The Cat Without A Purr

This is the only children's story I've written.  I hope my wife can do the illustrations.  Meanwhile I have a few photos of our own cats with which to liven the tale.

           "Wow!  What a big cat!".
          That was David's first thought as he looked at the animal that had jumped his fence and landed in his yard.         

          David wanted all creatures to have good homes and plenty of food.  People in his neighborhood called him "Mister Zoo" because he adopted so many animals. He had six cats, four dogs, a parrot, a guinea pig and a pony.  They all lived in the house except for the pony, who slept under an awning in a fenced patch of grass.  The pony was only about the size of a little boy and spent the day wandering around with the other animals.

            David watched the cat quietly.  The animal was sitting like a king in his garden.  He had long black and white fur.  His ears were torn from fights and there was a scar on his nose.  His fur was matted with mud and was full of sharp sticky little leaves and twigs.  His paws were so big that David already had a name for him.  He was Paws!

            David knew that trouble was coming.  The wind changed direction.  It carried the smell of a strange animal.  Six cats, four dogs, a guinea pig, a parrot and a pony caught the smell of the new cat.  Their heads turned at the same time, eyes and noses searching for the stranger in their garden.  They saw him, sitting calmly in the middle of a patch of red flowers.

            It was as if someone had blown a whistle to start a race.  Tweet!  All of David's animals went zooming across the yard at top speed, barking, flapping, neighing and hissing.  Attack attack!  A stranger is in our midst!  Drive him away!

          That's how animals treat strangers.  Animals think about food a lot, and strangers might eat their food.  So their first idea is to chase away new animals.

           Paws didn't run away.  The animals came to a sudden stop in a circle around the new cat.  Wait a minute!  What's going on here?  This cat should be running for his life.  Instead he's standing straight and tall and telling everyone, " You don't want to mess with me.  I'm a pretty tough cat."

            Sniff sniff.  Sniff sniff.  The animals circled the stranger, sniffing his nose, sniffing his toes, sniffing his ears and sniffing his other parts.  Paws sniffed back.  In animal language this sniffing is like seeing a movie or reading a book.  The sniffing says everything.  After sniffing, animals aren't strangers any more.  They decide by sniffing who's going to be their friend.

            This time David's animals decided that Paws was going to be a friend.  They  turned and walked towards the back porch, escorting Paws like a super hero.  They let him go up the steps first. The food and water dishes were on the porch.  The pony waited for everyone else to get up the steps and then he followed.  His hooves made sounds like drum beats on the wooden deck.

               Paws was hungry and thirsty.  The animals stood back while the cat drank a long drink, his tongue going "flup flup flup flup."  Then he ate all the kibble in one of the dishes.

            He was a big cat and he was really hungry!

            David went into the house.  The animals followed.  Even the horse went into the house. 

            David had never seen anything like this, never seen his animals make friends so quickly.  They not only accepted the cat: they made him their leader, just like that!

            Paws rubbed against David's legs with his tail going swish swish swish swish.  David got onto the floor and gave Paws a scratch on the ears  The cat rolled onto his back while his tail went swish swish swish swish.  David scratched his tummy and the cat's eyes were half closed with happiness.

            One thing was strange to David.  Paws didn't purr.  David  could tell if animals were sad or lonely.  He could tell if they had made a great journey across mountains and deserts.  Paws was one of those cats who had traveled a long way.  Today he had found a new home!  He should be happy.

            But he didn't purr.  That was strange.  Happy cats purr.  Don't they?

            David was tired from working in the garden all morning.  He went into his living room and sat on his big soft chair.  He was surprised when Paws jumped right onto his lap and looked straight into his eyes.

            "I wonder," thought David, "what stories this cat would tell me if only he could talk."

            It seemed as if the cat heard his mind.  He's trying to tell me his story, David realized.  Paws opened his mouth and said softly, "Yow?.  Myow?"  His voice was gentle, almost too quiet to hear.  It was a sweet voice for such a big tough looking cat.

            I wish, thought David, that I could speak the language of animals.  They could teach me so many things!

            David stared into Paws' eyes.  As Paws said, "Myow?", a light slowly came from his eyes, a golden light that floated like a cloud around David's head.  The cloud became so thick that David couldn't see his house any more.  Instead, he saw people and places, he saw summer and winter, he saw deserts with cactus and high snowy mountains.  He saw good people and bad people.  Then David heard Paws' voice.  Inside the golden cloud, the  cat was speaking to him in a new kind of language, and he understood!  There were words in this language but there were also pictures and feelings.

            "I remember," the cat said, "I remember the first time I opened my eyes.  I was being fed by my mother.  My sister and two brothers and I were drinking milk

and purring.  All I knew of life was a giant purr, the sweet taste of milk and the sound of my mother's heart beating. 

            Mother had given us our names.  These are special cat names that a mother gives to her kittens when they're born.  There is no way to say them in human language.  I may have many names in my life but nothing is more important to me than my first name, the name my mother gave me when I was born.

            As I got older, huge hands picked me up and held me in a warm place where there was a giant heart beat.  My mother told me that these were the family that we lived with.  They gave us names, too.  They called my mother Violet.  They called my sister Fanny, and my brothers, Manny and Lanny.

            My name was Claude.  Don't ask me why.  I thought I might be Danny or Sammy, but someone  named me Claude.  Maybe it was because of my big paws.

            When I was about a month old I found out that I was different.  We had just stopped being a pile of kittens at mama's tummy and were getting picked up by people, one at a time.  The family's kids picked up Manny and I could hear him purring all the way across the room.  Lanny and Fanny didn't have any trouble purring.  It was just me.  When I got picked up, my tail went swish swish, swish swish, but there was no purr.  When we were all together I thought I was purring but now I knew I was different and it made me very sad.  I tried to purr.  I rattled the bones in my throat, blew air through my teeth, wiggled my tongue as fast as I could.  Nothing I tried sounded like a purr.

            My mother was worried.  Late at night she took me to the computer and used her paws to Google the word "purr".  We read all kinds of things, but it seems that no one really knows how a cat purrs.  It just does.  Or, in my case, it doesn't.

            "I'm sorry, little one," my mother said.  "Without a good purr your life might be harder than most cat's lives.  Just swish that tail of yours and you'll find someone to love you."

            I hoped she was right.  Another month passed and Manny found a home.

Then some people came to the house and fell in love with Fanny.  She went away with those people.  I missed my brother and sister but this is the way things are with kittens.  They have to find new homes or pretty soon there will be a hundred cats in the house and in my opinion I would not want to live around a hundred cats.  Not even fifty.  Or twenty.  Two or three is just about right.

            Pretty soon I was the last kitten.  A very nice lady came to the house, smiled at me and picked me up.  I swished my tail as fast as I could. 

            "You are very handsome, little kitten," she said.  I was thinking THIS IS IT THIS IS IT!  Someone will love me and take me home.

            A strange look came over her face.  It was a look I would get to know.  I would know that look on a hundred faces in a hundred places.  It was a look of disappointment.  It was a look of rejection.  That's when someone sends a feeling at you that says, "No, I don't want you!"  That's what rejection is.  And it hurts.  It hurts really bad.

            "What a shame," the lady said.  "He doesn't have a purr.  Not even a little vibration.  I'm sorry but I can't take him.  Who wants a cat without a purr, a cat that can't tell you when he's happy?"

            "I can tell you!", I yowled desperately.  "I swish my tail like this, see?  Swish swish.  Swish swish.  I'm happy I'm happy, see?  See?"

            She didn't see.  She couldn't understand my language.

            The next day my family put me in a box and took me to the grocery store.

The kids sat with me out front.  They had written words on the box: FREE KITTEN.

            People picked me up, stroked me, my tail went swish swish, but always that look came, that look of disappointment and rejection.  The look that said NO I DON'T WANT YOU.  People put me in the box and walked away

            Then a man came along.  He barely looked at me.  He didn't pick me up.  He asked the kids, " I have some mice in my apartment.  I need a good mouser.  Is this cat a good mouser?"        The kids didn't want to lie.  They shook their heads kind of up and kind of sideways and said "ummmm, welll....there aren't any mice in our house.  Not a single one."

            "All right, I'll take him" said the man.  He picked me up, tucked me in his jacket and drove me to his place.  I was filled with joy.  At last, I had a new person, I had a home!  It was sad to leave my first family but that's how nature works.  Kittens get adopted.  And now I was too.  I was, at last, adopted by a new person.

            The man gave me food, water, a scratching pole and a box to go in.  Then he went to work and he was gone all day.  The windows and doors were closed.  There was no fresh air.  The place didn't smell good. 

            I was terribly lonely.  The hours went by so slowly that I wanted to cry.

            Then I heard a tiny sound.  I looked under the couch.  A little creature with a pointy nose and a long tail was looking back at me.

            "OH!" It was surprised and almost ran away.  "OH!" I yelped and almost ran away too.  Then the creature took a close look at me.  "Whew, what a relief," it said.  "For a minute I thought you were a mouser.  But I can tell you're not the type.  Right?"

            "A mouser?" I said.  "You mean?  Uh..."

            "See?" the creature said with relief.  "Your mother wasn't a mouser and your grandmother wasn't a mouser and I'll bet your great grandmother wasn't a mouser either.  It runs in the family.  You either are or you aren't.  And you're not!"

            "So", I said,..."I presume that you are a mouse." 

            "That's right, I'm a mouse.  My name is Duke."

            He extended his paw and we shook paws and decided to become friends.  All the rest of that day we talked and played.  When we talked we used the language that all animals use.  It's called Everything Language.  All around the world animals talk to one another in Everything Language.  For some reason, people can't speak this language.  That's sad because if people spoke Everything Language maybe they wouldn't treat us like we don't have any feelings.

            When the man came home Duke vanished under the couch.

            After the man sat down with his newspaper I jumped up on his lap, swishing my tail.  "Hello kitty," he said, "we haven't given you a name yet.  What shall we call you?"

            I rolled over on my back and stretched.  I rubbed my chin on the man's knee.  I was doing everything a happy cat can do.  I was watching the man's face.  I was praying that I would not see that dreadful look on the man's face.

            "What's the matter," the man said.  "Don't you like me?"  There it was, the look that I feared.  If a face could be a door, this one was closing. 

            "I gave you the best food," he snarled.  "I got you a bed and a scratching pole.  Why can't you give me one little purr, to say 'thank you'"?

            "I'm doing my best," I said in Everything Language, which of course the man did not understand.  "I'm swishing my tail!  That says I'm happy, see?"  Swish swish, swish swish.

            The man didn't understand.  At that very moment, Duke poked his head from under the couch and said, "Forget it, dude.  The guy's a total loser.  He doesn't have any friends, he doesn't do anything besides work, he never goes out to have fun.  He just watches TV all the time."

            Then Duke ran scampering all the way across the room and vanished beneath the refrigerator.  Talk about bad timing!

            The man had seen my new mouse friend.  His face turned red, and he picked me up roughly.  "That's it!  I've got a name for you.  Useless!  That's your name!  Useless, Useless, Useless!"

            He opened the door of the apartment and threw me into the street.  The door slammed shut.

            I didn't know what to do.  This was supposed to be my new home.  I had a new friend.  I couldn't leave Duke.  I scratched at the door and cried.  When it opened I thought I had been forgiven.  I was wrong.  The man hit me with a rolled up newspaper and yelled "Get out of here you useless cat!"

            I ran and ran until I came to a place with trees and a little creek.  It was getting dark.  I found a hole in a fallen tree and crawled inside as the night covered the woods like a blanket.  I heard the flapping of owls' wings and the wind whispered through the moonlit branches.  I was so scared that I could only repeat my first name, the name my mother gave to me, my secret cat name.  I said it over and over.

            After a while I was so hungry that I forgot to be scared.  I went back to the place where the man lived.  I saw people putting bags of good smelling stuff into silver cans.  When I was sure no one was looking I jumped on top of one of the silver cans and tried to get food out.  The lid was too tight, so I made the can rock back and forth until it fell to the ground with a big clatter.

            There was food all over the place.  There was chicken, hamburger and cheese.  I was just taking a bite when something came running out of the woods and knocked me backwards so hard that I turned a circle in the air.

            "Who...who are you?" I whispered.  I was looking into a face full of sharp teeth.  They belonged to a creature with a long ringed tail and a black mask over its face.  Behind the leader there were four more of the animals, snorting and growling.  I thought it was the end, that my life was over.

            The animal stood up on its hind feet and puffed out its chest.

            "I am Raccoon Tour," it said.  "And these are my brothers, Raccoon Bob, Raccoon Slob, Raccoon Knob and Raccoon Job.  They are so stupid they wouldn't be able to find their own tails if I didn't help them along."

            Raccoon Tour shrugged his shoulder.  "What can you do?  Family's family, right?"

            The other raccoons muttered "Yeh yeh yeh yeh," as they chased one another's tails.  One of them thought it had someone else's tail but turned out it was its own tail and when it pulled hard, it fell over and yelled "Ouch!  Cut it out!"

            The others went "Heh heh heh heh" and turned into a big pile of masked ring-tailed animals.

            "These cans belong to us," Raccoon Tour said.  "Nobody eats from here but my family."

            "Yeh yeh yeh yeh," said the other raccoons, rolling around and biting at the air.

            "Now I ain't a bad guy," said Raccoon Tour.  "Here's a little somethin, so you don't starve to death'."  He reached into the spilled food and held out a piece of meat about the size of his nose.  It wasn't much.

            "Now get outta here and don't come back, little kitty, 'fore I get mad."

            "Fore he gets mad fore he gets mad" said the rest of his brothers.

            I ran back to my hole in the tree.  I ate the little piece of food.  I was still very hungry.  I repeated my secret cat name until I fell asleep.

            In the morning the wind brought me smells of cooking breakfasts from a hundred directions.  My stomach was growling.  It kept saying "Hungry, hungry, hungry, hungry, feed me feed me feed me feed me."  The noise my stomach made was even louder than the noise my mind was making.  Inside my mind a voice said over and over again, "I'm scared, hide.  I'm scared, hide."

            I had to ignore that voice.  If I listened to that voice, I would  starve to death.   So I picked out the best of all the smells and I followed it.

            There was food, lots of food.  I made myself as brave as I could and went to ask for something to eat.  With all this food, no one wanted to share.  Dogs chased me.   People called me bad names and sometimes threw things at me.  I had to find food that wasn't being eaten and guarded by such mean people.

            At last I smelled something that didn't have a dog, a cat, a skunk, a raccoon or a person eating it, guarding or protecting it .  The smell came from inside a big shiny car that had an open window.  I was able to jump onto a fender, then crawl over a big mirror and slip into the front seat.  At last, there was food! In the back seat was a slab of meat surrounded by two pieces of bread.  This was wrapped in paper, which I tore apart and began to eat until my tummy bulged.  I felt sleepy, so I crawled onto the floor and tucked myself under the seat.

            A noise woke me.  We were moving!  A man with yellow hair was playing with dials on his dashboard and loud groaning sounds were coming out of speakers, sounds that I didn't understand.  The whole car vibrated.

            "Uh..Uh.." the speakers said, "Mama wants you to get Down Dude, Get Down Get Down Get Down, Dude...Uh..Uh..Mama wants you to get Down".  The singer, if that's what it was, sounded sort of angry but he was singing about his mother, so I thought it must be okay.  I don't understand human beings but everyone loves their mom.

            The car drove for a long time. 

            It stopped at a building with colored lights blinking on and off.  I hopped out of the car before the driver saw me.  There was a road vanishing into the darkness.  Cars zoomed by so fast that the wind made my fur move.

            The building smelled like food.  People went in and out, with shiny bags of meat and bread.  They got back into their cars and drove off into the night, towards the mountains in one direction, towards the city in the other.  I didn't want to stay near this place.  The people acted bad.  They walked like their legs were made out of rubber and they pushed each other around.

            I was very confused.  I waited for the cars to pass, then I ran across the road.  This place didn't have tall trees like my birth place.  The ground was sandy and I could see spiny bushes and tumbled rocks in the moonlight.  I crawled into a little space in a pile of rocks, hoping that I would be safe until morning.

            The sounds of the night were like the pages of a story book turning.  Coyotes ran across the hills in single file, wailing at the moon..  Snakes rattled, badgers dug tunnels in the sand.  Scorpions crawled from rock to rock.

            Then something was hissing at my hiding place.  It was too big to get in, but it sniffed and growled.  The fur on my back grew stiff and I growled back, hoping to sound bigger than I was.  The creature started digging at my shelter and when it peeked in with one eye I saw that it was a cat twenty times my size.

            I prayed that I would be safe.  Just as I thought I was about to get eaten the monster let out a scream.  Its eye vanished and I heard it yelling as it ran across the desert.

            "Thank you, thank you, for answering my prayers." I said to God.

            Then a little black nose appeared.  A familiar face peeked into my hiding place.  It was Duke.  He swung a porcupine quill like a sword.  He had used it to stick the mountain lion's hind legs. 

            "Duke!  You saved my life...but...how did you get here?  How did you know?"

            "I've been following you since you left that jerk's place", Duke said, "that loser who hit you with a newspaper.  I got into the trunk of the same car you hitched a ride in.  I've been doing that for  years. I've been a thousand places.  Trucks are the best.  Just get in where the driver won't see you and eat all the stuff he throws on the floor."

            From that moment, Duke and I traveled together.  He knew a hundred things about the world and he taught me how to live.  He rode on my back, hidden in my long coat.  We journeyed across the country from summer to winter and back again.

            I grew into a full sized cat, a very big cat.  Once I saved Duke from a fox that bit me on the nose before I could chase it away.  Another time Duke saved me from some bad people.

            I was trying to get milk from a camping place.  There were a bunch of men who were trying to be friendly.  "Here kitty kitty," they said, "y' want some milk?"

            I started to go towards the campsite when Duke grabbed my ear.  "No no, Claudio," he said.  "Can't you see their eyes?  You can always tell about people by the kind of light that comes from their eyes."

            I looked at the men.  There were guns leaning against trees and propped inside their pickup trucks.  There was dark light coming from their eyes.  The light looked like storm clouds.

            "See that?" Duke explained.  "That dark light means trouble.  No matter how hungry you are, never NEVER mess with people who have dark light in their eyes.  Wait until you see people whose eyes have golden light, or silver, or rainbow colors.  Those are good people.  They'll help you.  They'll give you food even when they're starving themselves.  There aren't too many people like that in the world, but you can find them if you look.  Let that be your guide about human beings.  Look at the light in their eyes."

            One of the men kept saying "Here kitty kitty kitty," and his voice sounded like a snarl.  His hand was resting on one of his guns.  Now I saw the stormy light that came from his eyes.  I was running fast when the gunshot went whizzing over my head.  Duke was clutching my mane and we vanished into the night.        

            I think that was the most important lesson I ever learned.

            One hot summer day Duke and I were resting in a bale of hay at the back of a barn.  "Duke," I said, "Let's find a real home, with a real family."

            Duke sighed.  "Be my guest, o best friend of mine.  Just remember: I'm a mouse.  Even a purrless cat can find a home sooner or later.  But a mouse?  Who are you kidding?  Who would want me?  Mice are not welcome, not anywhere!"

            "Duke, you're not just any mouse.  Come on, you've got to believe in yourself.  You're Duke, the wisest mouse in the world.  I could not have survived without you.  You taught me everything I know.  We just have to keep trying and never give up until we find a home for both of us.  All we have to do is watch the light in people's eyes until we find a person whose light is the purest sun-shiny gold."

            Duke's shoulders slumped with weariness.  "I'm getting kinda tired of wandering around, with no place to call my own.  Everyone needs a home.  Everyone deserves a home."

            We started the search.  We went from town to town and from farm to farm.  There were a lot of good people in the world, but the light that came from their eyes was...well...ordinary light.  It changed from bright to dark sometimes, or it was golden colored but really not very bright.  Duke and I knew that our home would not be an ordinary home.

            Sometimes we found people who took us in for a few weeks.  They thought Duke was cute.  Sooner or later, something changed.  The people would stop being so friendly.  They put out traps and poison, trying to get rid of Duke.  It was time to move on.

            We traveled all the way to the ocean.  I wanted to hop a boat but Duke refused.  "I get seasick, Claude.  I get it bad.  No boats!"

            We turned around and started back towards the mountains and the deserts.

We climbed a string of hills.  One day after I had reached the top of a high hill, I looked below and saw a place that was as beautiful as the place where I had been born.

            Duke was very quiet.  I could tell what he was thinking.  It looked like his birth place too.

            It was a little town.  The houses had big fenced yards full of apple and pear trees.  The light that came from the peoples' eyes was as clear and bright as any we had ever seen.  There were children and pets everywhere, and the people moved and walked with their hands and legs swinging loose.  They weren't like the people in the big cities.   City people moved like they had molasses poured down their pants and were trying to keep it from running into their shoes.

            We watched from the top of the hill.  We went down and started going from house to house, family to family.  One day I saw a man.  I had never seen eyes that held such beautiful light.

            "Do you see him, Duke?  Do you see that light?  It's like the sun but it doesn't blind me."

            Duke wrinkled his nose.  "Not bad.  But he's got a lot of other animals.  Look at all those cats.  What if one of them is a mouser?"

            My heart sank.  The man had six cats, four dogs, a guinea pig, a parrot, and pony.

            "Stay here," I told Duke. "I'll go find out."

            I waited till the man wasn't looking.  I jumped up on the fence and let the animals see me.  They came running, barking, hissing and flapping.  I ran back up the hill.

            "Just wait," I told Duke.  "This may take a while."

            A few hours later, I jumped back up on the fence and walked back and forth.

Again, the animals came running.  The dogs leaped in the air, the cats got on the fence rail.  The pony neighed.  The parrot squawked.  The guinea pig sighed because it wasn't much good at jumping or running.

            I ran away.

            Later that day, I did the same thing.  And I did it again.  The sun started sinking behind the hills and I returned to Duke. 

  

         

"You're doing a great job, buddy, a great job." Duke was sarcastic.

            "Sometimes good things take time," I told my friend.  "You know that.

You've said it to me many times.  If something is worth having, you keep working.  You don't get angry or sad, you focus on your task and you keep working."

            "You're right,"Duke apologized.  "I'm just sitting here watching while you do all the work."

            The next day I jumped on the fence.  The animals looked at me and then ignored me.  They had gotten bored with my routine.  So I took the next step.  I jumped down from the fence and landed in the yard, in the middle of a patch of red poppies.

            This was too much.  The animals had to do their duty.  They charged at me but this time I didn't run.  I wanted to run.  My fear was saying, "I'm scared, hide!  I'm scared, hide!"

            I told my fear voice to be quiet.  I didn't run.  The animals stopped and looked at me with questions in their eyes.

            "Who are you?" they asked. 

            "My first name is the name my mother gave me," I told the animals.  I said the name and the cats understood it because it's a special cat name that only cats can pronounce.

            "My second name is the name given to me by my birth family, which is Claude.  That's the name I use most of the time.  I have another name which I never use.  That name is 'Useless'.  I've also been called 'Heycat, Purrless Wonder, Getouttahereyoupest,' and all sorts of names."

            The cats told me their cat names and their first family names and the names they used with the man.  They told me the man's name was David.

            The dogs had only one name apiece.  The bird had twenty names and the horse didn't know its name but it thought it might be  'Giddyup' or 'Come On Let's Go'."

            I learned with great relief that none of the cats were mousers.  I called to Duke.  He was just outside the fence.  He crawled under and came towards us.  I could tell he was nervous.  He got up on my back where he usually rode and clutched tightly at my fur.

            Introductions were made all around.  "By the way," said the cat named Isadore, " we know a lot of nice lady mice around here.  You should feel right at home."

            Duke and I and David's animals made a plan.  Then we went to our positions and waited for David to appear.  After a while, he came from his house and walked toward the garden.  I sat calmly in the poppy patch while the animals put on a great show of trying to chase me away.  As I had hoped, David was amazed.  He approached me and bent to scratch my ears.  My tail went swish swish swish.

            "I've already got a name for you," he said.  "I'll call you Paws."

            It sounded good to me.  What's one more name?

            David turned to go back to the house.  All the animals followed.  Duke stayed hidden in my fur. 

            David sat in a big chair and I jumped right up on his lap and looked straight into his eyes.  Then something happened.  The light in David's eyes jumped out and met the light in my eyes.  In that moment, somehow, David learned to speak Everything Language.  We could understand each other.

            David had been thinking, "I wonder what stories this cat would tell me if only he could talk." 

            I had always been able to talk in Everything Language.  Now that David could understand,  I told him my whole story.  When it was over, David asked me politely, "If you're starting a new life, maybe you should have a new name.  Do you mind if we call you Paws from now on?"

            "Yow, myow," I said.  "I don't mind."

            A little wrinkled nose came from the fur behind my ears.

            "You must be Duke, Paws' best friend," David said.  "You've been brave, loyal and wise.  Welcome.  Welcome Duke and Paws.  Welcome to your new home.  This will be your home forever."

            "Thank you," said Duke.  "But I don't want a new name.  Is that okay?"

            "I don't make people do things," said David, " that they don't want to do."

            My tail and Duke's tail went swish swish swish at the same time.

            "This is my kind of place," said Duke.  "A place where I can be free."

           

           

           

A Key To A Good Relationship

Healing Hands: mine and Fox's.  My left hand was pressing the shutter release.

A Key To A Good Relationship

            My wife and I have been together for almost eleven years.  I can't imagine having anyone being as close to me as she is.  We are like two tuning forks, vibrating at the same frequency.  I know what she is feeling, when she is feeling it, and I always know that she understands me.  That's a gift, a god-send.

            Our lives are not easy.  We duel with illness, poverty and aging.  We're really struggling.  But being together in adversity makes that adversity more bearable; I know someone's got my back.

            We may be hanging on the very fringes of society.  We are daily bombarded with messages from this culture that tell us we're not valued as elders, we are dispensable and  no one cares about our health or our future.

            Yet we have a successful relationship.  How much is that worth?  Everyone knows that a great relationship is priceless.  The Fox and I have one, and I'll share a lesson that I've learned about maintaining such a gift.

            We never forget to be courteous to one another.  In large things and in small, we speak gently, say "thank you", "please", and offer words of praise.

            It would be so easy to take one another for granted.  It would be so easy to leave out the endearments and the expressions of gratitude.  But we're getting old.

We don't know how long we have on this earth.  So we'll continue to nurture one another with every passing day, gratefully.  

The Artistry Of The Cosmos

       
          This is an image of the famous Horsehead Nebula, which is part of the immense Orion nebular complex.  The Horsehead has been seen in thousands of photos all over the world and written about in every language.  Astrophotographer Robert Gendler posted this on his Facebook page today and it was so new and startling in its depth that I felt compelled to write something about how I feel about astronomy and about the Universe in general.
          Mr. Gendler is an amateur astronomer.  His images can be found here:http://www.robgendlerastropics.com.  He is one of the world's master astrophotographers.
          When I see something so beautiful I must ask myself the question: who made such a thing?
It is primarily hydrogen.  It assumes its shapes by way of the gravitational influence of nearby stars. The entire region is regarded as a "star nursery"; vast amounts of hydrogen are gradually being squeezed more and more tightly until the pressure of gravity ignites a fusion reaction.  This fusion reaction is the first cry of a new born star.  I've taken pictures of this region and I know that the Horsehead is but a tiny extrusion of an immense nebular region that takes in many light years of space and includes the mighty Orion Nebula, M42. It is virtually encircled by a torus of hydrogen cloud called Barnard's Loop.  There's so much hydrogen, so much star-formation going on here that if one "zooms back" to see the region as a whole, the Horsehead is nothing but a speck.
          I don't adhere to any formal religion.  I see a mighty Intelligence in the shapes, lights,
the sheer artistry of the cosmos.  I see staggering beauty and I worship the maker of that beauty.
I'm an artist and I also try in my humble way to make beauty.  That's the only way I can touch the hem of the majestic robe of the Creator Of The Universe.  Thank you Mr. Gendler for your great work.  Thank you, Mighty Intelligence, for allowing us to see these things.

NGC 5189 by  Robert Gendler

Veep: A View Of Honesty In TV Dialogue

            We watched four episodes of VEEP.  We laughed, we were entertained, but we didn't finish the disc and we sent back both discs, Numbers one and two of Season One.

            Something about the series struck me as futile.  I will give ANY series a reasonable shot.  It's hard to produce quality work in this medium and the work is arduous.  I've seen pilot episodes that seemed like crap but the episodes got better as the series progressed.  The writers got their stride, the actors inhabited their characters and that ineffable magic of FILM started to work. 

            VEEP has talented people.  Julia Louis-Dreyfus has the authority to make a credible Vice President and she uses her patented body language to great comic effect.

            Still, there's something missing from VEEP.  It has no core.  I didn't see any change in the characters.  Four episodes is enough to reveal whether or not a series has a dramatic structure, whether or not the characters are going somewhere.  They might be going to Hell but still, at least they're in movement, they're changing.  Veep lacked this sense of dynamism.  The characters kept repeating the  sharp, witty and very nasty banter ad infinitum.  They kept trying to climb over one another's social and professional errors to enhance their own careers.  So what?  Isn't that what everyone does?  Not necessarily, but this kind of one-upsmanship has become a staple of television comedy.  TV and movie characters now speak, and act, as if their internal censors have been turned off.  I first noticed this tendency on SCRUBS, and it was brilliant.  There was something shocking about the way Doctor Perry Cox spoke to his interns.  He spoke the absolute, devastating truth, nothing was watered down.  Sometimes it was inappropriate.  Dr. Cox couldn't care less.  He abandoned the idea of "appropriate" because it was useless.  He played a teacher/physician and if he couldn't resort to blistering character assassination, one of his students may fail to learn a life-saving lesson.  On SCRUBS the characters routinely spoke dialogue that cut through the usual pleasantries of social life.  It was seldom less than hilarious.  From Dr. Kelso's blithely honest selfishness to The Janitor's pointless malice, the characters on that groundbreaking series ripped away the masks that people use in polite society. This mask has a name in psychological parlance.  It's called The Persona.

            As I watched the characters in Veep attempt to mine these same veins of ruthless truth-telling, I felt as though this indicated a complete paradigm shift.

            The Persona is disappearing  in television and film.  Characters actually say what they think and feel.  This may enhance a sense of authenticity but it also points to a vanishing civility.  People are becoming more rude, and not just in TV and film.  They may be more real, but they are also less concerned about one another and more concerned with themselves.  Honesty is a good thing but there's an evil side to such candor.  It has become a license to hurt.

            SCRUBS had heart.  It had a moral premise. Dr. Cox's ferocity was offset by his vulnerability.  We knew that people weren't as cruel as they seemed to be.  They were just tired of the same old shit.  The producers of that innovative series made comedy gold out of the idea that characters could say the craziest things, especially when they were true.

            I abandoned VEEP because I didn't feel that same sense of compassion. There was no moral thrust to the stories.  VEEP seemed to be amoral, and that was ultimately boring.

            As comedy, VEEP can't touch SCRUBS, and as political drama it doesn't even kiss the hem of WEST WING'S robe.  I give it two muskrats for the inventiveness of the dialogue and the sadly funny viciousness of its put-downs. 

            

Getting Out Of Bed: The Most Dangerous Part Of The Day

            In 2005 my wife and I moved out of an absurdly expensive cabin in the woods and bought a 38 foot motor coach.  We had decided to make a major change of lifestyle.  It was an audacious and risky move, loaded with potential pitfalls.  But it worked.  We got out of our "stick house" and moved into a slightly cramped but homey RV. 

            Our original plan included travel.  We crossed the country once, and went on assorted adventures, but the price of gasoline kept rising and our incomes kept falling.

            The RV became a home in a campground where the rent is cheap and all the normal conveniences of civilization are available.  Internet: check.  TV: check. Phone, water, power, sewage: check check check check.

            We love our 38 foot motor coach and we live amicably with two dogs and three cats, surrounded in a campground by a motley bunch of people from all walks of life.

            Our flat screen TV is in the bedroom.  There are cabinets and drawers, windows and fans.  The arrangement of space and the existence of five animal friends imposes one giant fact of life upon us: the only way on or off our bed is from the bottom.  Crawl in, crawl out, head first or butt first or any way you can.  It's a form of gymnastics.  Adding to the complexity of getting in and out of bed is the fact that there are two sets of doggie steps at the bottom of the bed.  Our actual exit/entrance is about two feet of space between these steps.  What's the story? you may ask.  The answer is twofold.  One, our bed sits higher than the normal bed because that's how RV beds are designed.  They are set on a swinging slab of plywood that can be opened to reveal a large storage space. 

            Our cats could get up and down without a problem, but when our teeny miniature poodles arrived we found ourselves being constantly disturbed by whines and whimpers.  I want down.  I want up.  I want down.  I want up.

            We ordered this cool set of pet steps: a five step staircase that fit perfectly into our domain.  Gabriel, the smaller dog, loves them.  Bear, the bigger dog (Gabriel's dad) is terrified by the steps and no amount of cajoling or training will get him to use them. Being the utter saps that we are, we left Bear's stool in place at the right end of the bed, put Gabe's steps on the left and there you have it!  No whines or whimpers.  Gabe up, Gabe down, Bear up, Bear down, end of story.  Each of our poodles is about the size of a shoebox.  They're half the size of our smallest cat.  They like sleeping and lazing underneath blankets or within piles of pillows.  There is a rigorous discipline involved in the act of moving to and from the bed.  We must ALWAYS know the location of the animals.  It has become second nature to make a mental map of the bed before moving in any direction. We feel our way, hands, eyes, entire bodies recording the positions of our loved creatures.  And it's been good; no one's been hurt.  Perhaps, even, the exercise and stretching keeps us loose and more fit than might otherwise be the case.  There are times when I find myself in familiar yoga poses, contorted but otherwise successfully moving to my destination.

            Getting out of bed is a job.  Getting out of bed is a job that has to be done cheerfully in spite of wake-up wrath, grogginess, the pukes, piddles or poops.

            I might interject here that my spouse and I live this way with very little inhibition.  We show tender compassion toward one another's aging bodies.  Life is inherently humiliating as it is; we are careful to grant ourselves some dignity as a couple.

            So...if I say that we have a rare intimacy, I believe it's true. There isn't any choice.  An RV is an environment that is not conducive to privacy. 

            Getting in and out of bed is a procedure that induces uncommon positions and viewpoints.

            It is time now for me to give you another piece of information about myself:

I tend to fall asleep in unusual positions and at unusual times.

            Talk about full moons!  At this point, if you are a bit prudish or tightly wrapped about certain normal anatomical realities, I suggest you stop reading and find an issue of Vanity Fair or O(prah).

            The Fox and I are in our sixties.  I'm not sure how this happened.  The God Of Hippie Fantasies promised that we would never get older than thirty five.  Anything after that was like one of those thirteenth century maps of the world.  HERE LIVE DRAGONS, says the map and that's how we felt.  Old age didn't exist.  It would never exist. 

            We weren't going to be sixty or sixty five.  Hell no!  Something would intervene to ensure our youthfulness.  We would discover that the juice of wild onions mixed with the nectar of rare orchids would halt the aging process.  Or something like that.  Getting old just wasn't real.  It would never happen.

            Before we met, The Fox and I lived wild and crazy lives.  We were in dangerous places, courting viruses or murder and dismemberment, to say nothing of derangement of the senses, intellect and terminal brain damage.

            Somehow we ducked under those scythes.  We survived, and the onion juice/rare orchid miracle didn't happen.  What is it that people say?  That today's sixty is yesterday's fifty?  What bullshit.  Today's sixty is more like seventy.  Baby boomers have lived risky lives, imbibed quantities of exotic stuff, participated in the great Poisoned Democracy, watched fifty billion bullets and ten billion bombs explode all over the world, fled from toxic clouds and radioactive dust storms.  We've lived in apocalyptic terrifying times!  It's stressful!  It beats down those lovely anti-oxidants that we're supposed to cultivate.  

            What the hell do we do now?  Am I going to have to be seventy?  Just wake up one day, bam!  I'm seventy? No!  Nuh-uh.  Fuck this.

            Time moves awfully fast.  Time is sneakier than a weasel stalking a raven's egg.

            I can fall asleep with a book in my hand and a mouth full of raisins.  I can look perfectly awake but I am sound asleep.  I can raise myself up on my left elbow to look out the window and fall asleep, halfway between up and down.  I can, so I am told, walk to the fridge, make myself a waffle, then walk away and get back into bed.  Eyes open but sound asleep.

            The Fox and I have had a rough year.  I lost a job I'd had for nearly thirty years.  I had worked as manager of a large commercial property.  Great job.  Name my hours.  No supervision.  Decent pay. Then the property owner died suddenly.  One day last year I got a letter giving me thirty days' notice.

            It's been that kind of year.  The Fox suffers from auto-immune diseases. 

I have the feet of a hundred year old longshoreman. I don't walk, I hobble.

When an opportunity comes along that gives us a good belly laugh, we cherish the moment like precious treasure.

            Last week I woke up to take my two o'clock pee.  I'm lucky I only pee twice a night.  My prostate must be the size of a football.  What is a prostate, anyway?  It seems to be a gender-specific time bomb buried just behind men's nuts.  Thanks, god.  Thanks for the prostate.  Great invention.

            Anyway, as I was sitting there taking my usual ten minutes to pee, The Fox woke up and slithered from bed.  It was time for her two-fifteen pee and she stood before me in the dark, waiting patiently.

            "You know what you did last night?" she asked, unexpectedly.  We don't talk much in the middle of the night.  We mumble and stumble, grunt and nod until our missions are accomplished.

            I didn't say anything.  She was going to tell me.

            "You got to your knees, turned around and started getting out of bed, head first.  Like you did just now.  Except that as your head reached the bottom of the bed,  your elbows folded, you laid your head in your hands and you fell back to sleep."

            I already had the picture.  I am a big hairy Jewish man.  As I crawled forward, dodging three cats and two dogs, I ran out of steam and fell asleep with my ass in The Fox's face. 

            I started laughing.  It was late and our neighbors are pretty close so my laugh was a high pitched "heee heeee" but it was still satisfying.

            "Your snore was so rhythmic" Fox continued.  "The night lights gave me a complete view of  your full moon and I thought maybe I could play bongos on your butt, maybe they would be tuned to nice pitches, maybe a minor third between them so it would sound like 'Sing Sing Sing'.  But I didn't want to wake you."

            I was tweeting like a canary I was laughing so hard and trying not to roar as I might in broad daylight.

    

     

   "I thought you'd wake up eventually and finish your chore.  As long as you didn't fart or something, what harm could  your ass do to me?  I was willing to take my chances.  You were so deeply asleep; and of course I think you're cute from any angle, so I figured 'what's the harm?'.

            We were both giggling like children.  Oh my god!  You just had to be there.

            I did of course wake up after about five minutes and complete my forward facing slink off the bed, snaking my way down with the help of the doggie steps, none the wiser regarding the comic episode I had gifted to my spouse until she told me this story the following night.

            Have I embarrassed anyone by telling this tale?  I couldn't care less.  We have been betrayed by the God Of Hippie Fantasies.  There is no magic wild onion/orchid juice to reverse our neuropathies, our arthritis, our pops and twinges, our encroaching deafnesss, blindness and dithering mental acuity.  I hereby decree that growing old is an activity of heroes, that it takes major guts to manage the passages that lead us to the Great Light that waits beyond death.

            And if there is no Great Light?  Then we will turn back to behold our brief and insignificant life experiences and know that this WAS the Great Light, one that we weren't able to recognize until after we had lived it.

            

I Surrender! A Capitulation To The Internet

I Surrender

            I surrender.  I raise my hands, throw down my weapons and kneel before the Internet.  I am now its prisoner, I am now its slave.  I let my attention wander, and before it returned (it was a ten second daydream), the Net had morphed into a new paradigm, had spawned a thousand new concepts.  In order to be computer literate, I must understand and master each of these thousand new concepts.  I give up.  I don’t have the time.  I don’t have the speed.

            Around the time Twitter arrived, my grip began to slip. 

            Twitter:  what the fuck is this?  Oh, I get it.  A giant global billboard.  Every person living must now BE a brand, and Twitter is the brand name town crier. Twitter itself generates a thousand spin-offs, becomes an industry.

            “I’m selling new software called Twitterbee to get you thousands of followers on Twitter!  Be in everyone’s face, all the time! Twitterbee.  Subscriptions begin at $4.50 a month.”

            Facebook.  I’m really lost with Facebook.  The word “friend” meant something in the past, it was a powerful concept.  It, the word “friend”, has become utterly devalued.  A friend is now someone who has permission to get in your face who has given you permission to get in his or her face.  What can we do with all these friends?

            It’s obvious!  Sell our Brand!

            Let me see, just what is my Brand?  What am I selling?  I’m an artist, a photographer, musician and writer.  That’s what I sell.  What do I call myself?

I know!  I’ll call myself AARTT!

I sell entertainment with a sideline in Insight.  It isn’t AARTT if it doesn’t have insight.  You’ll learn stuff when you consume my work.

            Among the things you will learn are the following:

How to tolerate yourself.  You are convinced that your flaws are so grotesque that no one will ever love you and you want to puke every time you look in the mirror.

            I can show you how to tolerate yourself.  I can teach you how to look in the mirror and say “hi there” and move on.  You just aren’t important enough to make yourself puke. Also, you're not alone.  Everyone feels this way at some point in a life.

            I can show you how to believe in God without being a fool.  Now that is hella useful.  Everyone needs to believe in something but that need is either repressed by your own subculture or it’s converted into a simpering set of clichés that are not worthy of you. 

            I can make you laugh.  Really, give me a few minutes, I’m just warming up.  Look at yourself!  Look at all the drama you’ve created.  How can you take yourself seriously?  Stop trying. What a Schlemiel, what a Megilla!
            This is my super-secret mantra and tantric yoga procedure for curing negative thinking.  Step one,
take your left hand and put it to your forehead with the palm facing outward.   Tilt your head slightly to the
left.  Make it look dramatic.  Now, in your most self-pitying voice, cry out, "Oy Veyzmir!  Oy Veyzmir!"
(For the goyim:  It's simple.  Oy vay z'meer).  The cry must begin on a mid-tone note and rise half
an octave higher with a strong accent on the final syllable. You MUST repeat this procedure at least eight times, closing your eyes  half way and letting your body droop.  Don't worry about getting the notes right, so long as you sound sufficiently self-pitying. If you fail to reach eight repetitions I am not responsible for potent side effects such as warts and a pungent odor of gefilte fish rising from your body.

            So come on, folks, step right up, buy some AARTT.  Oops, I have to get on Twitter, Facebook, Crazenook, Struttmutt, Hurdlelnurdle, Flank, Bubgut and all those other internet gizmos to sell my Brand.  And I’ve surrendered.  I surrendered in the first sentence.

            I think I’m fucked but I’ll figure out something. A podcast, a webinar...something.

Sit-Coms, Ray Romano and MEN OF A CERTAIN AGE

Ray Romano and MEN OF A CERTAIN AGE

           

            Sometime during the era of Norman Lear's dominance over the television sit-com landscape there arose a formula for writing scripts that haunts us still.  I call it the "three lines to insult to laugh track" gambit.  It's simple.  Character A enters the scene through what appears to be the kitchen or back door.  She asks a question of character B, who is eating a bowl of cereal.  Character B guiltily evades the answer to the question.  Character C throws an insult about Character B to Character A.  The insult is a clever quip exploiting Character B's weight or habits of personal hygiene.  The audience chuckles (or canned laughter of the proper intensity is supplied.)  Another character enters from the living room and asks the same question, i.e. "Who drank all the milk?"  Character A responds with a variation of the same insult, but it's a little stronger.  Audience laughs again, a little more fulsomely.

            Line one is the exposition, it moves the story line along.  Line two reveals the learned helplessness of a character.  Line three insults that character.  Then there's a laugh and the dialogue returns to another insult, another laugh before the cycle returns to the expository dialogue that moves the story another inch further along.

            All the laughs are from the insults or the escalation of the insults.  These imply long audience familiarity with the characters; the audience participates in the humor of the insults because they are, in a sense, members of the family, entitled to

exchange barbs with the characters.

            Shows such as I LOVE LUCY were constructed differently.  They were real Situation Comedies, i.e. Lucy would get herself into a comic situation.  The humor was provided mostly by lies that Lucy told to Ricky.  The lies were made necessary due to some transgression Lucy had committed against one of Ricky's personal rules. Each lie led to further complications as Lucy tried to protect herself from Ricky's notorious Latin temper.  The lies would lead to crazier and crazier situations until Lucy's fib was unmasked.  Yes, she broke Ricky's favorite bongo drum, yes she defied his order not to audition for the part in a TV commercial.  Somehow Ricky's temper never explodes.  The audience knows that Ricky loves Lucy and that he would never harm or abuse her.  Ricky's most fearsome outburst is "Lucy, you got some 'splainin' to do." He's merely playing the part of the fiery Cuban, in a time when Cubans were still hot-blooded band leaders.  Lucy has never been in any real danger. The threat of danger, and Lucy's fibs and their escalating complications to avoid this imagined danger are the meat of the show's humor.  The situation is comic, as is Lucy's physical humor when she inexorably loses control of the Situation.

            I may find I Love Lucy dated and no longer very funny, but I see a moral and imaginative collapse in the quality of the formulaic nit-coms we see today.  Insult comedy is a venerable stream in the great delta of comedic history.  Co-opting insult humor as the driving engine in the bottomless plethora of mediocre sitcoms only serves to allow laziness to rule the writer's room. 

            Producers and writers seem to have learned nothing from the formula-busting brilliance of Seinfeld.  True, since Seinfeld's long run on the air there is room for wackier premises and looser story structures, but these too have played into the propensity for lazy writing.  It's been an awfully long time since anything as good as Seinfeld has appeared.

            Ray Romano has never been on my psychic radar.  I didn't watch his sitcom. 

I don't watch many sitcoms for the reasons outlined above.  But Romano surprised me with his beautifully calibrated drama series "MEN OF A CERTAIN AGE".

            The series revolves around three middle-aged men.  They are old buddies from high school and they meet at a restaurant several days a week to eat breakfast and hash out their personal problems.  Scott Bakula plays out-of-work actor Terry Eliot.  His boyish charm still works on the ladies but it's proving to be an unreliable backstop for whatever pitches the future may throw at him.  At fifty, his face is falling and his prospects have dried up.  When he's offered the role in an  updated commercial that was once his greatest hit, he cringes with embarrassment.  Instead he takes a job with the second old friend of the trio, Own Thoreau, played by the redoubtable Andre Braugher.

            Owen is the son and heir to Big Daddy Owen Thoreau, the towering figure in one of Los Angeles' venerable auto dealerships.  Owen Junior still calls his father "daddy" and is struggling to overcome the iron-clad dominance of his monolithic father.  "Daddy" is ready to retire and hand the business over to his son.  But he makes it clear that he has no confidence in young Owen.  He feels that his son doesn't have the drive and charisma to sustain a competitive business.  Owen Senior's pompous contempt for his son, his constant undermining of younger Owen's efforts makes him the perfect bully and the ideal target for an audience's wrathful involvement.  He is what every good drama needs: a villain.

            Romano plays Joe Tranelli, owner of a store specializing in party supplies.  He's a compulsive gambler, recently divorced and trying with all his heart to connect with his adolescent children.

            These three very different characters share breakfasts, jogs in the hills above L.A. and as much intimacy as any American male can achieve.

            Using these simple ingredients, Romano has produced an absorbing drama that is utterly lacking in strain, self consciousness and over acting.  The obstacles and tensions each character endures are convincing yet played with a precision that draws no attention to itself. 

            This may not be a series that will attract a younger audience looking for a high level of stimulation.  I may not have been drawn to EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND but in the future I will be watching any project with Ray Romano's name attached to it.  He's demonstrated a quiet mastery of television drama. 

            The series went two seasons.  That was all it needed to achieve its goals.  A third season would have gone against the grain and defiled its own modest yet profound ambitions.
          MEN OF  A CERTAIN AGE has no laugh tracks, no set-ups to predictable put-downs, no generic sitcom kitchen-with-living-room set.  It has, instead, several great characters, three of whom are honestly struggling with the onset of male middle age and its challenge.  The series ended with satisfying resolutions without ever seeming pat or forced.  The struggles of life would continue but these three men could rely on one another's support.    I can't think of a greater gift  that can bestowed out of friendship.  Support equates to a guarantee that in times of trouble your friends have "got your back."