All’s ill that ends ill

 

 

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

           

Perhaps I was ill all along. But I fell into bed on Saturday, along side Sharon, who was also ill.

            It is exhaustion really, and the need to rest that plagues me, so I slept, and slept, rising on Sunday morning to shovel the foot of snow that kept us from making the trip to see our friends in Brooklyn.

            I got up long enough to finish my paper on Monday and went back to sleep.

            Sharon kiddingly blames Sam the cat for giving her a cold since Sam, an outside cat we brought in recently because of his condition, routinely sneezed in her face.

            The cat – who I dragged to the vet last week – is the second outside cat to inhabit our kitchen over the last month. Crazy, who begged to come in, was dying and needed to comfort him and help him with his passing, which we did.

            Sam is on the mend, growing stronger each day and forcing us to fight to give him his medicine each night.

            And we need to wait for him to heal before we open the house up to him and the rest of the cats.

            This, of course, gives our home the feel of a hospital ward, cats ill, people ill, and all of us trapped together in a house due to the storm that hit.

            I was supposed to meet with Garrick on Sunday, but felt too weary after digging out.

            Messy Kittie, the cat that came to stay in one of our cat houses outside, left on Sunday, and has yet to return, making me believe that he or she has moved on after a brief stay to recover here.

            Now, we have only Charlie outside, which should make my asshole next door neighbor happy, the jerk that called animal control on us because we continued to feed the cats while he was setting out poison – supposedly for the rats living under his porch.

            This portion of life isn’t pleasant. Partly because we are all running out of time, looking for the inspiration we lost somewhere in the last decade.

            We wanted to be artists, and still wait for that train to arrive, when we know now that the train arriving, won’t bring us to the artist life, but to our final reward.

            At this time of life, I should be getting faith, fearing for what might happen to me after I pass off this mortal coil. But I’m getting less faith instead, angry not over how unfairly life has treated me (I’ve been treated well by life), but by the mass of stupid people who hold back the potential of civilization.

            Freud was right on two points: First, humanity hasn’t changed much since we came out of the caves, only the technology has. Second, humanity aches to die, to relieve itself of the burden of living. We fear it, but what we want most is a return to the peace we knew prior to birth. We are always looking for stability, when life is naturally unstable, and the only stable peace is death. Christians dress this up by claiming we will get rewarded in an after life, allowing many to skip out of doing their Christian duties on earth.

            Being with God, essentially means, resting in peace. Death.

            I hope I am wrong. I hope that there is a spiritual world I am bound for. But I’m not counting on it.