I decided (on a whim, as I usually decide upon "new projects") to begin blogging instead of journaling the old-fashioned way. Why? I type much faster than I write; it's easier to edit; and I just thought it would be cool. That's enough for me.
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Cat Supervision (and Snoozing)
Nothing can be done in this household without cat supervision. Knitting, gaming, reading -- you name it. The Cat must be present. I think it's in his contract or something. All this supervision is stressful and must be remedied by frequent naps. Peasant, bring me my catnip and kitty treats!
"Laiane" rhymes with "rain."
I'm "a woman of a certain age" who loves computer games, baths, and the written word in all its lovely forms. Insomniac. Ailurophile. Fledgling Knitter. Intellectual snob and damned proud of it. I read too much; I'm just "That Way." I have a marked tendency to Talk in Capital Letters. That could be (a) because I'm of German origin, or (b) I'm more like Eeyore than I care to admit [N.B. -- when I took the Meyers Briggs personality test, the web site gave Eeyore and Fred Mertz as examples of fictional characters who shared the same personality as me -- an ISTJ.]
In my childhood, I was a fervent worshipper of the tiger -- not the jaguar, that spotted "tiger" that inhabits the floating islands of water hyacinths along the Parana and the tangled wilderness of the Amazon, but the true tiger, the striped Asian breed that can be faced only by men of war, in a castle atop an elephant. I would stand for hours on end before one of the cages at the zoo; I would rank vast encyclopedias and natural history books by the splendor of their tigers. (I still remember those pictures, I who cannot recall without error a woman's brow or smile.) My childhood outgrown, the tigers and my passion for them faded, but they are still in my dreams. In that underground sea or chaos, they still endure. As I sleep I am drawn into some dream or other, and suddenly I realize that it's a dream. At those moments, I often think: "This is a dream, a pure diversion of my will, and since I have unlimited power, I am going to bring forth a tiger."
Oh, incompetence! My dreams never seem to engender the creature I so hunger for. The tiger does appear, but it is all dried up, or it's flimsy-looking, or it has the impure vagaries of shape or an unacceptable size, or it's altogether too ephemeral, or it looks more like a dog or bird than like a tiger.-- Jose Luis Borges
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