It's been a hundred years since T.S.Eliot wrote The Wasteland.
"I will show you fear in a handful of dust" is exactly what I feel when I look around our house. Dust!Oh the dust and the dog fur that blows across the floor like tumbleweed.
It may be partly to do with the wonderful food she eats - cheese, meal worms and more cheese. She likes to fly in when I'm having my breakfast and often sits on the door with Pocket (quarter Bengal) sitting on the table staring at her. Now Pocket is an arch killer and I've often wondered why he doesn't attack. When I mentioned this to someone they thought it was perhaps because Mrs Magpie doesn't act like she's prey. Actually sometimes she acts like a child. I went on holiday for a week and when I came back she refused to come down and say hello but turned her head away in disgust. She did this for most of the day until finally she flew down onto my shoulder and told me off for going away.
I think we should all be more magpie.
Collect shiny things. Hop happily down the street for no apparent reason. Whatever you eat eat it with joy. Scream loudly when you see your friends.
Nearly time for the hedgehogs to hibernate.
Pocket (above and quarter Bengal) relaxing after a little light shopping. The key to finding a happy balance in modern lives is simplicity he tells me. He then informed me he'd like to be known as Rinpoche Pocket.
Have you given up writing novels I ask.
He smiles. Bring your mind home. Release and relax.
I am hoping this will make him a kinder cat, not only to us but the wildlife he brings in and leaves on the mat. Recycling is good though as Mrs Magpie will take the odd dead mouse off my hands.
Rocket who knows all about relaxing has possibly left his mind elsewhere. Below though he is with his new group of friends at the Sighthound meetings once a month when all these lovely pointy noses race around the field. There he is drinking out of the water trough.
Scout sometimes goes with him but doesn't do much racing.
Because of T.S.Eliot I found this poem I wrote literally years ago - though not quite a hundred. I had read somewhere he had been in a small car crash and I imagined how awful it would have been if he couldn't remember anything.
P.S. T.S
Tom lay on his back and looked
at the crack in the ceiling.
His fingers were curled
by his side - his legs and toes
without feeling.
An unguent furnished the room
he wondered - was he in heaven?
Tuber rose, hyacinth and
the four seven eleven
of the starched nurse.
Turning to her he said
was there a cat?
His head filled with fog
grey door, grey floor, grey bed.
The nurse smiled
and stroked his brow
and in the room below
the women come and go
talking of Michael and Harry and Joe.
I remember a ......
men stood there now
in coats and grave faces
men from distant parts and places
do your toes move?
your legs bend?
yes - is my beginning
in my end?
He said to the nurse
am I being driven in a motorized hearse
or lying etherised?
The room moves
my thoughts won't be still
I remember ... a pill
was popped onto his tongue
and in his head
ten thousand angels sung
yet ... in the room below where the nurses come and go..
can you remember who you are?
what is your name?
were you driving the motor car?
where do you live
and who is Viv?
your name
you must remember your name?
And in the room below
and in the room below
he slowly closed his eyes
and whispered -
no.
