xii. the divine miss T

when my cat, who is still an adolescent, jumps onto my bed, she emits a tiny squeak that is her form of announcement and greeting. twyla brings her striking face--half black, half orange--inches from mine and begins to crawl feverishly around my head, with her weighted paws pulling my hair. i don't mind. i want only for her affection to continue into ripe old age. then my little girl will nuzzle her head into my palm, tasting my fingers, purring beneath her mottled calico stripes. it won't take long for her to settle somewhere near my shoulders, nestled into my torso, and i sense the pulsating purring resonating inside of me, akin to my own heartbeat. margaret atwood wrote in oryx and crake that a cat's purring can heal. i am certain of this. twyla heals me each day, sensing my own wounds and internal scars as an extension of her own being. my worst nightmare included a scenario where i had lost her, and almost found her over and over again, only to discover a cat who was almost like her but with different marking--a white circle around one eye, or a face with too much orange. my little girl was lost to me. disappearance is almost like dying, but with more ambiguity.

throughout my life, i have known cats named madeline, cotton, mim, isadora, effie, and paul. before i had a cat, i spent years spouting bullshit about not believing in happiness, but i finally recognized that wholeness is not perfection. i try to lighten up and offer what little care i can, to myself and the tiniest of beings. my happiest moments are when surrounded by furry twyla and dearest R, all of us nestled on the couch, wanting for nothing. in the dead of winter, i lead a charmed life. with books, purring, the flicker of tea candles, and touch, i cannot want for more.

xi. slumbai

i am a failure as a blogger. even though i will continue to think this, i will not write of it again.

this afternoon i saw a matinee of 'slumdog millionaire.' a far cry from danny boyle's 'trainspotting,' although equally superb. it reminded me of the worst aspects of india, the barefoot children with gold nose-rings and filthy smears across their faces, needy yet cunning eyes, and cupped palms with dirty fingernails that poke at your hips or tug on your tunic, keeping you surrounded as you attempt to push past them down the ghats or across the street. for as brief a time as i spent there, it is this india, the india of brothels full of children, of feces and excrement, crowding sweat, pickpocketing, drug-addled, dreadlocked europeans, and smoke, diesel, and garbage rotting in the sun, that will not leave me. a little girl called me her butterly auntie, and another painted my nails at her father's tea stall. all of the children were so eager to be touched.

earlier this year i read mehta's "maximum city," about mumbai, and the film contained one such burning man as is mentioned therein, lit on fire during the hindu/muslim riots of the early nineties. today i saw him erupt and stumble down the street, unaided, unsalvageable.

and somewhere among all of this, there is room for the corporeal reality--not our phantasms--of the gods, brilliant in their colors, vindictive in their righting of wrongs, cyclical in their quest for creation and destruction, creative in their amalgamations of inhuman bodies. they are, and are not, of us. ganesh has guarded my many passings to and fro, to and fro, yet what liminality, what interference of the divine, will allow me to truly cross over?

x. inertia

my days are unsettled. i needed peace, solitude, slowness, after the whirlwind tour to visit family; but now i am nearly alone in my house and it is silent, cavernous, creaking with the cold. i feel the draft from my unprotected windows, carrying in swirls of frigid air that settle on my desk, on my floorboards. shards of ice crawl up the panes, onto the walls, into my feet and rigid fingers. i have a list of things to accomplish, two pages long, that flutters as i brush past it. i curl up and attempt to read. i know something is wrong when i am not interested in magazines, books, news items, words. i stare listlessly out the window, watching the sunshine's reflection on the snow. it beckons me with its falsehood, for not a shard of warmth exists in the golden light. i sip stale tea and wonder how long i can maintain this purposelessness; neither do i want responsibility to return. i cannot reach three-hundred words. my eyes are blank discs hiding dark matter with frozen synapses. i am inertia, becoming more entrenched in my seat and shuddering frame with each visible breath that crosses my chapped lips.

ix. two thousand nine

people are not quite this crazy where i come from. there was that new year's where T imbibed god knows what in the empty farmhouse, then almost burned down a field until the county fire department appeared. otherwise things are pretty tame, folks fill their fireplaces when it's fifty degrees outside, and liquor can only be bought south of the railroad tracks. not so in north dakota. we arrived at the cabin bundled up in the car, with cold toes and frozen pizzas hanging out in the back of the truck. everyone was standing by the hobo fire outside, their fronts illuminated with a goblin-like glow. it was two degrees fahrenheit. beers froze in the bottles if not gulped fast enough. we added layers and joined them, glassy eyes peeking out below caps and hoods and bulky carhart coveralls and ski attire. one of the older generation passed around redeye, also known as wedding whisky, which tastes of black licorice and leaves a burn on your lips. i sipped red wine during the brief interludes indoors. then it was close to midnight, so a few of us gathered in the garage, some smoking grape cigars, to unwrap bottle rockets and sparklers that were crammed into a sawed-off barrel. well over a hundred firecrackers bouqueted in anticipation of release. outside the sparklers were lit, we prepared to duck as needed, and the booms started. a shower of divine light accompanied by acrid smoke blocked the clear, cruel sky. i coughed and retired indoors. sleep came soon after, on blankets on the floor in a corner shared with mummified crickets and tired carpet. the morning brought tequila shots and classic rock radio before departure, my snow boots well coated and smoke-filled outerware reeking of the new year.