A Saturday morning and a long weekend.
Getting up when I wanted to. . .well sort of. . .
More like getting up when Tikka's full bladder and Frankie's empty stomach could wait no longer. . .
But at least I was able to go back to bed when their morning ablutions were complete.
Coffee and fruit salad in bed when I did decide to get up at 11.30 am.
Reminding me of the Wallace Steven's poem about coffee and oranges. . .
Sunday Morning
Complacencies of the peignoir, and late
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,
And the green freedom of a cockatoo
Upon a rug mingle to dissipate
The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.
She dreams a little, and she feels the dark
Encroachment of that old catastrophe,
As a calm darkens among water-lights.
The pungent oranges and bright, green wings
Seem things in some procession of the dead,
Winding across wide water, without sound.
The day is like wide water, without sound.
Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet
Over the seas, to silent Palestine,
Dominion of the blood and sepulchre.
2Why should she give her bounty to the dead?
What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth,
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?
Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch.
These are the measure destined for her soul.
3Jove in the clouds had his inhuman birth.
No mother suckled him, no sweet land gave
Large-mannered motions to his mythy mind.
He moved among us, as a muttering king,
Magnificent, would move among his hinds,
Until our blood, commingling, virginal,
With heaven, brought such requital to desire
The very hinds discerned it, in a star.
Shall our blood fail? Or shall it come to be
The blood of paradise? And shall the earth
Seem all of paradise that we shall know?
The sky will be much friendlier then than now,
A part of labor and a part of pain,
And next in glory to enduring love,
Not this dividing and indifferent blue.
4She says, "I am content when wakened birds,
Before they fly, test the reality
Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings;
But when the birds are gone, and their warm fields
Return no more, where, then, is paradise?"
There is not any haunt of prophecy,
Nor any old chimera of the grave,
Neither the golden underground, nor isle
Melodious, where spirits gat them home,
Nor visionary south, nor cloudy palm
Remote on heaven's hill, that has endured
As April's green endures; or will endure
Like her remembrance of awakened birds,
Or her desire for June and evening, tipped
By the consummation of the swallow's wings.
5She says, "But in contentment I still feel
The need of some imperishable bliss."
Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,
Alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreams
And our desires. Although she strews the leaves
Of sure obliteration on our paths,
The path sick sorrow took, the many paths
Where triumph rang its brassy phrase, or love
Whispered a little out of tenderness,
She makes the willow shiver in the sun
For maidens who were wont to sit and gaze
Upon the grass, relinquished to their feet.
She causes boys to pile new plums and pears
On disregarded plate. The maidens taste
And stray impassioned in the littering leaves.
6Is there no change of death in paradise?
Does ripe fruit never fall? Or do the boughs
Hang always heavy in that perfect sky,
Unchanging, yet so like our perishing earth,
With rivers like our own that seek for seas
They never find, the same receding shores
That never touch with inarticulate pang?
Why set pear upon those river-banks
Or spice the shores with odors of the plum?
Alas, that they should wear our colors there,
The silken weavings of our afternoons,
And pick the strings of our insipid lutes!
Death is the mother of beauty, mystical,
Within whose burning bosom we devise
Our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly.
7Supple and turbulent, a ring of men
Shall chant in orgy on a summer morn
Their boisterous devotion to the sun,
Not as a god, but as a god might be,
Naked among them, like a savage source.
Their chant shall be a chant of paradise,
Out of their blood, returning to the sky;
And in their chant shall enter, voice by voice,
The windy lake wherein their lord delights,
The trees, like serafin, and echoing hills,
That choir among themselves long afterward.
They shall know well the heavenly fellowship
Of men that perish and of summer morn.
And whence they came and whither they shall go
The dew upon their feel shall manifest.
8She hears, upon that water without sound,
A voice that cries, "The tomb in Palestine
Is not the porch of spirits lingering.
It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay."
We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.
Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail
Whistle about us their spontaneous cries;
Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;
And, in the isolation of the sky,
At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
Downward to darkness, on extended wings.
I always loved this poem.
Things to do, but not immediately.
The only dance on my card is going to have dinner and a visit with Mum.
This is the kind of day that makes getting up at 5.30 am worthwhile.
Now if the sun would just come out.
For longer than 5 minutes.
Yesterday, my only non-teaching day, was filled to the brim with "things I need to catch up on."
Answering emails.
Downloading assignments.
Grading assignments
Making up exams for next week.
Meeting with my new honours student.
Volunteering at the kitchen.
Coming home and crashing with the collective exhaustion of the last three weeks.
I can't wait for a series of non teaching days to be the norm and not the exception.
Meredyth has a kitten.
Jasper.
Yes, I know he's cute.
But there is something about not being able to look after yourself and trying to look after something else that is just a tad bit annoying.
But he is very, very cute.
We all knew about Jasper.
Meaning Keith, Em and me.
Stephen. . .
Not so much.
In spite of unfounded misconceptions, I actually don't like keeping things from Stephen.
And it was getting harder and harder to do so.
When she called on Wednesday, expressing her need for cat litter and I couldn't figure out how to get it to her without Stephen knowing what I was doing, I simply said to him,
Meredyth needs cat litter.
And watched as the meaning of that statement permeated his consciousness to land squarely on the island of understanding.
She has a cat.
Yes. He's more of a kitten. His name is Jasper.
Um.
Initially, he was about as impressed as I was.
And when we went to pay for the repairs to Em's car, to facilitate more needed repairs, we stopped at the grocery store and bought an 18 kg box of cat litter.
While in the cash line up, I turned to Em and said,
Does she have food for this cat?
Thank God for cell phones.
Yes, she had some food, but more would be needed.
Hence, a bag of cat food was added to our order.
I have yet to meet this kitten, and was going to when we dropped the goods off to her, but, we still hadn't had supper.
It was almost 8.00 pm.
And Stephen was getting crankier and crankier by the millisecond.
Dinner first then.
After which he went to drop off the cat cargo, proclaiming he was going to get the $20.00 back from Mer.
The cost of said cat cargo.
Whatever.
I didn't think to let Mer know that Stephen was delivering the goods.
Apparently, when she opened her apartment door and saw Stephen, she was more than a little shocked.
You know? she asked.
I know, he replied.
Oh, she responded.
Can I see him? Stephen asked.
Sure, she replied.
And the second he looked into those kitteny blue eyes, he was a goner.
Hooked for life.
The she-must-pay-back-the-20.00-proclamation became consider-this-your-cat-warming-gift.
Softie.
Pure softie.
All marshmallow, all the time.
I still have yet to meet this kitten.
By the time I do, he'll be a full grown cat.
I understand Mer's need for companionship.
She doesn't like living alone, and, having something to come to has made a world of difference for her.
Making her more content to live on her own.
And thus making life more content for those of us who don't live with her.
Having said that, as soon as she told me she had a cat, I understood how my parents and my former mother-in-law felt when my ex and I got a dog.
How can you look after a dog when you can barely look after yourselves and, oh, the two children you've had?
I get it now.
I'll have to tell her.
She'll appreciate the acknowledged awareness.
But it'll be hard to admit.
I'm just like that.
Now, I want a kitten.
It's been a long time.
Five years to be exact.
Not since the introduction of Goblet has a kitten graced the threshold of our happy home.
I like cats and kittens.
Another would be more than welcome.
The last time I said to Stephen we should have another child, I got Frankie.
Perhaps it's time to ask for another baby.
Maybe this time I'd even get a pony.
Title Lyric: Pile of Kittens (In My Mind) by Parry Gripp
