Open Windows

The heat is on here in the apartment, and you don't realize how warm it is until you toss donated bags of clothing into the car outside and then re-enter the building. I flipped a few windows open to release the stultifying stuffiness; Min has taken her post on the sill and is yelling to Buffalo, New York all the cat news and opinions she thinks it needs. She is my talker, once a stray who ran the porch at the back of another building. Meow meow meow. Rawr. She misses her cat boyfriend Martian, who we lost last summer to heart failure. Big orange guy. Last year was a sorrowful year of combined losses.

I am doing brief research regarding intuition for a final project, and find that this work is taking me into a paranormal arena of extra-sensory perception. Tread carefully. I can't stress that enough. There are fine lines between this world and the unknown next, bordering on things that have little to do with any savior. People fall into traps of their own making, some plummet into a world of illusions. I have a relative from a generation ago, who heard voices in lonely train whistles, who thought the vacuum cleaner was inhabited by demons. I can see how that happens, especially when hearing the call of the train that goes by in the night, a long, lone, wavering banshee which pulls you into the distance. To me, it's now a friendly sound of progression and exploration, to someone on the edge tormented by thoughts of saints and penance, it can become less so.

Before the age of nine, when we lived out behind the woods laced with cricks and swamps where catkins grew, a train track ran through the trees at the back of the far boundary. The whistled warning as the freight came to the crossing on Gunville Road scared me for many, many nights, reminding me of the ghost from a Disney movie. The movie was "Darby O'Gill and The Little People," and it was listed as forbidden by The Catholic Union and Echo, which also forbade Tarzan movies because Tarzan and Jane lived together in sin. My beloved Protestant cousin took me into the city, to Lafayette Square to see it, very hush hush, my also Protestant Mom in cahoots. Afterwards, I suffered the confabulation of the young, and ascribed it to heathenistic choices of the willy-nilly. My sin. My penance.

Gosh, I was a nutty kid. Certain planes flying over the house, especially the C-119 twin boom tails scared me, the frequency of their sound lit me up like a Christmas tree. No other plane, just the double-tailed ones. They traveled slowly, and the low sound of the engines was a cascading rrrwir rrwir rrwir that searched over every hillock and moraine for human essences, particularly tender, juicy, six year old girls. But this is the point, that those who are susceptible to suggestion can take the hoodoo part of science and run with it, like a dog with a frisbee.

What can I say? My phobias were fed by sneaking into my other cousin's stash of fifties monster magazines, and being horrified yet fascinated with the walking casserole-faced people of black and white cinematic fame that preyed on the living and well-coiffed. God, I paid for that. They lived under my bed for years, and I slept with a night light until I got married.

Now, the night is for sleeping. Period. No monsters or hands are waiting to grab any body part hanging over the edge of the mattress. Peaceful, silent sleep of the innocent, both human and animal. Lovely. Purple edged night, solace for the weary. That's us, all around. Sleep well, sleep secure. Good night. Good, good night.

What Was I Thinking

No, no, nevermind me. It's something that will seem funny in about a half of an hour. I am in the throes of writing papers for this degree, and since nearing bedtime, want to avoid caffeine in anything or I won't sleep. Yesterday I had trod the aisles of a health food store Only Because the pet store wanted four bucks for less than a tablespoon of winter wheat in a bag of potting soil. Cats love grass, and mine have been a little oogy-foogy lately with stomach toss-ups-- if it starts with one, it usually runs through the lot of them. A helpful thing to do is plant wheat grass which can be found for maybe 70 cents a pound at the grocery. Put it in brightly colored packaging with a happy cat cartoon on the front, and you can charge four bucks and up. Not in my world. I trot over to the health food store in the next block and find two pounds of the stuff much more reasonably priced.

While looking and listening to fascinating ideas held by organic nutritionists ("There's a raw food Thanksgiving at Merge")(blech), I see a box of catnip tea. Yippee! I love catnip tea, and used to make catnip jelly for my toast. It comes home with me, I plant the wheat kernels, and get busy on this paper. Now it is tonight, and I want to wind down but also am dying Dy-ing for a cookie, which I haven't any on purpose. The solution is tea, and at this time of the evening, non-caffeinated is necessary, perfect for breaking out the catnip tea while working on the laptop.

I brew a cup, scalding hot in a favorite mug, and head back to the desk where I am working. Tap tap tap away on the keyboard, and there's a tail, a big swish tail coming to visit, how nice. Kai leaps onto the desk. Another tail comes by, and Steve Pickles is on the desk also. A third tail enters, and crazy-crashes into a nearby box; Snowbelle has arrived. They are undulating back and forth, stepping on keys, and if a meow could be a bark, this is it. They are barking short meows, and it becomes so clear as Kai loops a paw towards the hot catnip tea. She tries to stick her face in it, and I have a problem in that I cannot have my tea sit quietly as the desk is crowded with three agitated cats.

They know where I keep the real stuff, so we traipse out to the cupboard and all the cats including the two who weren't part of the pillage get a dose of catnip leaf, gathered earlier in the year. I am not paying pet store prices for something I can pick for free. I bribe them with their drug of choice and gallop back to the laptop for a peaceful two minutes. Yet the aroma from the tea still attracts them after they have downed their portions, but it is a much less frantic plea except for Kai, whose paw is putting great effort into snagging what is rightfully mine. At least to my way of thinking. When combining writing a master's project with writhing tails batting one's face and paws running figure-eights atop the Mac, it is easy to lose it. No door to shut them out, no shelf to stow the hot tea; I could only drink it quickly and be done with it. I will have to hide the soggy tea bag in the refrigerator, or face consequential late-night rowdyism with the wet bag dragged out of the garbage and torn apart maybe in my bed, their favorite place to hide things. Whee.

I'm calmer now. Maybe the catnip kicked in. Time to feed the fish and turn off lights and laptops. I am hitting la hay. Everyone has had their fun, beat each other up, and are now washing their dainty selves. It is cold outside, and all of us want blankets to make us happy. Another day has come and gone. Poof. Wah. Tired.

Bless your hearts, what else could we want? Fun, a fight, and then a snooze. Sounds like a few family gatherings on my mother's side. Tuck under then, pull the kivvers up to your chin. Frost is on the pumpkin, rambling vines sink to earth, the last of the harvest is brought to the barns. Old Earth is getting ready to sleep, we can too. Good night, good night, quiet tails.

People Who Smell Like Bacon

Once upon a discussion, I sat next to a middle aged man. We were perched on folding chairs in an audience for a telecast of academic conversation, stifled by the heated stage lights and closeness of elbows. I was taking notes on the laptop, and he leaned over to ask a question whereby a sudden updraft of warm air from the floor brought the unmistakeable aroma of bacon to the fore.

I realized: it was his maroon sweater that smelled so delicious, I mean, So Delicious. The warmth of the studio became a kitchen, a Sunday kitchen for bacon and sizzling fry pan aromas somewhere in the middle of a cold day. Bacon was for weekends, for slow good morning breakfasts with toast and eggs and orange juice, coffee and the paper. Saturdays were usually rushed affairs, full of errands before the next day when most shops used to be closed. That was why you could take your time on Sundays ago, because nothing else was happening until Disney came on in the evening, after Lassie.

I don't think he understood the effect his sweater had; I wanted to bury my face in his midriff and inhale. I sort of kept up the conversation so that each time he leaned in, I could smell him. Sweetly, innocently, it just joggled the bacon pathways in my brain. The presentation began, and we went our attentive ways.

So, the other night I sat next to a woman who usually dresses in layers of foofy clothing. What? What? My gosh, she smells like bacon. She did. Must have fried something up for a quick supper, or it was left from the morning, but for goodness sake it was a weekday and who cooks bacon for breakfast when you have a job? It did not have the same effect on me, since well, she is also a smoker and frankly, a woman; her hair and clothes were permeated with stale cigarette vapors over the delicate bacon aromas, but yet the bacon-o-meter sensor levels were high enough to establish a reading.

When frying bacon it pays to wear an apron, for even with a screened cover over the pan, microglobules of sizzling deliciousness will invade clothing fiber, the pores of your skin, and cling to fuzzy sweaters. I am only recommending this for my own sanity for if you smell like bacon, I may hover like a hummingbird over a feeder. Really, I have better self control than that. Most of the time. But a man who smells good to begin with, especially with a starched shirt over that and then a sweater with baconness, it's like human catnip.

On myself, I can't stand it. Seems thick and cloying. But then, that's a good thing. I don't cook it or eat it that often, and am shocked and dismayed that some everyday markets are charging up to six dollars for a pound of store brand with a streak of lean so thin it looks unhappy. The price of pork didn't zip up that high, so what gives? Bacon is a mainstay of flavor and used to be a cheap supper; tuck a rasher into a grilled cheese with tomato, build a BLT, begin a chili, add to the vinegared joyful mess of German potato salad, let it draw the family into the house on a chilly day. Pancakes? Waffles? Better with bacon. I rest my case.

Long day, short night. Time just flies by. Aches come and go, come and stay. I will turn gratefully in tonight, after typing up a paper for class. The wool blankets have come out, and the cats burrow under during some of the chiller October midnights. Sleep well, sleep safely, put your worries in a jar and let the subconscious sort out the nonsense. Good evening, good night.