Our cat died this morning. She was sixteen. I have had cats my whole life and this is the second one that I didn't love. The first one went to live with my boyfriend's grandfather after six months of us vexing each other. This cat, though, was acquired partly because I wanted my son to grow up in knowledge of caring for something smaller and weaker, so sending it off to live on a farm wasn't an option. And she didn't vex me so much as she just never took my heart. She  was sick in the beginning and suicidal through most of the middle, and though I made her flashcards explaining about how she only got nine lives she continued to jump out the apartment window whenever she got the chance. Possibly I never loved her because I never expected her to stick around for long. I felt bad about it sometimes, not loving this creature who lived with us, but certainly my son loved her and she was fed and petted and brushed. 

We were gone for the summer and five different people took care of her, with five different ideas of how a cat should be cared for. I'm sure that was a factor. But she had been toothless for seven years and always had one thing or another going on with her fur or her digestion, and she was eighty years old in cat years. We came home to a cat that was clearly not long for the world. She licked food off of my fingers for the first day but then even that didn't interest her.

She didn't seem to be in pain; she purred when she was petted and she mewed when she was uncomfortable but mostly she slept on my chest or in my suitcase (a previous battleground, but I decided she could have it this time). I watched her slipping away this past week. I thought I would see if I could let her go naturally, without euthanasia, although I am a big fan of choosing not to suffer needlessly. But it didn't seem like she was suffering. I am incredibly privileged to work from home and be able to spend most of my day checking on a cat every hour to see if she wants to lick water off my fingers or be carried to the cat box, so that's what I did. And somewhere between one hour and the next this morning, she died.

I did not love her. But I did care for her. I hope I have resolved that within myself. I'm not sure she knew or cared, as long as I fed her. She was a quintessential cat in that regard. 

My sister has a bird, a parrot, that was rescued from some old dude who wasn't really able to take care of it. Otis is an absolute beauty and quite gentlemanly in many ways. He has a collection of phrases from his previous owner, and sometimes we talk to him in that voice, as if it were his voice, Otis's, though of course we don't know what that would sound like. Otis is a bird, with a bird-sized brain, but because he can talk, it sometimes seems like he's really quite smart, smart enough to mess with you.

Like sometimes he makes the sound of the dishwasher being done when it hasn't even completed a cycle, and I come running to be a good houseguest for nothing; I think he likes the scurrying. And sometimes he uses my sister's or brother-in-law's voices to call out "hello" as though they have just come home and I get all happy because that means it's cocktail time except Otis doesn't drink and they won't be home for two more hours. Pavlov's parrot or something, this one.

Or like I sit down to work and Otis asks me "Whatcha doing? Whatcha doing?!" and I tell him I am working. And he asks and I answer until it seems existential, until I am almost crying about it, because I am sitting here in beautiful sunny California, there is a swingset in the backyard, there are rivers to raft in, and I am… well, Otis, I am working. Which is the right thing to do, but if you say it enough it can sound wrong.

So I am working. I am also taking some time for myself: I have been wine tasting; I have driven over the border into Nevada to win $60 on a $1 slot machine and walked away; I have eaten until all I can fit in are cotton pants with an elastic waist, and then I have heaved a giant sigh of relief and eaten more. I have been complimented on my "look" by a stranger and have in parallel noted with pleasure my increasing invisibility in the patriarchy. I have celebrated birthdays and anniversaries. I have mourned the deaths of 49 people I did not know and one who I did. I have visited some friends and will visit more. I have laughed until I cried, which is usual for me, and cried until I laughed, which is new and interesting. I have debated whether love makes us blind (I believe it does not). I have been flooded with memories of previous times I was here, previous longings and disappointments and delights.

I have not told Otis everything I am doing. I probably shouldn't tell you, either.  

Ok, so television. I like watching Orphan Black a lot. It started sort of in the realm of "who are you, really?" nature/nurture stuff, which is one of my favorite stories, and then it got sort of Fringe-y with the Neolutionist stuff, which is not my favorite story but since I would like to have tentacles I have empathy for people who want to have tails so okay, that's fine. Now I think it's gotten a little too "holy crap, we haven't been canceled? Better string this along then" with the plot, but I'll still watch Tatiana Maslany do just about anything and I like Jordan Gervais a lot too so you know, still fun. And I like playing "Which clone is the most like you?" with myself, where we would like to be Cosima, with her smarts and her pretty French girlfriend and her desperate desire to believe in love against all the usual odds, even though we know we are more like Alison with her pointy needs.

And I like Orange Is the New Black, and I'm putting them together here not just because they both start with O and end in Black, but because I again feel these vague identifications with the characters. I like Red's fierce loyalties, Boo's uncompromising sense of self, Norma's faith in kindness. I would like to think I have Poussey's moral steadfastness. But the other night we watched the episode when Caputo compromises himself over and over to be the "good guy". Gives up his dreams to help someone weaker, falls on his sword because he can take it. And I have done that; I have let my ability to see how to help other people and my pleasure in being able to do that interfere with even thinking about what I want, what pleasures I could take for myself beyond giving. But then Caputo started listing everything he'd given, and I thought: eww. Because I will give to the extent that I feel able, and then if the only reward is knowing I gave, well after a while it just gets boring. After a while, it's like sleeping on marble, pouring out the heat of my body into endless cold. And I did that, I have done that, but I can't do it anymore. After a while I have to get up and move around and find some place softer. I feel that the point of kindness for me is that I can, it is the pleasure of doing something I do well. When kindness is used as an excuse for self-pity, it's almost as ugly as being selfish in the first place. So not Caputo, me. Though it felt like a useful cautionary tale. And that is why I love television; these stories, the mythology, the promises and the warnings, the shoes I can walk in for 45 minutes at a time and see where I might wind up. 

Things that have not changed:

There are some faces that I love to look at, have loved to look at, even when my love for the person has so completely evaporated that I barely trust my memory, I still feel such pleasure in the tilt of their eyes, curve of lip, chicken pox scar, whatever. There is still, in their faces, something of what initially pulled me to them. Other faces as my love faded the veil slipped and they became unattractive on the outside as from the inside, until they are just faces, flowers of no particular interest. 

And then there are faces I almost can't bear to look at. 

What I am wondering this month, as I fail to watch another political debate partly on aesthetic grounds, is whether these people were born with terrible faces and then gradually developed personalities to match them, or whether their faces reflect their personalities. This one constantly surrounded by every stale fart in the world, judging from the curled lip and the pinched nose. This one with his lips pursed tighter than any sphincter needs to be. These faces physically repulse me, and yet other people must find them attractive. What is that about?

I walk down the street and look at faces and think about chickens and eggs. Is this the face you would have chosen, if you had a choice? Were you born looking like the world had failed to meet your expectations; arms crossed disdainfully already on the playground, a bossy dissatisfied child; does the thin upper lip reflect a disappointment you were born with? Were you born this way and your personality grew into it, or did your looks grow this way because of how you lived? The result is the same, I guess, so maybe it doesn't matter, but I have a half smile, slightly widened eyes, and I'm asking.

Last night an angry bee was bothering me as I took a leisurely stroll down a narrow path that seemed mostly like a grocery aisle. Flapping my hands in front of me to get rid of it. I don't know why I didn't just turn and walk the other way; this fuzzy yellow creature was obviously intent on stopping me. Fwap fwap fwap with my hands at it, effectively blowing it out of my way on puffs of agitated air until finally it landed on my hand and I couldn't shake it off, and I felt the stinger go in. A mixture of pain and… relief, then, because now the thing I had been dreading happened, and now the bee would die so I could proceed unhindered. Except it kept coming at me. A wasp? Is it bees that die and wasps that don't? And which are hornets? I could feel my hand starting to swell. I just wanted to get to the end of the path, where it opened out again; also, I wanted to find tweezers to get the stinger out, and they're on another aisle. I am, even now, confused about why I didn't turn around. Instead waving my hands, sometimes brushing against the fur of a very determined and angry hornet, the buzzing, the pain in my hand. I put a scarf over my head, tenting it over my face so the hornet couldn't sting through it, then wondered where the scarf had come from and why it was so heavy and finally woke, buried under the blankets, sweating and frightened and very confused. I still need tweezers. 

In May I had almost no work at all, which scared me because May is usually a pretty busy month. Freelance means you set aside some money when you get some money and you enjoy some time when you have some time and you try to hustle reasonably in busy times and you also try not to panic unnecessarily in slow times so even though I experienced some concern in May I mostly enjoyed the fine weather and the free time and waited it out. Summer's always slow; things predictably picked up a bit in September, but I still hadn't come close to making up for May.

AND THEN: November and December were absolutely crazy. Every academic in Brno wanted to publish something, the air was thick with the smell of grant money to be spent before the end of the year. January promises more of the same, and I finally took time out to look at finances and raise my prices, which I haven't done in ages. I know this is a very interesting story that I am telling you. Stay with me; it gets a little better.

I am thinking about this, about feast and famine, about the flow of things, and about boundaries. What happens with my work is in many ways the same as what happens in my life and I have to remember to keep my eyes and hands and heart open and take it all in and let it all pass. Just like the absence of work in May, there are times in my life when I am scared, when I feel lonely and like what I have is not enough, that I need more hobbies and more interests and more life in my life, but if I can remember to look at what I actually have and assess whether changes need to be made, most of the time the only change needed is the passage of time, into another month and then things are different. And there are times with work and with life when I feel almost overwhelmed, like a hamster running on a wheel, but then I have to remember that I can stop that wheel whenever I want, and that in fact I do kind of love it, running like that, too much to do, 20 pages a day every day, weekends too, and no time to sit around dithering about angels dancing on the heads of pins or practicing ukulele or exercising or anything other than work and basic social maintenance. Not forever, but for a month or two (or three, if I must) it's okay.

And raising my prices, it's so scary in a way because: what if I lose clients? But asking isn't hard, and in this case it's just a yes or a no. And if the answer is no and I don't especially like the client, then it doesn't matter. And if the answer is yes, then I can start enjoying months like May with even greater pleasure. Similarly with life I am asking a lot of my friends right now, for their patience and kindness during this period of self-absorption and overwork, and I'm blessed to have friends who do understand that there will be a sunny day somewhere in the future; a beer garden and the pure pleasure of laughing the sun down, maybe even waiting for the fireflies, because we will have earned that. And the yoga and the ukulele can wait, too.

It is there whether you think about it or not, this impulse that is below thought, or maybe beyond, or over, or in any case not fixed with your consciousness into a place where you can overcome it; it is simply there. Brought to you by a pet, maybe, or something you ate, a walk in the woods, a picnic; probably there was sunshine but not necessarily, and now you have it. 

The way it affects you is impossible to ignore, it is stronger than desire, it is more than almost anything, and even when you manage to put your thoughts to something functional like work or reading, your hands wander back again and again to it; it is more than pain and you realize this when the red ribbon of blood unravels under your hands and you still can't think about anything but this.

Cover it if you can, smother it with magic potions, creams; wrap your hands in bandages; recite the songs of childhood forwards and backwards, spells and incantations, still it rises, insists, whines, cries. It will not be denied. It murmurs in your ear at night, wakes you with hot whispers, your physical response to it is stronger than your thoughts are quick, and your mind is mercury but this is faster, more, demanding.

How do you deal with it? The persistence of memory, the persistence of thought, the realization that it doesn't matter how it started or when it ends but all that matters is now, right now, how you will deal with it. Try for one minute giving it your focused and complete attention. The whole of you absorbed in this, the whole of you absorbing it. Realize you will never satisfy this. Finally now, you can accept it, even take pleasure it in, see it as a mark of where you've been; it's not release but it's better than it was. For now.