Tess
Showing posts with label Tess. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tess. Show all posts
Thursday, September 02, 2004
Tess
About fourteen years ago, a skinny young female tabby cat spotted Margaret talking with her friend Annie, in Annie's back yard in a Pittsburgh neighborhood. The cat, 6 or 9 months old, ignored Annie and wrapped herself around Margaret's feet.
Annie identified this cat as a stray, a street cat, though it was a residential neighborhood of homes with lots of gardens. Margaret's two children were in the process of leaving the nest, and her house was feeling empty. She decided to give the calico a month's trial residency. That little cat was on her best behavior for those 30 days. She got into mischief later.
Margaret and I were just getting to know each other. I'd had the same three cats since they were kittens in Cambridge, Mass. They all lived past twenty, but were all gone by then. Margaret asked me about names. I advised her to choose one with lots of sibilants---"s" sounds got a cat's attention. Soon when I visited Margaret, she introduced me to Tess.
Tess lived on Worth St. in the Squirrel Hill section of Pittsburgh, and afterwards in Huntingdon, PA when Margaret taught there. I joined them for a term, although I kept my Pittsburgh apartment at the other end of Squirrel Hill. Once Margaret knew she would be coming to the North Coast of CA to teach at Humboldt State, she gave up her house and she and Tess moved in with me.
Actually it was Tess and Allie, another cat---black with some white, who Margaret adopted to keep Tess company during her long hours at school. But Tess wasn't especially interested in the company of another cat. Allie was sweet and deferential, but Tess barely tolerated her, and seemed to be getting a little neurotic about it. In the fall of 1996, Margaret flew to Arcata, and so did Tess. Tess didn't like riding in cars, let alone airplanes, but we thought she'd like riding in a Ryder truck with me for a week even less. I saw them off at the Pittsburgh airport. Everybody who saw Tess poking her nose against the cat carrier door remarked on what a pretty cat she was. (Allie stayed in PA: my sister Kathy adopted her. I saw her on visits and she was quite happy there.)
Tess had to move only once more, this time only a few blocks, from a townhouse on Hidden Creek Road in Arcata to a house on Ross Street. There she reigned over her home, and policed the perimeter of her backyard garden. Tess had a few adventures in her past by then: a mouse or two on Worth Street, and an errant bat in the house in Huntingdon. But in Arcata she was content to chase moths. A few years ago she gave up chasing anything. In her youth she played with a stuffed spider, we called Spidey. It was gray with eight red legs when she started batting it around, and was down to one pathetic limb when she finally lost interest. It was the only toy she ever liked. She disdained scratching posts as well.
She liked chewing certain blades of grass and leaves of particular plants, and for some reason she really liked drinking rainwater. But mostly she was a house cat. She'd torn up some of my furniture pretty good in Pittsburgh but here she confined herself to a few rugs. She stayed off tables, and generally out of trouble. In her maturity she was economical with her movements, but she always moved with grace. She was not exactly bold--she drew back from even a brisk breeze---but she was sweet and gentle.
She and I developed several rituals. In PA she had a brief nighttime exercise period when she would play hide and seek, and bat at string as she chased after me. But by the time we moved to Ross St., the rituals mostly had to do with feeding-with what kind of food she got at a particular hour-and her participation in our ritual behaviors, like "TV time" in the evening, and bed times. She slept on the bed, either at Margaret's feet or sprawled across my feet or legs. She would take one of those two positions for many nights in a row, and then switch. I could never figure out the pattern or a reason for the timing of the switch. She had her own language for certain communications---a little tail-twitching dance in front of the refrigerator for her evening meal, and so on.
Because Margaret and I had somewhat different schedules, Tess had separate rituals with each of us. She would get up early with Margaret, hop up on a particular chair for her attentions. Sometimes she would come back to bed with me after Margaret left, or else she would just doze on the couch until I got up, then spend a few minutes with me, before wandering back to the bedroom. She didn't react much to my comings and goings, but she always knew when it was Margaret coming to the door, and she would go to greet her. Margaret was her mother, she hardly ever took her eyes off her. At night, if I was up too late, Tess would come and get me, sometimes quite insistent that I come to bed. She'd nag at me until I followed her to the bedroom.
In early July, the seemingly minor and intermittent problems Tess was having with eating became more pronounced. Her body began to change shape severely. The vet told us that she had a large tumor, probably cancerous. For the next several weeks we treated her with medicines that improved her appetite and would have been the treatment as well for a non-cancerous tumor. Margaret took her in for hydrations, and we learned to do it ourselves.
As Tess got thinner except for where she was swelling, I spent more and more time with her. I had the night shift taking care of her, and Margaret took over in the morning. We fed her baby food from our fingers, which she licked with an expression of great pleasure. Until she stopped eating even that. Tess was an education in courage. Margaret worried about her being in pain. I was determined that as long as she was still Tess, and still showed that she wanted to be with us, that I would do everything I could for her. She had periods of distress and confusion, no expressions of acute pain, and long periods of quiet and apparent contentment. She stayed on the bed most of the time, and during the day I stayed with her, reading and writing. When Margaret was with her in the evening I did the work I needed to do on the computer.
There were a few nights I wasn't sure Tess would make it to the morning. Yet I would wake up and see her on the bed, and I was grateful for that day, and sometimes almost hopeful. One exceptionally sunny and warm Sunday afternoon, Margaret and I were both there on the bed with her, reading. When it was just Tess and I, I would talk to her, reminiscing about our past, about Spidey, the bat, and the time Allie alerted me that Tess was out on the window ledge of my second floor Pittsburgh apartment, high above the pavement. The time she and Allie and Margaret had to be rescued from a stalled car in a snowstorm.
I'd look more carefully at the swirls and blendings of browns, black stripes and patches of white. With the white on her face and chin like a beard, we were starting to look alike. Tess had amazing green eyes, and a peculiar thoughtfulness in her expression. Her fur was shiny and soft, especially her underfur. She had a slight sienna spotch on her forehead, in the third eye area. She always looked at me directly and openly.
I comforted her as best I could when she began those long helpless rattling purrs, that she seemed to use to calm herself to sleep, or near sleep. I kept my hand and my breath near her. She still liked to be petted in the ways and places she always had, and now welcomed a kind of full body massage. This contact seemed to strengthen her.
She developed some peculiar behaviors, and began staring off into the infinite at times. But she always came back. When she was still eating, she would end it abruptly by turning on her heels and walking back to the bedroom, leaving me sitting there on the floor, gooey baby food on my finger. But sometimes she would stop and wait for me to follow. When I did she would continue.
Towards the end of July, she began an especially peaceful period. We'd given up all medicines except the hydrations. She now had a little bed of her own next to ours. But then she began jumping up on the couch again with Margaret or me, or both of us. She responded to being petted, and to the sound of my voice. She began going outside again, sometimes just sitting under a chair on the porch, sometimes venturing to the perimeter of container plants, sniffing the air deliberately and eagerly, as if drinking in the world. She began to stop in the "library" and so I made another bed for her there. She seemed calm, and yet determined to gather the moment. And she was determined to be with us. She had trouble getting up on the bed, but she kept doing it nevertheless.
One afternoon when Margaret was out and Tess was on the couch, I put some Bach on the stereo, and we listened together. Every day or night now, I made a point of singing Tess her song. She usually responded to it. I used to think this was some weird thing only I did, but I read somewhere that it's quite common: many people have a special song they sing to their pet, usually a familiar melody with special words.
I talked to Tess about happy times. There was once, earlier this year, when I'd gone to bed late after writing. Tess had been sleeping on my side of the bed, so she got up, went out to the kitchen while I got settled. She left a nice warm spot. As I was beginning to doze off, Margaret turned over and was just touching against me. Then Tess jumped up on the bed, and settled across the back of my legs. That's how I fell asleep. I was aware of that being a happy moment.
But now Tess was skin and bones, except for her distentions. Her ears seemed as large as a kitten's. She was weak, and would sometimes just lie down wherever she was. But Tess was still Tess. She enjoyed being touched. She still wagged her tail. She knew us, knew we were near, and she was determined to be with us. She was also at times clearly on her own journey.
One Thursday night, the night John Kerry gave his acceptance speech, we had guests. Tess was on the couch, and I spent as much time as I could sitting beside her, stroking her as she rested. That night she went onto the bed with Margaret, but later had trouble, going to her box with no result, going to her water dish and only hovering over it, maybe getting a sip or two. She wandered back and forth, and wound up on the couch at four a.m. where she rested quietly.
In the morning I was awakened by a sound---I opened my eyes to see Tess. She'd jumped onto the bed. Margaret was up and gone. I looked at Tess sleepily. I was very happy to see her, but I thought I saw an almost pleading look in her eyes. Dozing and waking, I petted her and talked to her. Margaret came home to pick up some pills she'd forgotten, between finishing yoga and going to school. She stayed to eat something, and as we talked, we heard Tess cry . She was in her bed in the library. She was in pain and distress, having spasms.
After she'd calmed a bit, and there was clearly nothing we could do, Margaret and I retreated to the bedroom to talk over what we must do. Tess surprised us by once again getting herself up on the bed. She had more spasms. But she was determined to be with us, to show how much she wanted to be with us. She'd had to give into whatever was happening to her, but she wouldn't abandon us.
Now we had a duty to her. It was late Friday afternoon, and we could not let her suffer through a weekend with no other recourse. We bundled her in a sheet. I held her while Margaret drove to the animal hospital. Tess never liked riding in cars, she would meow a constant litany, but this time she only looked around at the world passing by. When we got there and went in, they were not ready for us. There were lots of people there with their animals, and all of the people seemed to be quite old. Despite the kind and professional people who worked there, it was not the kind of place I'd like to spend my last moments.
I took Tess out to the front lawn, talked to her, and showed her the flowers, and the blue sky. She was interested in all of it. People who passed by all said what a pretty cat she was. Her eyes were large and open and she was not distressed. I held her and told her we would have to say goodbye. I told her I'd see her in my dreams.
It seemed to all happen so fast. Did we panic? I don't know. Tessie was never going to get better. She trusted us and we did what we felt was best for her. In the end neither of us could live with allowing her to suffer any more.
But in the late afternoon I was holding her as she nuzzled under my chin. And by early evening I was digging a hole in the ground, the hardest job I've ever done. The first shovelful of dirt on that small cardboard box was like a gunshot to my heart. I'd wrapped her in my shirt, the one I'd worn most often when taking care of her those long nights, and we put some of her favorite kinds of weeds and plants in the pockets, along with some sage and a bit of Pennsylvania soil.
There's a theory that people shouldn't have pets, because it robs the animal of its wild nature. Specifically it keeps them from maturing, they are always dependent as infants, which may be the way we like them. I'm sure that's true. But it's not the worst thing that can happen to a specific animal. And given our inherited way of life in this human society, this is as close a relationship to another species as many of us get.
I've never had children. And I'm ruefully aware of our strong predilection to project onto animals. Since they can't talk (or not in our language) we do their talking for them. Perhaps it is also the relative simplicity of our relationship with pets that makes it so powerful. One can fail or please or disappoint a pet in only a few ways that are usually very obvious, and usually the same each time. With humans sometimes you never know.
Who know why I've taken Tess' death harder in an immediate sense than the deaths of humans who were quite important in my life, including my grandparents and parents? It can be somewhat explained, simply in terms of companionship. Since I work at home, Tess was my almost constant companion for the nearly eight years we've lived here. The last thing I did before leaving the house was to check on her. She would greet me---or I would greet her---whenever I returned. An empty house was never really empty: there was always a beautiful being here. Her beauty inspired me, even gave me a kind of anchor of hope.
We developed a unique relationship, and it deepened in those last weeks. It's impossible to explain, even to myself. Something simple and direct, yet complex and uncertain, as we each tried to communicate and figure out what in the world the other was trying to say. Something earnest, yet everyday, and without the defenses we learn in our encounters with humans, even those we love.
But it may be a combination of the factors I mentioned before that have channeled the experiences of death that in prior human cases were defended against, or complicated by other aspects of a relationship. So the feelings were and are quite raw. For example, for awhile I felt that she trusted me but I failed her, because I could not protect her from becoming ill and dying. I've felt this idiotic anxiety of waiting for her to return. I've felt angry that she can't be here anymore. I've regretted every moment I got annoyed with her. I've felt a lot of the meaning empty out of my daily existence. Tess was a secret reason for going on. We have only a few photos of her, for some dumb reason. But looking at them reminds me that I almost never looked at her without smiling, without feeling delight. Perhaps worst of all, I selfishly feel bereft that I will not have Tess warm on my chest as I pass away.
All of these emotions seem more seemly when applied to humans. No doubt this is a character flaw on my part. But Tess wouldn't be bothered. As long as she could jump up and be petted as she clung to my shirt, under the warm lamplight as I read. As long as she knew I would be there, making sure she was okay.
Why was this harder than losing my other cats? Perhaps because when I was younger there was an unknown future of potential growing and looking forward to blossom. Change could be sad and painful and haunting, but there were the possibilities, the mysteries and destinies. I don't have much of that sense now. Little Tess grounded me, yet her beauty and grace and maybe even the strength of a simple reciprocal relationship reassured some idealistic sense.
In the months before she got sick, Tess liked me to pick her up a lot more than she used to. She was generally friendly with people, but she didn't usually like to be picked up. I always felt honored by this, and pleased. Editors could diss me, employers ignore me, my clients not pay me, the world insult me, and people bewilder me, but held in one arm and petted by the other hand, Tess would still purr. And her warmth across my legs or sometimes in the small of my back would ease me past the anxiety to the surrender of night.
What I learned from Tess in her last weeks I have not yet entirely absorbed, but much of it will be of her courage, of her loyalty, and her love of the world, even as she seemed to be gazing into the next.
Tess, the lion-hearted. It's just not the same without you.
About fourteen years ago, a skinny young female tabby cat spotted Margaret talking with her friend Annie, in Annie's back yard in a Pittsburgh neighborhood. The cat, 6 or 9 months old, ignored Annie and wrapped herself around Margaret's feet.
Annie identified this cat as a stray, a street cat, though it was a residential neighborhood of homes with lots of gardens. Margaret's two children were in the process of leaving the nest, and her house was feeling empty. She decided to give the calico a month's trial residency. That little cat was on her best behavior for those 30 days. She got into mischief later.
Margaret and I were just getting to know each other. I'd had the same three cats since they were kittens in Cambridge, Mass. They all lived past twenty, but were all gone by then. Margaret asked me about names. I advised her to choose one with lots of sibilants---"s" sounds got a cat's attention. Soon when I visited Margaret, she introduced me to Tess.
Tess lived on Worth St. in the Squirrel Hill section of Pittsburgh, and afterwards in Huntingdon, PA when Margaret taught there. I joined them for a term, although I kept my Pittsburgh apartment at the other end of Squirrel Hill. Once Margaret knew she would be coming to the North Coast of CA to teach at Humboldt State, she gave up her house and she and Tess moved in with me.
Actually it was Tess and Allie, another cat---black with some white, who Margaret adopted to keep Tess company during her long hours at school. But Tess wasn't especially interested in the company of another cat. Allie was sweet and deferential, but Tess barely tolerated her, and seemed to be getting a little neurotic about it. In the fall of 1996, Margaret flew to Arcata, and so did Tess. Tess didn't like riding in cars, let alone airplanes, but we thought she'd like riding in a Ryder truck with me for a week even less. I saw them off at the Pittsburgh airport. Everybody who saw Tess poking her nose against the cat carrier door remarked on what a pretty cat she was. (Allie stayed in PA: my sister Kathy adopted her. I saw her on visits and she was quite happy there.)
Tess had to move only once more, this time only a few blocks, from a townhouse on Hidden Creek Road in Arcata to a house on Ross Street. There she reigned over her home, and policed the perimeter of her backyard garden. Tess had a few adventures in her past by then: a mouse or two on Worth Street, and an errant bat in the house in Huntingdon. But in Arcata she was content to chase moths. A few years ago she gave up chasing anything. In her youth she played with a stuffed spider, we called Spidey. It was gray with eight red legs when she started batting it around, and was down to one pathetic limb when she finally lost interest. It was the only toy she ever liked. She disdained scratching posts as well.
She liked chewing certain blades of grass and leaves of particular plants, and for some reason she really liked drinking rainwater. But mostly she was a house cat. She'd torn up some of my furniture pretty good in Pittsburgh but here she confined herself to a few rugs. She stayed off tables, and generally out of trouble. In her maturity she was economical with her movements, but she always moved with grace. She was not exactly bold--she drew back from even a brisk breeze---but she was sweet and gentle.
She and I developed several rituals. In PA she had a brief nighttime exercise period when she would play hide and seek, and bat at string as she chased after me. But by the time we moved to Ross St., the rituals mostly had to do with feeding-with what kind of food she got at a particular hour-and her participation in our ritual behaviors, like "TV time" in the evening, and bed times. She slept on the bed, either at Margaret's feet or sprawled across my feet or legs. She would take one of those two positions for many nights in a row, and then switch. I could never figure out the pattern or a reason for the timing of the switch. She had her own language for certain communications---a little tail-twitching dance in front of the refrigerator for her evening meal, and so on.
Because Margaret and I had somewhat different schedules, Tess had separate rituals with each of us. She would get up early with Margaret, hop up on a particular chair for her attentions. Sometimes she would come back to bed with me after Margaret left, or else she would just doze on the couch until I got up, then spend a few minutes with me, before wandering back to the bedroom. She didn't react much to my comings and goings, but she always knew when it was Margaret coming to the door, and she would go to greet her. Margaret was her mother, she hardly ever took her eyes off her. At night, if I was up too late, Tess would come and get me, sometimes quite insistent that I come to bed. She'd nag at me until I followed her to the bedroom.
In early July, the seemingly minor and intermittent problems Tess was having with eating became more pronounced. Her body began to change shape severely. The vet told us that she had a large tumor, probably cancerous. For the next several weeks we treated her with medicines that improved her appetite and would have been the treatment as well for a non-cancerous tumor. Margaret took her in for hydrations, and we learned to do it ourselves.
As Tess got thinner except for where she was swelling, I spent more and more time with her. I had the night shift taking care of her, and Margaret took over in the morning. We fed her baby food from our fingers, which she licked with an expression of great pleasure. Until she stopped eating even that. Tess was an education in courage. Margaret worried about her being in pain. I was determined that as long as she was still Tess, and still showed that she wanted to be with us, that I would do everything I could for her. She had periods of distress and confusion, no expressions of acute pain, and long periods of quiet and apparent contentment. She stayed on the bed most of the time, and during the day I stayed with her, reading and writing. When Margaret was with her in the evening I did the work I needed to do on the computer.
There were a few nights I wasn't sure Tess would make it to the morning. Yet I would wake up and see her on the bed, and I was grateful for that day, and sometimes almost hopeful. One exceptionally sunny and warm Sunday afternoon, Margaret and I were both there on the bed with her, reading. When it was just Tess and I, I would talk to her, reminiscing about our past, about Spidey, the bat, and the time Allie alerted me that Tess was out on the window ledge of my second floor Pittsburgh apartment, high above the pavement. The time she and Allie and Margaret had to be rescued from a stalled car in a snowstorm.
I'd look more carefully at the swirls and blendings of browns, black stripes and patches of white. With the white on her face and chin like a beard, we were starting to look alike. Tess had amazing green eyes, and a peculiar thoughtfulness in her expression. Her fur was shiny and soft, especially her underfur. She had a slight sienna spotch on her forehead, in the third eye area. She always looked at me directly and openly.
I comforted her as best I could when she began those long helpless rattling purrs, that she seemed to use to calm herself to sleep, or near sleep. I kept my hand and my breath near her. She still liked to be petted in the ways and places she always had, and now welcomed a kind of full body massage. This contact seemed to strengthen her.
She developed some peculiar behaviors, and began staring off into the infinite at times. But she always came back. When she was still eating, she would end it abruptly by turning on her heels and walking back to the bedroom, leaving me sitting there on the floor, gooey baby food on my finger. But sometimes she would stop and wait for me to follow. When I did she would continue.
Towards the end of July, she began an especially peaceful period. We'd given up all medicines except the hydrations. She now had a little bed of her own next to ours. But then she began jumping up on the couch again with Margaret or me, or both of us. She responded to being petted, and to the sound of my voice. She began going outside again, sometimes just sitting under a chair on the porch, sometimes venturing to the perimeter of container plants, sniffing the air deliberately and eagerly, as if drinking in the world. She began to stop in the "library" and so I made another bed for her there. She seemed calm, and yet determined to gather the moment. And she was determined to be with us. She had trouble getting up on the bed, but she kept doing it nevertheless.
One afternoon when Margaret was out and Tess was on the couch, I put some Bach on the stereo, and we listened together. Every day or night now, I made a point of singing Tess her song. She usually responded to it. I used to think this was some weird thing only I did, but I read somewhere that it's quite common: many people have a special song they sing to their pet, usually a familiar melody with special words.
I talked to Tess about happy times. There was once, earlier this year, when I'd gone to bed late after writing. Tess had been sleeping on my side of the bed, so she got up, went out to the kitchen while I got settled. She left a nice warm spot. As I was beginning to doze off, Margaret turned over and was just touching against me. Then Tess jumped up on the bed, and settled across the back of my legs. That's how I fell asleep. I was aware of that being a happy moment.
But now Tess was skin and bones, except for her distentions. Her ears seemed as large as a kitten's. She was weak, and would sometimes just lie down wherever she was. But Tess was still Tess. She enjoyed being touched. She still wagged her tail. She knew us, knew we were near, and she was determined to be with us. She was also at times clearly on her own journey.
One Thursday night, the night John Kerry gave his acceptance speech, we had guests. Tess was on the couch, and I spent as much time as I could sitting beside her, stroking her as she rested. That night she went onto the bed with Margaret, but later had trouble, going to her box with no result, going to her water dish and only hovering over it, maybe getting a sip or two. She wandered back and forth, and wound up on the couch at four a.m. where she rested quietly.
In the morning I was awakened by a sound---I opened my eyes to see Tess. She'd jumped onto the bed. Margaret was up and gone. I looked at Tess sleepily. I was very happy to see her, but I thought I saw an almost pleading look in her eyes. Dozing and waking, I petted her and talked to her. Margaret came home to pick up some pills she'd forgotten, between finishing yoga and going to school. She stayed to eat something, and as we talked, we heard Tess cry . She was in her bed in the library. She was in pain and distress, having spasms.
After she'd calmed a bit, and there was clearly nothing we could do, Margaret and I retreated to the bedroom to talk over what we must do. Tess surprised us by once again getting herself up on the bed. She had more spasms. But she was determined to be with us, to show how much she wanted to be with us. She'd had to give into whatever was happening to her, but she wouldn't abandon us.
Now we had a duty to her. It was late Friday afternoon, and we could not let her suffer through a weekend with no other recourse. We bundled her in a sheet. I held her while Margaret drove to the animal hospital. Tess never liked riding in cars, she would meow a constant litany, but this time she only looked around at the world passing by. When we got there and went in, they were not ready for us. There were lots of people there with their animals, and all of the people seemed to be quite old. Despite the kind and professional people who worked there, it was not the kind of place I'd like to spend my last moments.
I took Tess out to the front lawn, talked to her, and showed her the flowers, and the blue sky. She was interested in all of it. People who passed by all said what a pretty cat she was. Her eyes were large and open and she was not distressed. I held her and told her we would have to say goodbye. I told her I'd see her in my dreams.
It seemed to all happen so fast. Did we panic? I don't know. Tessie was never going to get better. She trusted us and we did what we felt was best for her. In the end neither of us could live with allowing her to suffer any more.
But in the late afternoon I was holding her as she nuzzled under my chin. And by early evening I was digging a hole in the ground, the hardest job I've ever done. The first shovelful of dirt on that small cardboard box was like a gunshot to my heart. I'd wrapped her in my shirt, the one I'd worn most often when taking care of her those long nights, and we put some of her favorite kinds of weeds and plants in the pockets, along with some sage and a bit of Pennsylvania soil.
There's a theory that people shouldn't have pets, because it robs the animal of its wild nature. Specifically it keeps them from maturing, they are always dependent as infants, which may be the way we like them. I'm sure that's true. But it's not the worst thing that can happen to a specific animal. And given our inherited way of life in this human society, this is as close a relationship to another species as many of us get.
I've never had children. And I'm ruefully aware of our strong predilection to project onto animals. Since they can't talk (or not in our language) we do their talking for them. Perhaps it is also the relative simplicity of our relationship with pets that makes it so powerful. One can fail or please or disappoint a pet in only a few ways that are usually very obvious, and usually the same each time. With humans sometimes you never know.
Who know why I've taken Tess' death harder in an immediate sense than the deaths of humans who were quite important in my life, including my grandparents and parents? It can be somewhat explained, simply in terms of companionship. Since I work at home, Tess was my almost constant companion for the nearly eight years we've lived here. The last thing I did before leaving the house was to check on her. She would greet me---or I would greet her---whenever I returned. An empty house was never really empty: there was always a beautiful being here. Her beauty inspired me, even gave me a kind of anchor of hope.
We developed a unique relationship, and it deepened in those last weeks. It's impossible to explain, even to myself. Something simple and direct, yet complex and uncertain, as we each tried to communicate and figure out what in the world the other was trying to say. Something earnest, yet everyday, and without the defenses we learn in our encounters with humans, even those we love.
But it may be a combination of the factors I mentioned before that have channeled the experiences of death that in prior human cases were defended against, or complicated by other aspects of a relationship. So the feelings were and are quite raw. For example, for awhile I felt that she trusted me but I failed her, because I could not protect her from becoming ill and dying. I've felt this idiotic anxiety of waiting for her to return. I've felt angry that she can't be here anymore. I've regretted every moment I got annoyed with her. I've felt a lot of the meaning empty out of my daily existence. Tess was a secret reason for going on. We have only a few photos of her, for some dumb reason. But looking at them reminds me that I almost never looked at her without smiling, without feeling delight. Perhaps worst of all, I selfishly feel bereft that I will not have Tess warm on my chest as I pass away.
All of these emotions seem more seemly when applied to humans. No doubt this is a character flaw on my part. But Tess wouldn't be bothered. As long as she could jump up and be petted as she clung to my shirt, under the warm lamplight as I read. As long as she knew I would be there, making sure she was okay.
Why was this harder than losing my other cats? Perhaps because when I was younger there was an unknown future of potential growing and looking forward to blossom. Change could be sad and painful and haunting, but there were the possibilities, the mysteries and destinies. I don't have much of that sense now. Little Tess grounded me, yet her beauty and grace and maybe even the strength of a simple reciprocal relationship reassured some idealistic sense.
In the months before she got sick, Tess liked me to pick her up a lot more than she used to. She was generally friendly with people, but she didn't usually like to be picked up. I always felt honored by this, and pleased. Editors could diss me, employers ignore me, my clients not pay me, the world insult me, and people bewilder me, but held in one arm and petted by the other hand, Tess would still purr. And her warmth across my legs or sometimes in the small of my back would ease me past the anxiety to the surrender of night.
What I learned from Tess in her last weeks I have not yet entirely absorbed, but much of it will be of her courage, of her loyalty, and her love of the world, even as she seemed to be gazing into the next.
Tess, the lion-hearted. It's just not the same without you.
Tuesday, January 06, 2004
Sunday
I awoke Sunday to see my article on Buddhism and the arts in San Francisco on the cover of the Sunday Datebook section in the San Francisco Chronicle. There was a note about me in the editor's introduction to the issue, and the piece was elegantly illustrated.
I noted all this as I also noticed that for the first time, Tess the cat had chosen my new meditation cushion (a Christmas gift from Margaret) for her sleeping spot.
We get the Sunday Chronicle delivered, so the Datebook was here when I got up. Then I noticed something else---there were two copies of the Datebook. Looking through the rest of the paper I realized that we were missing about half the sections, but of the sections we had, we had two of them all. So there had been some mistake in assembling our paper. But it resulted in two copies of the section my work was in, rather than one (or none.)
This is the rainy season here, and we've had a series of storms come through: lots of wind and rain, some hail, even a flash or two of lightning. But when the sun shines, it shines as warmly as in summer. When it comes out after rain, steam rises from the ground.
(This is specifically where we live, a couple of miles from the coast. Up in the nearby forested hills where friends of our live ---including a very new friend, born last month--- one of our rain storms was six inches of snow. )
Sunday was mixed clouds and sun, but dry and bright enough to warrant a walk on the beach. We drove the few minutes through flat farm land (a big flower nursery, dairy cows) to Mad River Beach. We parked in the lot, walked across the sand dunes to the beach, and north along the shore to the mouth of the Mad (which, like everything else on the beach, is never in the same place twice.) Some other people were there---students who returned early from home for the holidays---but as usual, not noticeably many for the size of the beach. A few birds, and some seals who seem to like to hang out where the river flows into the ocean.
On this beach you can find knarled logs and wood fragments, stones of many colors and shapes, shells and sand dollars. But generally you find one of those category dominates. Once on my birthday I walked on this beach and saw hundreds of sand dollars, many intact and bright white in the heavy fog. On Sunday the beach was dominated by stones. Red and yellow in adobe shades, marine green, blue to purple, granite gray, black and white. Many with stripes of another color, in thin regular patterns or large single swaths. A white stone with black patterns resembling calligraphy. Slightly wet, some were smooth and shiny. Others are singular bunched and twisted shapes. Smooth grainy granite like stones in perfect ovals and triangles.
It was sunset as we walked back down the beach from the river mouth. At one point we saw something we hadn't seen before: Margaret spotted a rainbow, faint but complete, a complete arch over the area where the sun was going down behind the cloud line at the horizon.
The whole sky was something. To the southeast, blue sky in shades of azure. Clouds above and to the north. Even a V line of birds (going north, though. Wondered about that.)
Now it's Monday, and I've gotten a few emails about the story, including one from Michael McClure, who I interviewed for the piece. It's not every day you get compliments from a distinguished, very well-read poet and playwright who knew both Keroauc and Jim Morrison.
And it's the first Monday after the holidays, and back to work. The work of finding work that pays. This piece was great in many ways, but financially it cost me more to write it than I was paid. I'd like to be able to still have these Sundays. The process continues, but so does the wonder.
I awoke Sunday to see my article on Buddhism and the arts in San Francisco on the cover of the Sunday Datebook section in the San Francisco Chronicle. There was a note about me in the editor's introduction to the issue, and the piece was elegantly illustrated.
I noted all this as I also noticed that for the first time, Tess the cat had chosen my new meditation cushion (a Christmas gift from Margaret) for her sleeping spot.
We get the Sunday Chronicle delivered, so the Datebook was here when I got up. Then I noticed something else---there were two copies of the Datebook. Looking through the rest of the paper I realized that we were missing about half the sections, but of the sections we had, we had two of them all. So there had been some mistake in assembling our paper. But it resulted in two copies of the section my work was in, rather than one (or none.)
This is the rainy season here, and we've had a series of storms come through: lots of wind and rain, some hail, even a flash or two of lightning. But when the sun shines, it shines as warmly as in summer. When it comes out after rain, steam rises from the ground.
(This is specifically where we live, a couple of miles from the coast. Up in the nearby forested hills where friends of our live ---including a very new friend, born last month--- one of our rain storms was six inches of snow. )
Sunday was mixed clouds and sun, but dry and bright enough to warrant a walk on the beach. We drove the few minutes through flat farm land (a big flower nursery, dairy cows) to Mad River Beach. We parked in the lot, walked across the sand dunes to the beach, and north along the shore to the mouth of the Mad (which, like everything else on the beach, is never in the same place twice.) Some other people were there---students who returned early from home for the holidays---but as usual, not noticeably many for the size of the beach. A few birds, and some seals who seem to like to hang out where the river flows into the ocean.
On this beach you can find knarled logs and wood fragments, stones of many colors and shapes, shells and sand dollars. But generally you find one of those category dominates. Once on my birthday I walked on this beach and saw hundreds of sand dollars, many intact and bright white in the heavy fog. On Sunday the beach was dominated by stones. Red and yellow in adobe shades, marine green, blue to purple, granite gray, black and white. Many with stripes of another color, in thin regular patterns or large single swaths. A white stone with black patterns resembling calligraphy. Slightly wet, some were smooth and shiny. Others are singular bunched and twisted shapes. Smooth grainy granite like stones in perfect ovals and triangles.
It was sunset as we walked back down the beach from the river mouth. At one point we saw something we hadn't seen before: Margaret spotted a rainbow, faint but complete, a complete arch over the area where the sun was going down behind the cloud line at the horizon.
The whole sky was something. To the southeast, blue sky in shades of azure. Clouds above and to the north. Even a V line of birds (going north, though. Wondered about that.)
Now it's Monday, and I've gotten a few emails about the story, including one from Michael McClure, who I interviewed for the piece. It's not every day you get compliments from a distinguished, very well-read poet and playwright who knew both Keroauc and Jim Morrison.
And it's the first Monday after the holidays, and back to work. The work of finding work that pays. This piece was great in many ways, but financially it cost me more to write it than I was paid. I'd like to be able to still have these Sundays. The process continues, but so does the wonder.
Monday, December 08, 2003
Random Notes
I found a video cassette at the library of a PBS (actually a CBC) production called "Singing Our Stories," featuring Native American/First Nations women singing and talking about their tribal music. Before I had a chance to screen it, the program turned up on our local PBS station when I happened to be surfing through.
It's a very good program, but I took particular note of a moment near the beginning. Years ago at the summer arts festival in Pittsburgh, I heard a duo of two Native women called Pura Fe and Soni. They've since become two/thirds of one of the better known Native recording groups, Ulali. At that performance at the edge of Point State Park, one of them (probably Pura Fe) prefaced one song with a bit of history, involving an area of the South (I believe it was North Carolina) where black slaves interacted with Indians, and their music merged to become the blues.
I never forgot that, and the more of traditional Native music I heard, the more I heard aspects of the blues and elements that would be incorporated in jazz singing. But I could never find any documentation for what Pura Fe said. I still haven't, but at least I've heard her say it again, on "Singing Our Stories." In that program she was singing with four generations of women in her extraordinary family, in which there have been seven sisters for several generations. They were singing and dancing barefoot on a smooth and bending wood front porch. The blues was clearly in that music, and she said she felt that way, and intimated that a lot of Native people feel that way. The way she said it made it sound as if it is still a heretical observation.
I didn't hear Ken Burns' emphasize it in his multi-hour historical "Jazz" series, for instance. But as Pura Fe pointed out, there were American Indian slaves working side by side with black slaves in the Southeast. There is a clearer if almost as unacknowledged connection in New Orleans, where the "juns" in Cajun are Indians. This mixed blood music is part of the richness of jazz that left that city and headed north to Chicago and Kansas City, and to the world.
Music-making is an undeniably wide-open tradition. Musicians copy whatever sounds good to them, and they've been doing it probably as long as there's been music. It's one of the reasons that despite instances of exploitation, many of the first blows against segregation came from black and white jazz and rock and roll musicians playing together. Racial harmony was more literal than most people imagine. Cultural sharing extends to ceremonial music as well---certainly in Christian churches, black and white. But it's way past time for the Native American contribution to jazz and the blues be explored and acknowledged.
A Cat Column
Our favorite San Francisco Chronicle columnist, Jon Carroll, has taken to warning readers in a variety of ways that a "cat column" is coming up.
Tess, the cat for whom I staff, deserves her column inches as well. So consider yourself warned.
I'm moved to write this because I'm now convinced that Tess not only uses language, she invents language. I don't mean her variety of vocalizations as much as her gestural language. For instance, she invented a way to signal that she wants her wet cat food from the refrigerator. Tess is very structured. She understands schedules and gets upset if we don't keep to ours, and of course, to hers. She knows how many times a day she gets wet food, and what part of the day. She's been known to demand it at exactly the same hour every day. The signal she devised for "requesting" it is to position herself in front of the refrigerator and shake her hindquarters in what we used to call her "tuna dance," before we stopped giving her tuna due to mercury content.
For awhile she corrupted this signal by refusing the food and wanting something else, so the signal became ambiguous. But lately she's returned to a one to one correspondence, Tuna Dance= I want my wet cat food, it's time.
The connection between her actions and what she wanted is pretty clear, and pretty eloquent. But then she began doing something that is closer to pure language. As she's gotten older she likes being held and petted a lot more, and more often. Lately she's been using a signal to indicate her desire to be held and petted. She vocalizes, then stands underneath one of the kitchen chairs, and vocalizes some more. If I don't get the message, she emerges and goes under another chair and repeats it.
What's really interesting about this is that her action has no relationship to the action she's requesting. In fact, it's counterproductive because it's difficult to reach her when she's under the chair. I've pointed this out to her a number of times, but she persists, perhaps because she sees that despite my complaints I get her meaning. Because of the difficulty of reaching her, I don't see how I could have given her the idea that if she goes under the chair, I am more likely to pick her up. This is a signal that she created, specific to this one thing she wants.
So what else is this but the invention of language-a meaning invented for a gesture that has no relationship to what's meant.
Tess considers herself a fully equal member of the household. Since we moved our kitchen table to an area she can see clearly, she has taken to eating or at least hanging out at her dish whenever we sit down for a meal. She participates in our daily routine and expects us to keep it. For the middle part of the day there is no set routine, as one or both of us may be absent, and she understands this, too. She also has routines established with each of us separately. Her sense of order orders us. But how she made the leap to inventing language is something else again.
American Dreams
This season's "American Dreams" has the kids growing up, the youngest getting an operation to correct a polio induced handicap, the middle child---the girl who seemed to be the central character in the first season---going on with her adolescence in this fraught context of the mid 1960s. The black family has also emerged as a strong if secondary set of developing stories. But the major arc follows the oldest of the Pryor children, the son who is now a Marine, and is now on his way to Vietnam.
There are no characters now in the series that correspond with my situation in the period---that is, no one for me to identify with, one to one. Nevertheless I feel an emotional connection to J.J., the oldest son, who is nothing like I was at his age. I'm surprised at the depth of my feeling after all these years concerning my contemporaries who went to Vietnam. Especially one I think about, a guy I didn't know very well in college-we had our political differences since he was gung ho ROTC, but we met accidentally alone shortly before graduation day, and made our separate peace. He was killed in his first week in Vietnam.
Maybe that's it---at the time, the draft and the war were at once so specifically personal, and also so political and large in implication. As I've said in this space before, whatever hostility there was for soldiers soon dissipated when the first of them started coming back from Vietnam, "radicalized." But perhaps this area between the very personal and the broadly political, the area of empathy, is one that I haven't fully experienced emotionally. So in a way I do identify with J.J., and his journey becomes my road not taken.
It's more than that, for Margaret seems to be similarly affected. And really, has there been the opportunity to emotionally experience this through a character over time? Not with the intensity of a book or a movie, but in these fully furnished moments of something like the past, stretched out over weeks and months? Following a character we've seen "grow up" for awhile? I don't think so. This TV show is not entirely accurate in its depiction of the 60s, but in particular scenes it can be devastatingly evocative. I never had to ship out to Vietnam, but in the draft process and otherwise I was in several sorts of military circumstances. So the scene of J.J. leaving was very powerful.
The West Wing
Aaron Sorkin is gone, can the West Wing survive? So far it seems to be successfully adding more personal and personality elements and conflict to political stories, in apparently well thought-out arcs that are subtle yet definite. Within the shows the writing is a bit uneven, especially the dialogue, but that's been getting better. (And, it's worth noting, at least one episode I noticed was written by a team of two women, a first for this series.) The integrity of the show seems to be intact. In any case, I doubt if any current TV series would produce an episode heavily advertised as a "Christmas show" that had less sentimentality and more reality about families and relationships, yet still had moments of authentic, earned feeling.
I found a video cassette at the library of a PBS (actually a CBC) production called "Singing Our Stories," featuring Native American/First Nations women singing and talking about their tribal music. Before I had a chance to screen it, the program turned up on our local PBS station when I happened to be surfing through.
It's a very good program, but I took particular note of a moment near the beginning. Years ago at the summer arts festival in Pittsburgh, I heard a duo of two Native women called Pura Fe and Soni. They've since become two/thirds of one of the better known Native recording groups, Ulali. At that performance at the edge of Point State Park, one of them (probably Pura Fe) prefaced one song with a bit of history, involving an area of the South (I believe it was North Carolina) where black slaves interacted with Indians, and their music merged to become the blues.
I never forgot that, and the more of traditional Native music I heard, the more I heard aspects of the blues and elements that would be incorporated in jazz singing. But I could never find any documentation for what Pura Fe said. I still haven't, but at least I've heard her say it again, on "Singing Our Stories." In that program she was singing with four generations of women in her extraordinary family, in which there have been seven sisters for several generations. They were singing and dancing barefoot on a smooth and bending wood front porch. The blues was clearly in that music, and she said she felt that way, and intimated that a lot of Native people feel that way. The way she said it made it sound as if it is still a heretical observation.
I didn't hear Ken Burns' emphasize it in his multi-hour historical "Jazz" series, for instance. But as Pura Fe pointed out, there were American Indian slaves working side by side with black slaves in the Southeast. There is a clearer if almost as unacknowledged connection in New Orleans, where the "juns" in Cajun are Indians. This mixed blood music is part of the richness of jazz that left that city and headed north to Chicago and Kansas City, and to the world.
Music-making is an undeniably wide-open tradition. Musicians copy whatever sounds good to them, and they've been doing it probably as long as there's been music. It's one of the reasons that despite instances of exploitation, many of the first blows against segregation came from black and white jazz and rock and roll musicians playing together. Racial harmony was more literal than most people imagine. Cultural sharing extends to ceremonial music as well---certainly in Christian churches, black and white. But it's way past time for the Native American contribution to jazz and the blues be explored and acknowledged.
A Cat Column
Our favorite San Francisco Chronicle columnist, Jon Carroll, has taken to warning readers in a variety of ways that a "cat column" is coming up.
Tess, the cat for whom I staff, deserves her column inches as well. So consider yourself warned.
I'm moved to write this because I'm now convinced that Tess not only uses language, she invents language. I don't mean her variety of vocalizations as much as her gestural language. For instance, she invented a way to signal that she wants her wet cat food from the refrigerator. Tess is very structured. She understands schedules and gets upset if we don't keep to ours, and of course, to hers. She knows how many times a day she gets wet food, and what part of the day. She's been known to demand it at exactly the same hour every day. The signal she devised for "requesting" it is to position herself in front of the refrigerator and shake her hindquarters in what we used to call her "tuna dance," before we stopped giving her tuna due to mercury content.
For awhile she corrupted this signal by refusing the food and wanting something else, so the signal became ambiguous. But lately she's returned to a one to one correspondence, Tuna Dance= I want my wet cat food, it's time.
The connection between her actions and what she wanted is pretty clear, and pretty eloquent. But then she began doing something that is closer to pure language. As she's gotten older she likes being held and petted a lot more, and more often. Lately she's been using a signal to indicate her desire to be held and petted. She vocalizes, then stands underneath one of the kitchen chairs, and vocalizes some more. If I don't get the message, she emerges and goes under another chair and repeats it.
What's really interesting about this is that her action has no relationship to the action she's requesting. In fact, it's counterproductive because it's difficult to reach her when she's under the chair. I've pointed this out to her a number of times, but she persists, perhaps because she sees that despite my complaints I get her meaning. Because of the difficulty of reaching her, I don't see how I could have given her the idea that if she goes under the chair, I am more likely to pick her up. This is a signal that she created, specific to this one thing she wants.
So what else is this but the invention of language-a meaning invented for a gesture that has no relationship to what's meant.
Tess considers herself a fully equal member of the household. Since we moved our kitchen table to an area she can see clearly, she has taken to eating or at least hanging out at her dish whenever we sit down for a meal. She participates in our daily routine and expects us to keep it. For the middle part of the day there is no set routine, as one or both of us may be absent, and she understands this, too. She also has routines established with each of us separately. Her sense of order orders us. But how she made the leap to inventing language is something else again.
American Dreams
This season's "American Dreams" has the kids growing up, the youngest getting an operation to correct a polio induced handicap, the middle child---the girl who seemed to be the central character in the first season---going on with her adolescence in this fraught context of the mid 1960s. The black family has also emerged as a strong if secondary set of developing stories. But the major arc follows the oldest of the Pryor children, the son who is now a Marine, and is now on his way to Vietnam.
There are no characters now in the series that correspond with my situation in the period---that is, no one for me to identify with, one to one. Nevertheless I feel an emotional connection to J.J., the oldest son, who is nothing like I was at his age. I'm surprised at the depth of my feeling after all these years concerning my contemporaries who went to Vietnam. Especially one I think about, a guy I didn't know very well in college-we had our political differences since he was gung ho ROTC, but we met accidentally alone shortly before graduation day, and made our separate peace. He was killed in his first week in Vietnam.
Maybe that's it---at the time, the draft and the war were at once so specifically personal, and also so political and large in implication. As I've said in this space before, whatever hostility there was for soldiers soon dissipated when the first of them started coming back from Vietnam, "radicalized." But perhaps this area between the very personal and the broadly political, the area of empathy, is one that I haven't fully experienced emotionally. So in a way I do identify with J.J., and his journey becomes my road not taken.
It's more than that, for Margaret seems to be similarly affected. And really, has there been the opportunity to emotionally experience this through a character over time? Not with the intensity of a book or a movie, but in these fully furnished moments of something like the past, stretched out over weeks and months? Following a character we've seen "grow up" for awhile? I don't think so. This TV show is not entirely accurate in its depiction of the 60s, but in particular scenes it can be devastatingly evocative. I never had to ship out to Vietnam, but in the draft process and otherwise I was in several sorts of military circumstances. So the scene of J.J. leaving was very powerful.
The West Wing
Aaron Sorkin is gone, can the West Wing survive? So far it seems to be successfully adding more personal and personality elements and conflict to political stories, in apparently well thought-out arcs that are subtle yet definite. Within the shows the writing is a bit uneven, especially the dialogue, but that's been getting better. (And, it's worth noting, at least one episode I noticed was written by a team of two women, a first for this series.) The integrity of the show seems to be intact. In any case, I doubt if any current TV series would produce an episode heavily advertised as a "Christmas show" that had less sentimentality and more reality about families and relationships, yet still had moments of authentic, earned feeling.
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