The Mountain In The Living Room

What softness, that small patch of fur on the underside of a cat’s chin, framed by those two small bones forming a triangle, the mandible as it’s called, the two bones right and left joined at the front at the mandibular symphysis, and how good it feels to rub with the soft part of my thumb that fur of the chin, that incomparably soft fur and all while hearing the soughing of the wind. It feels good to immerse oneself in a book on a bed even when there’s the worry of mold in the air due to the recent leakage in the bedroom closet, the slow steady drip from a copper drainage pipe, the copper corroded and revealing to the seasoned eye of the plumber, a big man from Texas, a seam-like fissure. Everything removed from the closet, clothes and boxes upon boxes of books and cards and trinkets and tickets and crickets and snippets and limpets and letters from a time when people still wrote letters. All of it a mountain now in the living room. And I wonder why we have all these things I haven’t looked at any of it in years. Forgot it existed. Even the Kandinsky print that was rolled and wrapped in paper and plastic. Hadn’t looked at it since I bought it thirty years ago, can’t even remember where. I unwrapped it to check for mold stains. It took a while. There was so much tape in so many unexpected places and knots and bunches of plastic I was a little too aggressive and tore a tiny piece at the bottom. If we ever got it framed there’d be no place to put it. Outside the world is growing green again. It’s definitely spring but the temperatures are still cold and winterly. I could feel the bite of it when out running and the sun just coming up. Surprised to see a few crows begging for peanuts but I didn’t bring any since I wasn’t expecting to see crows that early. Strange to see them already with an appetite, though I’m not sure it’s appetite, I believe the peanuts are more like ice cream to them, or candy, not a critical part of their regimen just a sweetmeat to lighten the load of existence. Them, too. They grow weary of it I’m sure, the daily sagas of search and survival. Wonder if they wonder. Weigh the merits of all that poking around on the ground, the constant bickering, and making nests, and hatching eggs, and mating. Mating does not seem fun for crows. It looks more like fighting. But maybe that’s not mating. Maybe it’s actual fighting. Step one to learning how to communicate with extraterrestrials: learn what it is that goes on in the minds of animals. I know something is going on, I can see it in our cat’s eyes, that opalescent green when the pupils dilate and she lifts her head inviting me to rub my thumb on the underside of the chin, of which she never tires.