The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.
More Uses than I Knew
One day a couple of weeks ago, I woke up, feeling exhausted and a bit down. I worked from home that day and discovered the extraordinary comfort of a kitty to pet.
Tonight, I'm going to bed early, so I can wake up and drive for 4.5 hours with one of my sisters and my mom to my cousin Shirley's funeral. I barely remember her, or her husband and kids...just that one of her sons sat at our Passover Seder table one year, reading "Mad" magazine.
It's not Shirley I'm mourning so much as the loss of my dad all over again.
Shirley was the last of his contemporaries in the family to go.
For no special reason, or maybe Phoebe is far more psychic than I've given her credit for, she's on my lap, doing her most endearing routine, which happens rarely, but which is extra-sweet: Phoebe's butting her body and head against my chest and looking straight up at me, exposing the white fur of her neck, which contains her whirring purr-box.
What a lovely comfort, which I didn't have back when I lost my dad of blessed memory (z"l) at 17. It's such a simple pleasure to pet a cat -- to feel her tail tap my leg, to see her yawn; all of these relax me so.
This afternoon, my mom and I visited a friend of my mother, who is in rehab, as he was rear-ended eight months ago by a 16-year-old, barreling around in a BMW SUV. My mom and her friend were swimming buddies; he was on his way to the JCC pool when it happened.
Today, he can move only his facial features and his left arm; he's right-handed. His left hand is in a permanent, loose fist.
Our conversation took us to Oliver Sacks, and Temple Grandin and animals, and the drooling, unwieldy dog he had, and to Pat's and my cats. I let him talk mostly about the dog, but I was missing Phoebe and Toonces as he told his stories.
If there is a simpler pleasure in response to paralysis and to death than kitty-petting, I cannot imagine what it is.
Showing posts with label kitty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kitty. Show all posts
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Saturday, October 18, 2008
I'm Hungry...
The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.
To Recover My Creativity
I want to write about the Cat Show at Madison Square Garden or the Economy or "Saturday Night Live," but I'm feeling too self-conscious.
Today, I decided to give myself the gift of focusing exclusively on my writing, rather than cramming it in around everything else I'm doing. That's turning out to be self-consciousness-producing.
Too bad. It's important to express myself, even if I'm listening too hard to each syllable as my fingertips slowly press it out.
Healthy Pressure
The artists support group I go to on Monday nights has agreed to devote on Monday a month to an Action Plan meeting.
That Monday is tomorrow night. Oy! The Plan will require each of us to declare and commit to what we'll do in a particular period of time to further our art. What I'd rather do today and forever is focus on petting the purring kitty, who's lying in my lap.
It's unnerving to try to figure out more than I'm doing via the blogging. In fact, my blog is far more than I ever did pre-blog to express my voice broadly. I started talking to one of my friends about the concept of the Action Plan and got the sense that committing further to my blog might not qualify as an OK Plan. It seemed that I needed to be paid for my writing, or at least published by someone else, rather than myself (via the blog).
What Would I Wish to Have Published?
That's the problem: I don't feel drawn to write anything that's commercially appealing. At dinner with a friend the other night, he said, "There's definitely a market for memoirs, but they have to be ironic, like David Sedaris' or Augusten Burrough's, and you probably don't want to write like that."
~Giant sneeze and Phoebe, the kitty, claws through my sweatpants as she springs off my lap in fear.~
In 2000, I completed a 180-page, coming-of-age memoir, but have had no desire to continue revising and editing it to make it commercially viable. The blog appeals to me so much because the only sort of writing that interests me in my free-time features my reflections on what I hear and see and experience around me.
If someone were willing to publish the best of my blog entries as a book, that would be wonderful. I just want the writing to be pure pleasure, and not laborious. Chutpah, I know.
Phoebe is back.
To Recover My Creativity
I want to write about the Cat Show at Madison Square Garden or the Economy or "Saturday Night Live," but I'm feeling too self-conscious.
Today, I decided to give myself the gift of focusing exclusively on my writing, rather than cramming it in around everything else I'm doing. That's turning out to be self-consciousness-producing.
Too bad. It's important to express myself, even if I'm listening too hard to each syllable as my fingertips slowly press it out.
Healthy Pressure
The artists support group I go to on Monday nights has agreed to devote on Monday a month to an Action Plan meeting.
That Monday is tomorrow night. Oy! The Plan will require each of us to declare and commit to what we'll do in a particular period of time to further our art. What I'd rather do today and forever is focus on petting the purring kitty, who's lying in my lap.
It's unnerving to try to figure out more than I'm doing via the blogging. In fact, my blog is far more than I ever did pre-blog to express my voice broadly. I started talking to one of my friends about the concept of the Action Plan and got the sense that committing further to my blog might not qualify as an OK Plan. It seemed that I needed to be paid for my writing, or at least published by someone else, rather than myself (via the blog).
What Would I Wish to Have Published?
That's the problem: I don't feel drawn to write anything that's commercially appealing. At dinner with a friend the other night, he said, "There's definitely a market for memoirs, but they have to be ironic, like David Sedaris' or Augusten Burrough's, and you probably don't want to write like that."
~Giant sneeze and Phoebe, the kitty, claws through my sweatpants as she springs off my lap in fear.~
In 2000, I completed a 180-page, coming-of-age memoir, but have had no desire to continue revising and editing it to make it commercially viable. The blog appeals to me so much because the only sort of writing that interests me in my free-time features my reflections on what I hear and see and experience around me.
If someone were willing to publish the best of my blog entries as a book, that would be wonderful. I just want the writing to be pure pleasure, and not laborious. Chutpah, I know.
Phoebe is back.
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