Saturday, October 24, 2020

Little Murders

 This is the season in Vermont when the wildlife assaults the barricades. The wolf spiders scuttle in from the garage and drink out of the dog water dish. The field mice squeeze through the tiny crack where the heating pipe enters the wall, hoping for a spot by the fire and a regular supply of crumbs. And it’s the season when, every evening, the gray cat Telemann goes on the hunt. 

In the morning I find the shrunken remains of a spider or two, its legs curled inward like fingers in a fist. I shudder as I walk by, thinking, if it’s the size of a penny in its contracted state, how appallingly huge it must have been while it was alive. And I am grateful to my hunter for keeping us spider free. 

But the field mice are a different story. If spiders rank at the bottom of the adorableness scale, field mice are at the top, with their furry little bodies, tiny paws, big ears, and shiny black eyes. Beatrix Potter used to keep them as pets, and so would I if I could litter train them. And if I didn’t have Telemann. 

Telemann doesn’t care about the adorableness of field mice. He views them not only as food, but as superior entertainment. If watching squirrels through the window is tantamount to watching tennis on TV, catching a live mouse must feel like playing an actual match. 

I don’t begrudge Telemann his mice. We really cannot have them in the house, and he saves us the distressing job of trapping them. It’s what happens between the catching and the eating that I cannot bear--the seemingly frivolous, sadistic batting and stalking and pawing for what looks like the sheer pleasure of prolonging the little creature’s agony. 

Or at least that’s what I thought until two minutes ago, when I googled “why do cats play with their prey.” And it turns out that they’re not playing at all! They are trying to exhaust their prey, before delivering the killing bite to the back of the neck, in order to protect themselves from being bitten or, if the victim is a bird, pecked. Cats have a short muzzle, and big vulnerable eyes, and a rodent in desperate straits can inflict serious damage. So the batting and pawing have a purpose, and Telemann, after all, is not a sadist. Whew! 

Not only that, he is a thrifty, respectful hunter. He eats every speck of his mice, leaving not so much as a tuft of velvety fur for me to find. For all I know, he bows and gives thanks to the Mouse God before settling down to his meal. 

When he’s done, he licks his perfect white teeth with his perfect pink tongue and, tail high, strides victorious and immaculate to where I’m reclining with my book. He jumps on my chest, right between the book and my face, butts my nose with his forehead (why?), turns around three times, and settles purring and blinking on my sternum to digest his mouse.


 

Tuesday, October 13, 2020

Rilke To The Rescue

Some days the most exciting thing that happens around here is that a chickadee takes a bath. A bathing chickadee is a cheerful sight. After checking carefully for owls and hawks, he wades into the birdbath and does a kind of shimmy, dipping his head, fluffing his feathers, slapping his wings, and sending up sprays of shiny droplets. 

Other than that, there’s not much going on, so it’s not surprising that many of us are treating this period of seclusion as a time set apart—a pause, a break during which the clock stops ticking. A time in detention, or in suspended animation, or in hibernation. A chunk of life held between parentheses that will melt away when things get better and we go back to normal.

 I remember my two pregnancies, when my entire being was focused on the resolution of that exceptional state, and daily events seemed not to matter as, like an accomplished meditator, I turned my focus over and over to the coming baby. But those two nine-month waits were joyous times, unlike the last nine months, during which I’ve often felt that, like Rosemary, the season was pregnant with the devil.

 Yet every day spent in this waiting is subtracted from the number of days that remain in my one and only passage through this world. I am like the bird that flies out of the darkness of nonbeing into a great lighted hall, and heads straight towards the window that is open to the darkness on the other side. My wings are beating faster; the window into the waiting night is getting closer; and the goings-on inside the hall grow more perilous by the moment. Will everything explode before I’ve gone?

 I’ve been waiting for the explosion since 2016. Surely, I’ve been saying along with millions of others, this cannot go on. It will not last. Things will go back to the imperfect but tolerable way they used to be. So let’s hold our breath and take a nap and think of something else. Something positive. Let us smile though our heart is breaking, because surely the sun will come out again, tomorrow.

 And then the universe, or the Goddess, or the Holy Spirit flung this at me, from Rilke:

 …How we squander our hours of pain.

How we gaze beyond them into the bitter duration

to see if they have an end. Though they are really

seasons of us,

our winter-enduring foliage, ponds, meadows, our inborn landscape,

where birds and reed-dwelling creatures are at home.* 

Winter is coming, in more ways than one, and it would be a waste to spend it hankering for spring.  Instead, let us find refuge in our inborn landscape, and feel at home.

 *The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, ed. and trans. Stephen Mitchell (New York: Random House, 1982).


 

Friday, October 2, 2020

My Brain, My Gut, and Sister Mary Ruth

My brain, my gut, and Sister Mary Ruth--my high school English teacher--reacted to the news of Trump's Covid infection:

Gut: Gasps, adrenaline surge, animal excitement. 

Brain: This could be the equivalent of the Clinton emails! 

Gut: But what if Trump gets really sick/dies and the Proud Boys decide that it’s the Democrats’ fault?! (Fight/flight response sets in). 

Brain: Serves Trump right that he got sick. 

Sister Mary Ruth: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. 

Brain: This could be the road to the first woman president!

Gut: Torrents of adrenaline flood system. Heart rate up. Feeling as if could—no, must—run a mile. Not an unpleasant sensation. 

Sister Mary Ruth, warningly: Ahem! 

Brain: Whiff of shame followed by twinge of conscience. 

Gut: Pulse rate down. Desire to run mile vanishes. 

Brain: But he KNEW that Hope Hicks had the virus and he STILL attended the fund raiser. He deserves what’s coming to him! 

Sister Mary Ruth, wags finger: That’s enough, now. 

Gut: Slight feelings of fatigue, or maybe indigestion. Also strange wired sensation, despite no additional coffee. 

Brain: Would be wise to close laptop. Maybe take nap? 

Gut: Must check updates. Trump cancels call with governors! Pence says Trump “just fine”! Should sic Sister Mary Ruth on VP, for telling fibs. 

Mind: Speaking of which, what if whole thing is another one of Trump's lies? 

Gut: Heart rate up again. Throat constricted. Nap? As if. 

Sister Mary Ruth , quoting Saint Teresa: “Let nothing disturb you, let nothing frighten you…all things are passing…God alone is sufficient.” 



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