A scatterbrain post that wanders all over the place.
Zen cat and crazy daddy
A manic-depressive neurotic with bipolar disorder has a nerve calling a prime minister schizophrenic. That was me describing Justin Trudeau of Canada.
But I should know. My mother was crazy and my son was receiving radio waves from Outer Space until he silenced them with an overdose of amobarbital and secobarbital.
The difference between me and Trudeau, of course, is that I don’t control the lives of 39 million people. The only life I have control over is a little cat in a hovel on County Road 9, just a hoot and a holler from the Town of Fishkill, which (if I may digress in an historical aside) was first settled in 1714 by Dutch immigrants, hence the name Fishkill deriving from two Dutch words, vis meaning fish and kil meaning stream (not a lot of people know that). The village was a major crossroads in transporting goods from Upstate New York along the Hudson River to New York City and New England, and (bear with me) one of the largest military camps during the American Revolution.
Zen cat and crazy daddy
Well, that’s enough of that, back to my cat, who I should say controls my life, not the other way around. Which is fine with me. She’s good company. My sole companion.
My previous sole companion was my very own American woman, a street-wise no-bullshit brunette from Detroit who kept me sane, relatively sane for thirty-four years. And now she’s— I don’t know where she is. I was ushered out of the Intensive Care Unit when the life-support machine was turned off. A Christian friend told me she’s with Jesus. An atheist told me she’s in oblivion. When I get drunk and stoned enough I think she’s with my son, wherever that may be.
When we were in Toronto thirty years ago she went to a Prince concert with my son, who was a teenager from an earlier and terribly failed marriage. I didn’t go and they got along well which pleased me no end. And then he went off the deep end. And that was the end of that. And now I live with a cat.
The cat takes my mood swings from manic to depressive in her leisurely and graceful stride. She concerns herself not with the shouting and the flouting and the railing and the wailing, but with the serenity of her own mind. A genu-ine little Buddhist. How do you like zen apples, Mr Manicdepressiveneuroticbipolarnutcase!
I recall my cat being in charge of my life when I was in school. He certainly let me know when it was time for him to eat. He was never multi-tasking and always very laser-focused when it came to eating time. Then again, so am I.
Yeah, I like their independence and self-confidence. Cats are Zen felineified.