| what sweet dreams you must have, cat, while pavement
plays and i on the porch realize the breeze - cool
as a cat. malkmus scat puts in perspective the crazy
world arouns us, you know? its machine noise.
i get it. pavement makes you feel like you're one
of us, human, that means: to feel, to be, or to not.
funny, though, the jam is just another sound in this
giant room filled with raucous rhythms but it's quite
charming music obviously. you made your bed doing
the cat dance and across the sidewalked street
patterns of human interaction emerge in the welcome
of new scholars to the old house, while sleep soundly.
they made on with their sound, chit-chats about the
riff-raff on the street, urban rap radio battling malk-
scat, an instrument in and of itself. on our side
of the street or road, avenue more specifically,
there are two trees already blooming with life after
this cold winter and i contribute their growth to
the caretaking of this house. like you they try
to imagine how it is to have a mind, a heart, courage,
and a home. although their homes are already cast
deep in the ground through roots they still manage
to dream also. they dream oak, pine, flower, fly-
trap. any one of their brothers and sisters.
obviously pavement's musical shower onto the
bewildered trees inspired something within them.
they notice us, you, cat, and me, as well as all
the solitary people walking alone draped in decoration
and maybe that's why they want to show some leaves.
pavement has given them the eye of humanity and
they so admire us they emulate it.
that's not truth.
to be honest, i am not being a truthful person.
i do not know what you are doing, cat, or what
you are, or ... can you dream?
do you want to be here with me while i enjoy spring?
do the trees imagine themselves differently?
do they trees wish to be different trees:
does the maple want to be a cypress - older,
wiser, handsomer, with more history, more famous?
does a tree want to be human?
i haven't actually said any of this out loud, to you,
cat. i have written it and just the same - point made.
you're dreaming.
oftentimes, i wonder if the people who sit on the street
close to the house are attracted to pavement.
are they dreaming too?
their eyes are not closed but they seem to look at
the trees and imagine someone else they could be.
and, they notice how well the trees around here look
and so they sit and listen to malkmus sermons and
dylan gospel songs in hopes to be transformed
into something beautiful.
our relationship with trees, or nature for that matter,
is reciprocal. i guess nature would include you, too,
cat. how is that? i know you - lived with you for three
years - know you are unrestrained, wild, proud, loving
at times, naive about the world outside, but you're a cat.
are you an animal or a friend? can a friend be an animal?
are you nature? are you separate from me?
actual writing is easier if you write to someone
like a cat, or a tree, or real people who play
purple frisbee. smoking cigarettes helps writing-
especially if you're doing an interview. i
write to you, cat, because you like pavement and
you share a love for sleeping during the day.
the day is also night - since we all live on earth.
it's scientific knowledge that day and night
happen at the same time; rather, one side of the
earth is night, the other day. normalcy, like
when you go to bed, or the hour at which you
begin to dream, or what you dream, scientifically
doesn't exist. nothing's normal, really, like
a day, for instance. i live on the other side's
time - though it's bright out and i'm awake, i
take time now to dream. later when i sleep i'll
be awake to do things. extraordinary things.
awake is the new sleep, right ben lee?
last night i went to medieval times before the
plague and wandered through ancient streets.
people were very similar, remarkably, to the
people of present times. when they saw that i
was a foreigner they gave me funny looks. but
when they saw that i was lost, they were more
than sympathetic, gave me directions - the wrong
ones - but nonetheless; help.
i met a bard on the road and i was able to play
a fine ditty. i listen to pavement and it amazed
me to find that the same notes and chords of the
21st century still rang clear and true hundreds
of years earlier on a medieval guitar. i pet a dog,
someone's pet i'm sure. a scruffy fellow with
the most straight teeth i've ever seen. he chases
a cat and i think to myself do dogs have the capacity
of mind and soul to recognize that eating that cat
might risk the unintentional eating of an ancestor,
of a former friend, a one-time lover? would he be
able to appreciate that? i wandered the outskirts
of the village and my expecting eyes found homes
which made up villages which made up cities which
made up nations working the same way as today;
trash and riff-raff littered the pristine ground;
broken wagon wheels, old jewelry and trinkets, used
brushes and utensils: humans are funny - we don't
really ever change do we?
this dream seems long.
it only lasted the amount of time i slept however
in retelling it i am having trouble finding
the precise words with which i can capture
the truth of the dream.
why, cat, does it prove so difficult to tell you
about my dream?
nothing in my dream so far was really that extraordinary,
but that the amazing thing has already been discussed.
the great thing was that i was actually awake. i wasn't
in medieval times physically; i went there in my mind.
i simply utilized my senses and what i had: a plane
booming across the sky became the rumbling of a horse
drawn carriage: the shouts of nearby dudes drinking was
the frenetic, hectic merchant procession pushing prices:
construction worker's clanking metal tools were blacksmiths
conjuring weapons of judgment. opening the eyes and actually
seeing the world in the actual time-space i was in jolted
me back to reality, or rather, to the piece of paper which
had become the impetus for our conversation. it is here
where 'it' is at. many times words simply don't mean
anything. they still, however, penetrate people deeply-
to the core of who they are - as if they stood on a mountain,
Ktaadn maybe, feeling the cold air rush, shift, while
they stand in the boundary lacking stratosphere at nature's
bay, or rather, command. in personal experience, in the
analysis and interpretation of it, i think i really must
find the right words to get out any truth. but, like i said,
those words don't necessarily have to make real, meaningful
sense to me. they can be nonsensical but musical, the perfect
words whose power lies in the way they are not prejudice or
bias, merely intuitional, instinctual, the exhilarating
naivete of birth through speech.
i find it easy to leave out characters.
i've made that immoral mistake now.
cat.
you're the real reason i began to write.
i feel horrible for leaving you out again.
it's like that though. in the writing of my own life
i make that crucial mistake. to forget those who
have affected me. it is a ubiquitous ritual among
every human, happened again here, in this casual review
of my life at this random moment of conversation with
you, cat. but, how often did i, in more important
writings of my life, forget who i was writing for,
what i passionately wanted to write about, where
the writing had traveled from, when the events of
the past allowed for the now, and how to remember that
above all else is love?
it is a regrettable thing, to forget a friend, a person
who has changed one's life.
the curly haired, overweight redhead at the grocery store
last week who had just found out she had cancer that day.
the child who sat in the stench of decay, his parents
dead but still bleeding heavily on the bathroom floor. the childhood companion cat whose insides scattered across the pavement as if splattered paint, red.
the entire world of humans and their plights constantly
forgotten.
i am sorry now, too, to forget you, cat, as well as my
immigrant parents who forced their way through forces
which held them at bay - the lives of all those who in
naive, desperate moments of teenage maturation suddenly
become missed. in those sad and somber inebriated
ceremonies, during those pivotal years, we realize that
the people in the present could go away.
then, many years later, we break the promise to ourselves:
"do not forget them."
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