Well, this one is for Tope, the cat who moved from one country to another, from spending a few lifetimes running from beach dogs who wanted to eat her, to a few lifetimes happy with us, trailing about gardens ready to bite and define her space.


Tope was found dead yesterday by the road-where-everyone-speeds, the road where I never shift above third because we've already lost three cats and a dog to people who thrill on country roads but don't even stop to carry a loved animal up a hill to those who loved it. Honestly, I feel like sitting at the bottom of our driveway and slingshotting every speeding car that whips by. Fuck you, people in cars who kill and don't deal.

Tope would have take one of their eyeballs.


So, Tope was born in Mexico near Akumal where my sister was interning with turtles. The way I hear it, things were incredibly hot along that beach, and the hut my sister lived in was infested with bichos, or cockroaches that were eaten in the evening by a grey kitten who wandered in and kept my sister company at night. She ate bugs and cuddled solitarily, then during the day dodged pack dogs who were eventually foiled by my sis who adopted Tope away, taking her in a small carry-on case, via multiple unexpected tolls, to WA where she learned within days how to fling herself out of our umbrella stand, which she climbed and curled into the folds so's to capture with rapier any innocent passersby.

Thin as an anorexic playgirl, Tope had more claws than any other creature known scientifically to earth, so my sister the biologist swears.

Tope lived in Seattle with A and P for a couple of years after that, and for sure I admired her all the while. And I can't actually remember the reason why she came to live with me, but it had to do with some amount of relocation. But Tope spanned two of my gfriends, both of whom admired her or put up with her (for different reasons I think), and she kept me through my Masters degree.

All things considered, I always found it noble of her to slink out the window to potty out of doors since I despise litterboxes and didn't feel like keeping one for her easy usage. She also always loved that spot between my head and the story I was typing on my computer, and we compromised by letting her have that spot, with me crooking my neck to see around her sleeping form on my belly.


During her stint with me, Tope showed a talent for bringing mice indoors and dismembering them in the bathtub. On the one hand, this did contain the gore, but on the other, it happened to be "startling" to sleepily enter the shower in the morning and step on trailing mouse intestines and a near beating heart.

But she loved it if I left the door open when I showered so she could greet me after my survival, to lick the droplets off my knees. She slept either: between the legs, right in the crook of the arm with her little head out of the blankets but everything else under, or if one was part of couple, right in the between touching both and always, always chaperoning. Tope didn't approve of her people fornicating, ever. She scratched movement under covers.

When I was stuck away from the apartment during a snowstorm and her window to the outdoor litterbox was blocked, she gracefully scraped up little corners in my plant pots. And when she moved to my mom and cr's place because I was abroad, she so successfully annoyed cr that he ranted and raved about her evilness. But when I went to put her in the car to bring her with me to Chicago, cr threw a fit and took her out. She wasn't a cat meant to be within city, as much as I wanted her to come, and we all knew that. She loved to prowl and scratch and hide in the grass. cr really loved her too, actually.

And when I moved back, a month ago, Tope started sleeping in my armpit again, so much forgiveness, and it hasn't even been three days since she thumped my foot with her back legs, biting and clawing in her inevitable angst, nor has it been that long since she purred and purred against my shoulder. I just got back. I just got back. I just got back.

Whereas I called her Tope and Little Bitch, my mom dubbed her PurrPurrSlash. In that measure.

One has to respect a being who willynilly defined her boundaries and enforced them -- with cuddle too, but mostly nippings, hissings and beatings. My sis liked to say I ruined her, made her a wicked little cu-t, but that's who she was from beginning to end, all herself, ornery and stubborn and wild, demanding and wonderful.

I took this video of her last week:

One [story] called “The Sad Island” (also named “carrying Water in a Sieve” though it’s come to be known as “Making a Picture”)

Its moral: If you echo onward you may fit the distance
Its second moral: The feathers in your cap are inextricable

Hejinian, The Border Comedy, 14

Swear to god I'm going to go insaaaaane with this one... I've gone to two pride parades in B-ville and each time I walk by a particular ex- whom I haven't been on speaking terms with for over three years, and her wife, who used to be our professor. Usually they're cuddling or something.

(I didn't go tubing because I suddenly realized that it would be just me and a great, hilarious fellow who nonetheless hits heavily on anything with big boobs whenever he gets drunk. Ibso facto, best to go with a group. Would have been better to do the same at the parade though.)

Well, this time, I almost ran into the ex- and her prof- four times, bam bam bam bam, with me turning the opposite direction each time, bam wham, and walking away (without them noticing I think) balam! It chaps my chiff to feel like I'm sneaking away, especially as I've worked admirably towards a disinterested neutrality with regards to that part of my past, but running into those two at the Pride Parade of all places and having to possibly make civil conversation with them for the first time in ages is my idea of Hell. The Hell where you stand up to the neck in your own shit while flames are thrown across your eyeballs.

On the other hand, I think I will go crazy if I can't just run into one or the other of them (not both) in a less ironic setting and get it over with, rid myself of the abstract symbol of something-er-other, so I'm not jumping at shadows.

bn told me before I left Chicago that I should never, ever feel like I have to slink. I'm pretty sure it was the nicest compliment she's paid me, and I try to keep it in mind around these parts since I'm often on edge when in town, and I pray that this goes away soon.

The hard, stupidest part for me to accept sometimes is that if [things had shaked slightly differently]... I wonder if we all might have been friends. Sucks to think those things; friendship is better, but unfortunately ethical friends are the best.

Love is for babies.

*

On other notes, the parade itself wasn't bad and I enjoyed myself. The two protesters sporting 'God Hates You' ilk banners on the edge of the Pride Parade made me eat my previous-post words. Blah blah blah and I guess pride's not about claiming that queerness ain't messy (maybe the opposite), but that it needs to be respected and included anyway, Blah Blah Blah. Everyone looked happy.

Plus, The Roller Betties were still hot, and it's nice for a change to let myself lecherously lust at the hotties.

Sigh. Nothing's ever easy for me, is it.

I went to my dad's housewarming last night though, and I guess I can say that quiche-making is getting easier and easier, because I made a Broccoli-Feta Plus Quiche to take there, and it was gone in an hour. It friggin rocked, if I may toot my own horn. Toot. And for home, I made a Cauliflower Chicken Quiche that also makes the mouth flow. Toot toot.

Oh, and I found a photo-project place. And maybe scored a very parttime job doing photoshop and grant-applying work. And I'm writing again (slowly, like mush. and got given major shit last night for having only submitted my work four times in my life, and always to easy catches. It's getting pathetic, I must say).

Going paddling.

Having mashed the knuckle of my index finger into a purple expansion, then grated the entire knuckle off my pinkie while making cole slaw for the first time, then sliced the thumb knuckle while sorting, boxing and/or shredding the 5 billion antiquated patient files at my mother's clinic, and then said mean spiteful misdirected words to the knuckle of my pointing finger, all on the right hand and leaving only the middle finger for healthy, self-esteemed usage, I'm assuming that it's that one weekend above all weekends, the moment of truth, the penultimate communal gathering, the temptation that should never tempt.

That is: having reflected honestly to myself about the past five years, leading me to make seven.five notches on the belt-half named Shame, leaving one.five to the other side; having recently read The Count of Monte Cristo and Lolita in order to come away with the distinct agnostic impression that above all else God must have sunk his lecherous claws into my nymphet thighs and claimed them as His own when I was but a wee tot, jealous jealous man that He be; having cried for three out of three of the past three days simply because I'm premenstrual and that's what happens; having dreamt of elephants on a sand plain after the apocalypse, slowly giving up and letting the nuclear snow cover them with only trucks and horned toenails remaining, plus a pack of separated coyotes howling within the slush they've packed into circles; having (angrily) felt for some time that the only three available fornication choices for intellectual lesbians appear to be: traumatized (straight) women, professors, or re-virginated defiance; having not so recently begun the long climb towards convincing myself that a "career" has always been my priority... yes, having all this, all this, I am left only with the belief that it is Pride Weekend in B-Ville.

And likely I will participate, partially out of that envious curiosity about those who actually feel positively about the sexual proclivities with which they have been afflicted, and partially from the niggling feeling that I might be a hypocrite and that bitterness and hopelessness don't accessorize well with the freckles recently touched upon me by sun and oceanic summer and the banal but gentle, developmentally-disabled salty air.

Of course, I've been invited to go tubing... so why the conflict?

P.S. Now I know it's so: my sister just called requesting that I bring over a sledgehammer and vacuum-cleaner.

(story removed... cleaning up the old drafts)

Well, I'm not going to get into the details, but today has been the day of uberRejection in the realm of jobs. Near tears, man, near tears.

What can I say but Fuck You Heartily, and also that I hope one day to live up to any particular intellect, maybe mine, commercially and maybe artistically too? But not to go into details, as promised before, today I folded laundry at the spot where they actually like me and then got, well, dishearteningly certainly and snottyBitchily somewhat, news about or from four different places.

And just so you Anti-Academics who have encouraged me away from The College don't gloat too much: two were from artist-sorts, and 1 of these 2 were among the most brutal of snubbings I've received (maybe next to the Fishermen who say "Oh Honey, oh Honey, oh Honey oh, But this is the Toughest of Tough Roughings - too much for any Independent Ho / Ahem... that is, this tisn't a job for such a Daintily Buffed, Painted or Innocent Tuft, replete with her Highly Prideful but Furry Muff / Were you Smutty and Butch, perhaps some kind of Vicious Grit or at least replete with an Erotic Wit, we'd consider taking you on as our Class-A Bitch / But M'Lady a'Wander, one might suggest you consider the alternate path: turn Straight as an Arrow, so's to never again consider the Oceanic Harrow / [as quiet as Solitude,... Vice, or an old Fishing Man's Leukemic Marrow]."), but here's the artistic version:

"I'm so busy, I decided to do it myself after we talked about how you might help."

Plus stuff about teaching, blah blah blah, stuff about teaching.

Maybe I suck, I guess.

Or maybe I'm overreacting, selfish, lazy, and just want a stupid career without having to lick as much ass as most have to lick these days. Sigh.

Man. I'm depressed. Self-esteem and commercial qualifications, sure, but I'd rather just be a fisherman. Except my back is fucked up. So. Karma. Soon. According to my Mother. Or if not, I have people who love me. So there.

So, it's always a wonder and an interest, but apparently those spider birth pics have enthralled the most amount of people visiting this blog since the inane jd-debacle, if emails, phonecalls, facebook, blog comments, shivers etc are any indication of enthrallationism.

One friend called thinking I must be in a beyond-despair depression if I was taking pictures of such dense creepy macabre... until of course, she thought about it and began to wonder if mayhaps I'm not as frightened or disgusted by spiders as other normal folks.

Other friends have bemoaned the fact that they've never seen such a birth, which startled me, since it seems like at least 10% of my childhood must have been spent watching such little bursts of speed and dropaway.

For some reason, our screen door at The Old Lynden House, where I lived from age 2 to 8 (eating cat food, always eating cat food), collected these spider spring births with regularity, and I remember watching more than one. Sometimes the spiderbags were deposited not exactly on the screen door, but rather near the screen door along the side of the old freezer that hoarded my multi-hued Popsicles. I checked the spiderbags' status tri-daily when I went for a withdrawal, and would get jumping excited when the bags were about ready to hatch.

And as I did this time, I would sit very still, watching them open and the tremendous number of different paths traced downwards, through air, on a floating string or along a crack, and I'd blow on them as they hatched - which for some reason encourages spiders along in their travels, perhaps replicating too closely an imminent thunderstorm or the breath of a hungered marauder. I don't have a good reason for thinking it, but spider births are really very beautiful.

So to be clear, I've always since adored spiders.

I once dated a girl who would give me a warning when she had reached the peak of her spider-cuddling abilities, and I would have three minutes on the nose to rush the house with a glass, capturing and releasing out-of-doors as many spiders as I could before she would whip out the vacuum cleaner and send me to near-tears as I imagined the remaining snuffed-out spiders suffocating slowly while trying to claw their way from within vast accumulations of the shed skin, hair and dirt we brought in filthily to their sculptured domains and then vacuumed up with them, just as if they and their weavings were nothing but ours to kill.

Indeed, a boy in high school once asked me rather politely if I would like to perform artificial respiration on one such insect who had been ruthlessly slain by a teacher with a rolled-up newspaper. I had been so furious that a bit of lather had gathered near my left cheek. And I'll say this: since then I've tried to give artificial respiration to a baby dolphin that died in our fishing net up north, and I friggin bawled when it didn't work - that small sleek creature - but I also don't draw as many lines I think between the webwork of water and corner; spiders are far stupider, granted, and they don't look at you so wisely, but they are travelers and collectors as well as killers (dolphins afterall kill fish), and this is partially why I respect them.

So, basically, I took about a hundred pictures of those spiders, and considered their birth a welcoming in.

But back to the bottle of worms... Liz, Liz C, Mz Liz - whom I've been missing so much and didn't realize how much I had come to depend on having you just around the corner, with your shelves of esoteric mystery, your little ladies, and that fireplace a haven for clicketyClack - I would like you to meet Siegfried:


Yes, and what a doll is he! Still doing wonderfully too, surrounded as he is by Balthazar:


& Gertrudes (she's the nasturtium mixed in between the unnamed Wally & Sunny):


Not to mention the rest of my kitchen babies, only one other yet named (because I am waiting to see if they survive the Uhaul trucking from Here:


to There [with Sabine in the foreground]:


A transplant which has caused them to meet Herr Slugs, one of the evil evil local nemeses, who fills my nights with fits of fretting freakouts involving flashlights and barefeet on my smooth red patio with the dewy grit between juncture and another awful flitteringly irritated fidget. Enough so, enough fits that is, that I have manufactured the glistening hermaphrodites a little house, replete with their frigid sunset [Samuel Adams].

)

Yep, so. I must get to bed soon, as I am set tomorrow to do some needed Pickup Hours at my mom's clinic. But three more things: I kayaked again a new little lake, the one I normally walk the dog around, and found I can paddle around it 2x as fast as walking, which maybe means I should do two laps, but I also (2) swam afterwards for the first time this year, and was so happy to not be in chlorine but still be in water, and to be diving around - and oddly enough, the temp was perfect: not too cold or too warm, which surely the bay will be when I swim in it, as per tradition, on the 4th.

AND I'm starting to feel stories again, but have been very bad about recording them, and so have decided to make a Go-Elsewhere schedule for writing, beginning soon, meaning, here's the view out my new kitchen at dawn: