Cat Prints: An October Tale

Chelsea had an interest in astrology and other subjects that dealt with the workings of the inner churnings of her mind and spirit. One memory in particular stood out in her mind: A Tarot reading she had while on vacation on the island of Oahu in Hawaii. She had been walking with a heavy weight upon her being about certain decisions that were out of her hands. She saw a woman sitting at a small table in an outdoor market and decided to get her cards read. The woman saw favorable conditions with regard to her situation and when the time came, the reading proved true. That moment had piqued Chelsea’s curiosity and down the road, over the years, she would learn more about the cards and find other ritualistic ways to work with them.

That evening before Chelsea went to bed, she thought about her day. She thought about how unhappy she was in her job, yet she didn’t know what else to do. She worked in an office and she liked office work, but this particular office was not in an area of knowledge that she wished to grow in. How could she bring more meaning into her life? How could she make the pieces fit together? She slowly drifted off to sleep and she began to dream.

She saw a dark figure. It was a man in a raggedy black raincoat. He wore a purple top hat, pointy black shoes, and carried a red umbrella. He came towards her using his red umbrella like a cane with his head held high. Chelsea asked, “Do I know you?”  He had been whistling a strange tune that she couldn’t make out. He stopped whistling when she asked the question. “My name is Milton and you must be…Chelsea.”

“Why am I here?”

“Somehow your path has crossed with someone else’s and it is the soul of that person that has brought you here. It is not important who that soul is. However, it is very important that you heed what I am about to tell you.”

“Is this your dream or is it my dream?”

“It is your dream, Chelsea, but it seems this soul has been trying to use your dreams because you both have something in common.”

“And what is that?”

Those were the last words she spoke that night.

The morning sunshine pushed itself through the window as the breeze caressed Chelsea’s cheek. She stretched, reached for her slippers and went down to make coffee. She sat at the small kitchen table waiting for the coffee to brew. She sat and rested her chin on her palms, in a daze, sensing that she had a strange dream but unable to remember. She stood up. The aroma of coffee filled the kitchen causing Chelsea to perk up. She poured a cup and got ready for her workday. But first, she would write.

At work, she settled into her desk; then noticing the calendar, as if for the first time, she began to daydream slightly. “Chelsea, Chelsea?, hey Chelsea!” She didn’t know how long she was sitting there before she heard her boss calling for her. It seems she was there an eternity, but only moments had gone by and she had entered into a waking dream state. She went into her boss’s office, received his instructions, and went back to her desk. Though her job wasn’t difficult, she often felt like a tired old car puttering along going through the same passionless motions each day.

That evening when Chelsea settled into bed, she began reading a book. She couldn’t focus, so she put the book away. She decided to pull a single tarot card from her deck. It had been a while since she had pulled a card. This was a ritual that she had done in the mornings for a time. She flipped the bed covers off, went to her bookshelf and picked up the tarot cards and a book that she liked to consult. With the cards and book in hand, she entered the kitchen, sat at the table and began to shuffle the cards. She closed her eyes, concentrated on the day and also concentrated on any sort of general guidance on her life that might accompany her in her dreams. She opened her eyes and fanned the cards out on the table. She closed her eyes again, passed her hands above the cards, going back and forth, until she had a feeling and chose a card.

There looking back at her: The Emperor. A powerful card, representing the “universal principle of power and leadership.” She held the card in her hand and gazed at the reds and yellows that were like a sunset ablaze; the Emperor exuded strength. It was a card she did not feel worthy of, yet she knew it had something to offer.

She read the full description from her tarot book and wrote in her journal. She flipped the pages of her journal and saw all the unfinished ideas: beginnings of essays, stories, and poems. What she didn’t see there was the children’s book in her mind’s eye. She had gone over the small bits, playing them over and over in her head, trying to visualize the words and how an illustrator would bring the images to life. Something was holding her back. She closed her journal and dragged herself off to bed.

Tap. Tap. Tap. It was the sound of the man’s cane. She approached him just as he was sitting down at a round table to have a cup of coffee.

“Well there you are,” he said. “Please do sit down.”

“I feel a little out of sorts.”

“Do you remember?”

“Remember what?”

“How you got here.”

She rubbed her eyes. “I know that I’m dreaming…I don’t want to wake up just yet. I know I can’t control it. I couldn’t remember when I woke up, but now—

“Try to concentrate. I want to know how you happened upon this same space.”

“Alright. I’ll try. Give me a moment…I see something…yes,  I’m at work. I’m standing in front of my calendar at work, gazing into the month of October. The image was of a white horse flying across the October sky with a champagne moon in the distance. I heard the phone ring; at the same time my boss was calling me. As I started to turn, I felt something touch my hand and a cool chill ran down my body. The last thing I heard was the pounding of a stapler from the far office. I looked up at the calendar and then I felt a pull and I fell through the page.

It wasn’t like swirling through a dark tunnel; it was more like sparkling leaves shimmering on a windy day, and the sun shining like a large crystal and then all went dark. I saw a familiar neighborhood. I looked around the rain-covered pavement of uneven cobbled shapes. I heard a voice, not your voice, a different voice. And then I saw you.”

“Ah, yes, the voice. That my dear, Chelsea, is the voice of a soul who has become entwined with your own, and that’s what I was beginning to tell you before you left. But this is your last visit to this particular dream world. I saw that you brought your tarot cards out before you went to sleep.”

“Bu—how did you know that!”

“Chelsea, we haven’t much time. I can only share with you the information that is relevant for your trip back. Now tell me what the voice says.”

He says, ‘In life, October has always been his favorite month. He feels like he’s locked in one of Dante's circles, in the sense that he would repeat and repeat some motion, some journey, each and every night in search of his soul.’ She stops.

“Go on,” he urges.

“And then he answers my thoughts and says, ‘ how is it that I am able to communicate this to you, you wonder? Well, I can't explain it completely myself, except to say that in your sleep, I enter your dream space at night. I know you’re a writer you see, and there is one other connection. As a little girl, you were surrounded by cats—lots and lots of cats. You understood them, and they understood you. The car you drive is your late grandfather’s car. It was left to you. That's the other connection. Every night I try to unlock my soul through you. You have become entwined with my life...life. You have become entwined with my connection to the world of the living. You hold my soul locked inside of you, as you also hold your own soul—locked away. The only way that I can be free is by your writing about me. And you must remember: My connection to you is a bit of a fluke, you see. It’s a connection where my soul became lost and locked onto your connection to your grandparent’s. It is a purely emotional connection.’

She has been speaking quickly and energetically, which is unlike her character.

Chelsea lets out a deep sigh and hunches over, looking into the man’s large eyes.

 

“His path has crossed yours for another common reason. He was a failed writer in life. Only it was not his writing—it was his own thoughts. It’s a sort of spell, a spell of self-infliction. It is the spell of self-doubt. He senses that in your own soul and before you leave this dream world, you must remember…and when you begin your day, you must take heed of the clue that “wakes” you up. In a way, you have become one with this other soul. If you strive for your potential, his soul, and yours for that matter, will be at peace.”

 

“I will try my best. I don’t want to leave here. And you say I won’t be back to this particular dream space?”

 

“That is correct. We may meet again in another dream, but you won’t recognize me as such. You will have a feeling, a feeling that you know me, but chances are, you will have forgotten. We can only remember what we need to at any given moment. It’s a cycle that continues and continues until we’ve moved through our life’s lessons.”

 

“Yes, I know that feeling all too well. Ah, another commonality. Sometimes the facts are bumping right up against our noses and still we don’t always see.”

“Farewell, my dear, Chelsea.” The man tipped his hat, got up from the chair and began walking down the dark cobbled streets into the darkness, whistling a strange tune.

When Chelsea woke that morning, she felt exhausted. She went through her morning routine. As she approached her car, she noticed little markings around the edges of the rooftop. It appeared as though someone took a flower stamp and stamped pollen flowers all over the car’s edge. She thought nothing of it, opened the door of the car, and plopped down on the seat. She looked ahead as she started the engine and she saw the same prints on her window.

Now she could clearly see they were cat prints. “So that’s what those markings are,” she said out loud. As she waited for the car to warm up, she felt a smile form on her face. She remembered how every morning she would run up to her grandmother’s house, two doors away, and the first place she would go after kissing her grandmother was the backyard to sit with all the kittens and cats. She was a child of nature. She sat in her pink nightgown and robe and placed as many kittens on her lap as she could. She would pet them and cuddle with them and speak to them and tell them all about the morning of adventure she had planned. Her grandparent’s home was her paradise.

Chelsea snapped out of her reverie. She started to have a vague remnant of a dream she had the previous night. It was fuzzy. She kept hearing a voice. Right now though, in this moment, the voice that she heard was of her grandmother telling her to study hard. Her grandmother had always believed in her. Though, Chelsea hadn’t finished college, she felt that she had gained something special in the many college courses that she took and from the people she had met along the way. She didn’t have a plan or focus. She always liked too many things to choose just one. The constants in her life were writing, learning, and reading. She sensed a strong presence from her dream but could not remember the dream itself. She had always struggled with self-doubt and she thought about this at this very moment and thinking of her journal pages. The veil of self-doubt must be moved. She felt a surge of energy. She released the brake and pulled out onto the road toward work thinking of the children’s book she would begin writing when she got home.

Short Story: Work Quirk

Walking back from their meeting, Jan clutches her file folder and notebook to her chest to keep all the warmth inside her down jacket. A cold lingers in her system. She starts coughing a horrible cough and her boss, Nevil, says, “are ya gonna live, Jan?”

“I think so,” she replies.

She’s gotten used to—or rather, she’s tried very hard to ignore some of the oddities of Nevil’s personality. Not oddities exactly, more like the splits in his personality.

Charley, the other office worker, kept quiet on the walk back. It was the three of them in this little office of number crunching.

They still had business to discuss, so they proceeded into Charley’s office to conclude the meeting. They got down to the “RIP List” to keep track of who had passed away, so they could keep watch on when they would need to follow up about paperwork and such. Nevil saw that the list was blank.

“So, no one’s died this year?”

“I guess not. But the year’s not over,” Jan replied matter of factly.

“No, I guess it’s not. Heck, it could be you, Jan. You don’t have to be old to die.” He had a smirk on his face that she would have gladly torn off.

Jan looked up, not surprised at Nevil’s comment. “Yes, that’s true. It could be me. I might not show up tomorrow,” she added with a slight annoyance in her voice.

"Jeez," said Charley, at the time giving some sort of a chuckle grunt to imply that this talk was a bit off track.

“I’m used to it." Jan looked at Charley, then back down at her list.

Nevil seemed taken aback and said, “now, Jan—”

“Ever since I started working here, you’ve made comments about my death. When I used to ride my bike to work, you’d say, ‘don’t get run over’ or ‘watch out crossing the street, you might get hit by a car, and I need you to come in’”

“Well you’ve worried about my death too. She used to worry a lot. She’s worried she won’t get paid.”

“I used to worry about what we would do if it did happen—how would we handle dealing with the clients—your clients—if you’re not here. We can’t work for free, even in a difficult situation like this.”

“Remind me to work on it.”

He had been reminding her and she had followed up, but he only made jokes. He wasn’t taking it seriously. She had a friend that went through the experience and she just wanted to know if there were plans in place so that things could run smooth during a possible transition.

“Ok, anything else?”

There was nothing else. The meeting was over.

But Jan couldn't stop thinking.

Was this God’s way of saying, “Hey, Jan, you’ve been fighting with yourself for many years: Should I stay; should I leave. You’ve been stuffing things that bother you, talking them out, shouting them out. You’ve never been one to lick someone’s boots. You’ve been loyal. You’ve tried to do a good job. And on the other side: He’s been flexible. He’s been generous in his own way. But—always a but—you sense something that you’re not sure you can keep turning your back on and that’s a sense of true appreciation and respect that’s lacking on his part. And you’ve argued with yourself—and every now and then he offers small praises, shows a little respect.

It’s more than that though. It’s as though he feeds off of the weaknesses that he perceives in you. He knows you’re a worrier. What does he do? He tries to make you worry and he admits it in a roundabout way. “Oh, no, I forgot to call in payroll,” he’ll say. And he did forget once. And you will worry because it doesn’t just affect you, but another employee.

He doesn’t seem to want to find anymore potential in you and seems to want to keep you down. That’s what you tell yourself because you’ve worked for other people where they clearly keep challenging you and helping you grow and it’s reached the point where it’s quite the opposite here. But, you have some of the things that you appreciate: Flexibility like you’ve never had; his sense of humor, which you like when he’s not using it against you; good pay. But, there are lots of buts—you feel like something big is missing and each year you tell yourself, one more year, and now eight years later, the years seem to have gone by fast. The challenge is you leaving—if and when—until you find something promising. You’re not jumping ship just for anything because it’s not all that bad. You wish there were more work. If things go according to the norm, he’ll retire in another five years. You can wait until then, can’t you? And most importantly, you keep telling yourself and thanking God: At least I have a job. I appreciate having work. I’m thankful for the days the boss is in a pleasant mood and says good morning to me and doesn’t use that ugly tone with me.

In any relationship, even if the good outweighs the bad, eventually the bad overshadows the good, especially when it keeps circling back and old wounds get opened.

You tell yourself, there must be a reason, there must be some divine plan that has you—a naturally sensitive person, that at times is moved to tears by the slightest beauty or hurt—there must be a reason for your personality and his personality to have sustained each other this long. In a way, you’re good for each other. You can read him, and on the surface, he can read you. You offer water and fire, where he offers earth and air. Or are you becoming more like ice?

Charley says sometimes you two talk to each other like an old married couple. You can usually stay a couple of moves ahead of Nevil. When he’s lost something, you know where to find it. He has a great sense of humor and a kind heart. He just doesn’t wear his heart on the outside of his sleeve. He’s fantastic with his clients and he’s admitted to you that sometimes when he speaks to you in that ugly tone, it’s not you he’s directing it toward, but you’re there—you’re the backdrop, you’re getting his frustration. Might be client related, might have just been a bad morning.

You tell yourself it’s really not that bad. You know there are assistants out there who are treated really poorly and some who probably don’t stick up for themselves. You don’t want a high stress job.

You ask yourself and wonder what’s on the other side. In a way, working for a small company is like a marriage—well not exactly, but it’s a relationship and there are times when you aren’t sure if it’s working any longer.

And don’t kid yourself. You know you’re not indispensable. You don’t want to be either.

If, and when you leave, you know that you want to leave on good terms. You want to leave on a high note, not when you’ve taken something too personally and internalized it for days.

But until then, keep working on those lessons, keep wondering, try to fight stagnation. Try to do what’s best for you. If an opportunity approaches, seize it. You know he’ll be all right.

Bits of Books and Life

The sky and this cloud formation washed over me. I almost didn’t take the photo. I went to unzip my bag to get my iPod Touch out to snap a photo, then I stopped. I continued admiring the sunset and the electric clouds framed by the pines and the sky. And then, there I was, I couldn’t resist and I took several photos and this one is “the one.” When I looked at it on the screen I thought of the art of William Blake, the intensity and light that is found in his pieces.

I see a woman and she is dancing and she is rising up through his trunk—through and around this Cloud King. She is in rapture as she spreads into his being, exchanging light for light. This moment she will keep and she will revisit in her dreams and she will dream and dream and dream.

**

A short story collection that I picked up a few weeks back while searching the science fiction/fantasy shelves of Barnes & Noble is Stories: All-New Tales Edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio. I haven’t read a whole lot of science fiction or fantasy and I thought this would be a mellow collection. I’m trying to read the stories in order but I did skip to the shortest story to see what that was like. I didn’t care much for it. It didn’t seem like there was enough there at three pages. I’m going to read it again. Not too soon though. I did skip over one story because I wasn’t in the mood for characters to be going back and forth saying, “shit” and “fuck” in the dialogue. Maybe I’m exaggerating. Just wasn’t in the mood for profanity in short story that day. I’m fine with some cursing. I’ll come back to that one much later, though, when I’m in that kind of a mood.

I have about a handful or maybe two handfuls of various short story anthologies. One is from an English class and the other is from a creative writing course. It’s interesting how many stories don’t get read and discussed in a class. The instructors have to pick and choose and though I did read other stories beyond the instructor’s choices, I hardly read them all. One of my favorites is Junichiro Tanizaki’s “The Tattooer.” That made me go out and buy his other books. I read The Key and a few others sit on my shelves to be read another time. The psychological depth pulled me in and kept me there. One other short story that comes to mind that made me laugh is Woody Allen’s short story The Kugelmass Episode. I’m a fan of his movies and humor and I enjoyed this one very much.

I’ve had a mixed relationship with short stories. Even though they are short, if it doesn’t grab me, I get impatient—more impatient than with a novel. With a novel, I’ll keep going until page 60 or 100 before I give up. But with a short story, as short as they are, I want something to happen fast; I want to like the characters and I want to love the words and I want to feel satisfied when I reach the end. It seems that, as in a game of chess, the ending is often the most challenging part. Opening, playing the middle game, these tasks offer their own challenges but to be able to bring your reader satisfaction and to not feel that you’ve reached a stalemate in an otherwise good game—story—but to create an ending that makes you feel that it was worth reading—that is art. This is something for me to think about if I decide to write short stories of my own. Something needs to happen and we need to come of changed in some way or relived or...

Of the short story collections I have, I’ve dipped in and out of them over the year’s barley making a dent. There are some stories I loved and many that I didn’t connect with. It’s not realistic, but a part of me would like to connect with all the short stories I read. That’s not how it works, though. I know better than that. 

Reading is such a personal experience and no two readers are alike, but I still wonder about this one. It’s also interesting to note all the different ways to tell a story, even though there are certain rules, I never know what it is about a story that will take me in and hold me there. This changes too. I’m looking forward to my upcoming class. We have a large anthology of short stories we will be reading and I think we are expected to read it all. This is good because at times I need motivation for certain things. That must be why I put myself in situations where I will be maintain motivation. Part of writing about these books and short stories brings me back and it always pushes me forward. So I think the anticipation for the class and other events is causing me to think of and pull out these anthologies and collections that I have.

I realize that my reading habits are scattered and I will read five pages from this book, then however many pages from that book, and another and…Do the stories start blending together? Does the fiction and non-fiction become entwined? It does allow me to see what’s calling to me strongest. There’s a book that I want to get back to and it’s going to be due back to the library soon, but something is stopping me. My main book right now is Rebecca (there’s a story and a blog behind this one when I’m done with it), and I’m reading a short novel by Alexis M. Smith called Glaciers. I haven’t gotten back to Aging with Grace, but I keep adding it to the daily rotation shuffle. I just picked up Fire Season: Field Notes from a Wilderness Lookout by Philip Connors. I saw this one when I went into a small bookstore over the weekend. It saw it there on one of the tables. Current nature writing and reflection combined into one. I had to have it. And then a few weeks back I started reading Muriel Spark’s Reality and Dreams. I’m half way through and as I look at the book and see where I am, I wonder, do I need to start this one over or has enough of the plot stuck with me. The first sentence of the first chapter got me: “He often wondered if we were all characters in one of God’s dreams.” I can repeat this to myself over and over and I feel that any one of us could take that sentence and weave our own tale. I was enjoying this short novel and then I stopped because other books pushed their way through and lately I’ve had a harder time finding longer pockets of time to devote to reading. And I want to read Another Country: Navigating the Emotional Terrain of Our Elders by Mary Pipher, Ph.d.  I came to this one reading another book. I keep finding I have to re-check out The Reading Promise: My Father and the Books We Shared by Alice Ozma. Each time I recheck it out, I get further. Progress. And I may never get back to So Many Books, So Little Time: A Year of Passionate Reading because I’m trying to get through my own reading. And I started Animal Farm. Attention span is all over the place. The book I mentioned earlier that I seem to not be coming back to but want to is called The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker. I must say this one is interesting, different, and witty. And do any of you have a bathroom book? I know that may seem odd, too personal—I don’t know. I have certain books that I take to keep me company and the one that has been that book on and off for years is Inevitable Grace: Breakthroughs in the Lives of Great Men and Women: Guides to Your Self-Realization by Piero Ferrucci. This is a special book and even if I only read a paragraph or a few pages, I come out feeling or learning something and nodding my head yes or thinking and reflecting further. Once I spent a longer period of time in the bathroom than was necessary and my significant other asked, “What were you doing in there all that time?” And I said to him, “I was reading.”

I had to take myself to the library yesterday to study and do homework for my accounting class. It was difficult to not look at books. I quickly looked in the new section and found a newer Thich Nhat Hanh book and a new astrology book that discusses signs born on the cusp of another sign. I took those books and set them aside and got down to accounting. Then after about an hour of work, I cracked the books. I decided to leave the astrology book behind. I got what I needed from it. Back to accounting. When it was time to go I took one last look—a sort of reward for sticking to my work—at the fiction on the new shelf. I did find one book that caught my attention. It’s a debut novel called South of Superior by Ellen Airgood. Under her photo, her bio says: “Ellen Airgood runs a diner in Grand Marais, Michigan. This is her first novel.” Well all be darn. Simple. It was nice to not see all the publications and educational accolades for a change. I read the short prologue and like the writing. I think this is going to be a good story. I’m will have to make the time and be assertive with myself and weave it into the reading mix. There are probably books that I forgot about or got buried in piles, but these are the ones that I would really like to finish in the next few months and if I don’t at least I can remember then and come back to them later.

I almost forgot. A few days ago I did finish Don DeLillo’s short novel, The Body Artist. The receipt is still in the book so I know that the first time I tried to read this book was in January of 2002. I bought this one at Orinda Books and thank goodness that small bookstore is still around. I had trouble with this one the first time I began reading it. I put it away, tried from the beginning again years later and then because when I went to see Jonathan Franzen speak and he mentioned DeLillo, it brought me back to this book, which I kept. The opening is beautiful and calls me right in:

“Time seems to pass. The world happens, unrolling into moments, and you stop to glance at a spider pressed to its web. There is a quickness of light and a sense of things outlined precisely and streaks of running luster on the bay. You know more surely who you are on a strong bright day after a storm when the smallest falling leaf is stabbed with self-awareness. The wind makes a sound in the pines and the world comes into being, irreversibly, and the spider rides the wind-swayed web” (page 9).

I’m ready to read this book again. If you haven’t read it, I would say make sure you’re in the mood to suspend whatever you think will follow that captivating opening. The dialogue can feel like walking through thick mud at times, but if you keep going—slowly and taking it in with all your senses, you may just want to start over again too.

Listening to conversations, going to watch authors speak, taking classes, reading blogs—interacting with life in some way—listening, observing—all of these experiences lead to more books, to more worlds—to new found connections.

Pulled into the web of life, if I see the silk lowered to me, I take it gladly—I hang on and enjoy the ride.