Answer #162 - Here, Kitty Kitty!

Having been gone for a week's touring, the answering machine is flashing the number 22 at me.


22 messages.

I'm averse to listening.  A couple of steps will be required, should I choose to walk that path. Among them, writing down what I hear. The hard part comes, however, in the acting upon what I hear.  Someone will invariably want me to do something.

I don't want to do something.  I want to do nothing.  It's just not in my genetic make-up to do nothing.  Hence, if I avoid listening, I avoid the compulsion to act on the information.

Also, my cat, Jezebel, seems to be missing.   The cross-eyed, toothless cat that I drug with me from Florida to Indiana, and for whom everyday is a puzzling and fuzzy adventure.  I'd worry more about this had she not gone missing before.  Generally I find her in the basement in a pile of wrapping paper or air filters.  I'm hoping this will be that kind of day.  The kind with a happy ending.  Otherwise, I'll need to panic, and then start running the long movie-ola of her cat life, and look at old pictures with a bottle of cheap red wine and a box of tissues.

Pathetic? Yes.  

Probable? Possibly.  When all else fails, I tend to revert to drama.  Also somewhat compulsively.

Two poets have written me in 24 hours.  I think this is a strong indication that it might be a good time to think about writing.  I heard a couple of great writers over the weekend in Canada.  Sparks were flying between my ears briefly - and then, like fireflies, they were gone.  Might have been the cramped constraints of the backseat, traveling between Ontario and Indiana.  Might have been the lack of sleep after a week-long run.  Might have been the triple-shot latte I had in Detroit.

Regardless, there it is. 22.  Flashing.
A pile of thank you cards to write, 3 new books to read
(Dave Eggars The Wild Things is calling...),
the gentle but slightly abrasive susurration of cicadas riding neuron sparks in the vacuous gray that holds the walnut shape of my brain.. and a missing cat.

Ah, well then.  Here, Kitty Kitty!