Muddle of Distracted Thoughts

When I'm anxious about something, I compulsively tidy up. It's something that doesn't demand much concentration. Tonight I removed some newspapers that had accumulated. I don't know why I keep them. I'll see an article that looks interesting, but which I haven't the time to read, and even though I know from experience that I'll probably never get around to it, I set it aside for later. The stack invariably grows.

As I peeled away at the stack blocking the stacks of books (most of which are probably destined to remain unread as well) blocking the long-overflowed bookcase itself, I glanced briefly at a few of the papers. Seeing the headlines of a year or more of events, I was struck by how transient it all is. All these things that were of sufficient importance to be published, and which caught my attention at the time, now are superceded by their consequences, or have turned out to have no lasting significance. At the moment, I don't feel like one of those people who can gather public history and hold it in their consciousness. Whatever impact these events have on reality -- undeniably a great deal, in many cases -- they inevitably slip from my mind.

I must acknowledge that the things I find most important are the daily occurrences of my own life and of the immediate world that I can see and touch. To some extent I can keep track of the course of those events which move the world, but I don't care for them. What I care for is the ordinary and everyday, and for the rare and beautiful. All the moving and shaking fails to move or shake me until it is distilled by some art capable of making it as real to me as the woods and flowers and bird songs I encounter each day. When the actions of the powerful or the mass have become the subject of fiction or poetry or painting, then they take on real meaning for me. Until then, despite the fact that their consequences effect me every day, they are like these dusty and yellowing piles of newsprint all destined for the recycler. I might choose to keep them around for a while, but there will come a moment when I will be eager to discard them. Behind them, I might find something such as this:

NANTUCKET

by William Carlos Williams


Flowers through the window
lavender and yellow

changed by white curtains--
Smell of cleanliness--

Sunshine of late afternoon--
On the glass tray

a glass pitcher, the tumbler
turned down, by which

a key is lying-- And the
immaculate white bed.

That, I intend to keep.

A While Ago

Evening has been cool, but the house (as usual) is a big heat sink, and I once again resort to writing on paper, letting Sluggo cool off. Sitting in one spot, I alternately feel the lingering heat and the brief cool breezes which are gradually displacing it. Most of the machines have quieted down for the night. At the moment, I hear a small motorcycle which has passed along the main road to the higher mountains. It's waspy buzz remains faintly audible after two minutes, until it is at last drowned out by the sound of a single car following the same route.

The way sound carries on clear nights makes the house seem very small, and surrounded by immense vacancy. I prefer the chirping of the crickets nestled among blades of grass or clumps of other ground-hugging plants. They draw the soft night close, wrapping it around the house like a big comforter.

Early this morning, the cat left the living room chair in which she had slept for the better part of two days and came into my room and slept on the bed. In the afternoon, she went outdoors for a few minutes. In her weakened state, I didn't want her out alone so I remained with her as she nibbled a bit of grass and then hobbled to a sunny spot at the end of the walk where she sat for a few minutes watching the birds. Then she came back in and, after another nap, had a half hour of lap time. She didn't sleep while being petted, but gazed at various spots in the room as though in rapt attention to something which I couldn't see. Once she had her fill of petting and purring, she hopped down and went to her old favorite spot in the closet, where she now continues to nap. While she remains obviously weak, and took only a few licks at the bowl of cat food I gave her, she seemed to enjoy her brief outdoor adventure and the bit of attention she received.

Now, with her sleeping out of sight, and the younger cat out enjoying the pleasant spring night, I am again left with only the sound of the crickets, the passing cars and the scratching of my pencil for company. In a while, my mother will wake and need tending to, and her middle-of-the-night meal, but this moment I have the house to myself. I just went to put some laundry in the dryer, and as I traversed the silent rooms the thought that came to mind was that the place is full of empty spots where once there were cats. There have been six cats in this house altogether, as many as five of them at one time. As I returned to my room, I noted their favorite napping spots and play areas, the places where they once crowded around their food bowls and water dishes, the window sills where they sunned themselves and watched the passing days and nights, the doors at which they patiently waited to be let out. Soon, I know, there will be only the one cat left to enliven all that space. I don't think I've ever felt the place so empty.