffected. But his footing is less sure today ~the marble floors are a toss-up between becoming more difficult for him to get about on and a breeze for me to clean up the increasingly frequent urp~ and his jumps are more often a close call than an over-shoot anymore.

I am accustomed to my little old man, his occasional play, his serenity. Young cats look fat and crazy in their antics. I can't imagine a kitten in the house. They require so much supervision, so much guidance, so much vigilance. Exhausting. Sure, we get up in the middle of the night if he's hungry for meaty food and have a drowsy few minutes in the dim kitchen light, but then we're both back to sleep. No nocturnal rampages, bouncing off walls and tearing around. Maybe my sleep is lighter for keeping one ear open for the tell-tale sounds that I should immediately set him to the floor, but I remember the years of sleeping with that same ear open for little chewing sounds at the computer wires. It's very satisfying to provide a warm, safe place for a once-homeless cat to spend his retirement.

Right, everyone loves kittens, but providing love and comfort for a creature's declining years is that much the greater kindness. I've considered, for that time in the future when my life again has a cat-shaped hole in it, adoption of a senior citizen. To take someone out of a shelter and provide a real home at last, what a benevolence. But now that I am once more watching a loved one walking toward the Rainbow Bridge, I don't know how I'll get through it, let alone ask to fall in love again, knowing it won't be for long. Even now it doesn't seem so long ago when he was new and we had his whole life together in front of us. It's been a good life, more interesting than I ever expected it would be. But that has brought us so far from everything I know about veterinary medicine and I fear taking him in that he might catch something worse in the office. Yet, in two months, I will have to leave him for six weeks. Taking him with us on Home Leave is out of the question. It would do him in for certain. But how do I ask someone to take care of a cat near the end of his 9th life? Every time I leave, I promise him that I always come back. How can I risk breaking that promise, to not come back soon enough?

Living Experiment, General Observations

Waaay back in the day, God decided it wasn't good for a person to be alone. No surprise, He was right. But not only for the obvious reasons ~proof one isn't talking to oneself (cats give that, really), reaching top shelves and opening jars, or even being an economical heat source~ but having an other helps us to elevate ourselves beyond a base existence, living without accountability.

Craig has been gone 4 weeks and my consumption of fresh produce has been, within reasonable error, a pile of green beans, an eggplant (left over from the curry dinner I hosted for a few friends in hospitality repayment), and a carrot [aside: carrots will keep for a freakishly long time standing in a glass of water in the fridge]. Oh, and a delicious bowl of cherry tomatoes from a friend who likes to grow them, but not to eat them. I'm afraid that's it. When he is here, we go to Saturday market and load up on greens and other deep colors because he refuses to lay a carbohydrate base as the locals do and, with his support, I can't bring myself to face much dead animal. So, with a kitchen full of plants so perfectly ripe, they take priority. It guts me to see food go to waste. But without him loading up the shopping bags, I find myself living on beans, rice, and even pasta.

Right, accountability. My personal pleasures run toward quiet indoor games such as reading, sewing, wasting time in cyberspace with the excuse of "keeping up with the outside world," making art, doting on the cat. None of these do squat to burn off the previous paragraph or strengthen the heart or maintain bone mass. But when Craig returns, his early rising (admittedly, by our standards) will move me to quit the bed sooner and shamble off to the gym for a ready-made exercise class MWF.

Even socially, I find myself becoming more hermit-like. Without someone else here reminding me that it will be fun and giving me a reason to clean up and put on nice clothes, I'm happy puttering about in this home we've made. Eventually, people would stop inviting me ~which, of course, would hurt my feelings even if I didn't really want to go~ and I would never go out. There be the way to 100 cats.

The sleep research hasn't revealed anything useful, except that regardless of when I go to bed or when the ginormous jackhammers start up in the morning, I'm brain-dead until 10:00 a.m. Sleep for 8 hours or 11, it doesn't seem to matter. Ask the cat. He's been through a full wake cycle and back to napping before I cease to be so borink. If he's persistent, he might drag me out to make a meat breakfast ~only from guilt about his digestive health~ but it's a temporary verticality. I have a theory about the jackhammers: rather than keeping me awake, it feels like being pounded flat. Try to stand up under that.

At least I am finding my own housekeeping boundaries. I feared I might never care, but eventually the floor feels too dirty, the shower curtain gets slimy, the cob webs must go, and the dust becomes too much. It is my shame to be able to ignore what my mother would never abide, but there it is. So, my world is cleaner for sharing it with another.

Of course, this is an artificial situation, a 6 week experiment. But would I resolve to do these things for my own good? For his health and happiness, I cook the vegetables, make social commitments, and abandon the covers to wish him good day. Perhaps, were it my life rather than my vacation, I would take a longer view, a more responsible and healthy perspective. I hope it never comes to finding out.

A Living Experiment. . .in Living

6 days ago, Craig left for 6 weeks at sea. What's a girl to do with a month and a half on the Italian Riviera? Without job or other major obligation ~beyond the cat, who is, as you may guess, a little fur sack of bones and MEH!, more demanding than most roommates and to whom I am boundlessly devoted~ it could become The Lost Weekend of epic proportions. Or just a big fat waste of time. Or, just maybe, a personal experiment of peeling away expectations, examining just what could make my life tick and flow rather than stutter and stagnate. How often, if ever, does one have such an unstructured block of time to pursue occupation only as inspired, eat whenever but only when hungry, to sleep when taken by it?

What a luxury it is to be able to put my life under a microscope for no one's dissection but my own. And every time I do, there are artifacts, things from which all practicality has drained, and they remain as awkward souvenirs better pasted into the scrapbook of memory. It was so liberating the day I rolled up all of my linens. Understand, my mother kept a beautiful home and her linen closet might have been set with a T-square and plumb line. So, that was my template and for years I tried to keep her standard, never succeeding. When I realized she did it that way because doing so pleased her, and failing to do so certainly didn't please me, and.... here is the best part... there are other ways to organize the sheets, I was free to leave Little Peg's perfect linen closet in the house I grew up in, with all the other precious memories of those years. Every time I discover another one of these artifacts, be they habits or ideas, that I can set safely aside and replace with something different that works for me, it is growth. Each of us as individuals is molded throughout our lives by so many people and forces, we are constantly becoming. . . what we become requires vigilance and care.

So, it is an exciting responsibility, to know myself better and thereby have been productive during this marvelously free time. By the time Craig returns, I hope to have not only physical proof of my productivity, but also a perceptible improvement of myself. I've begun a list of things to do, and one of things accomplished, dated. Every day I intend to be able to add one to the latter, if only to justify the day's passing. Honestly, it doesn't matter how big or important the project has been, only that some mark has been left on the day, something happened.

I'm curious to see the things I do or do not do because he is not here. And why. How many expectations do I place on normal days without just cause? The things I do not do now, I should note and ask if he values them or if I've imagined their need to be done. And things I do now, which I must believe would make him crazy, perhaps would not.

But perhaps also, in order to live peaceably with another, what one does not mind of one's own does give offense to the other. My dirty dishes are familiar to me; this smear is ketchup, this dish was cat food, this sludge is coffee from days gone by. But anyone else's? I don't know what lurks in the bottom of that big bowl of murky water! Also my shoes, I know where I've left them. But in the dark, were he here, they would become a hazard.

So, upon identifying the habit, the first discernment is whether one could abide it, or the lack thereof, in the other.

Ahh, good work for today. Add "philosophizing" to the Accomplished list.

I'm Not "The Crazy Old Lady with 100 Cats"

Putting my time where my mouth is (see previous post), today my art is a line of designs for clothing and accessories. It's called 97 Cats...More or Less, because, you know, people always talk about the crazy old lady with 100 cats. Most of the pieces have this name on the outside somewhere because Italians love English writing on their clothes and bags which makes no sense.

It began with my general inclination toward buying plain clothes, solid colors, basics. But I bore even myself. I was tired of my clothes, but if it's in good shape, why get rid of it only to be buying something else? However, if it's already too dull to wear, that gives me absolute license to do something to it. Its fate couldn't be worse than neglected in a drawer.

So out come the Jones Tones (fantastic fabric paints available at Dharma Trading) to meet with old T-shirts for a second chance at love. Starting with simple, iconic (yeah yeah, I've heard the word has been banned by newspaper editors as over-used to the point of homeopathic dilution, but literally, how cool would it be to see 97 Cats in a desk-top theme?) line drawings, the first pieces were born:



Now, doodling on old or inexpensive clothes is one thing, but it would take more confidence to lay out my brand new $50 PacSafe purse and put the paint to it. This bag is awesome for wandering cities, uber secure (as described in detail on their website), and I wouldn't carry another ~except my larger version when I just can't go without a sweater, water bottle, umbrella, phrasebook et al~ but while its stalwart character is deeply embedded, the poor thing lacked charisma. Jones Tones comes through with... dare I say it? flying colors. It took to the nylon like brown on rice and is so flexible, not stiff and cracky at all.

What's in your closet that isn't really "you"? Giving to charity is always a great option, but if it's still a keeper, you could make it fabulous, dig it for a while, then circulate your art to the less fortunate. Who wouldn't love finding that one of a kind, hand-made piece in the thrift store?