Cozy Cabin Cat: Callie
“If you would just do it right.” I heard myself say as I lay in bed paralyzed. So I stayed there in the sheets and thought some more and heard a stern voice inside: “It’s time to learn a little more discipline. Remember your vows. Remember?” I wanted to get outside of this cold house and go somewhere, anywhere but to my writing desk.
“You should buy a timer, so you can honestly count how long you actually do anything.” came another voice. I scheme how I could put in four concentrated hours a day developing my craft. So I get up with a will and shower. I think out loud: “Screw all that advice.”. I get ready to go to Starbucks to write anyway. I walk to the door and begin to put on my shoes. Then I step into cat barf that has been conveniently deposited into my right shoe over night. Squish…Yanking my once clean sock off, I step back into my own internal schism.
“Ok, the cat left a sign that I should stay home and really work on my book project”, I think magically. So I traipse out to the cabin to my desk. There she is, my dear cat. She is ensconced in my chair with piles of drafts and poems and paints all around her. I think: “Even the cat can be disciplined enough to sit here where I’m supposed to be. What’s wrong with me?”
I look down at her curled in a ball. She flicks an ear at me and opens one eye. I reach past her to my sticky pad and add onto the to-do list: “Get timer.” I have prerequisites for this experiment of passionate living after all?
I look at the cat. She has that “Whatever” look of mocking that only felines and teenagers can have on their face. Then I see her paw is draped across the writing pen I’d left on the chair. “Must be another sign, right?”
But there’s something about how still she is that nudges another part of me. So I kneel down. I take a minute to just breathe. Then I sit on the floor another minute to center myself. Beside me the cat is now purring on my chair, with my pen, in my cabin which is dedicated to the discipline of my writing and my painting.
And it came clear as a bell what I would do. I gave in and listened to the voice that said “Just sit down and do it. Write”. I also listened to the magical child inside saying: “All the signs point to staying put. These events are all just inklings that something good will finally come out of your creative heart.”
I listened.
Then I turned around and left the cabin to go to Starbucks.
As I closed the cabin door I looked in to see the cat lolling on her back, keeping the cushion warm for my return. There was no judgment on her face or on mine.
There’s a committee of voices inside the mind of most people. Some thoughts seem so petty, some so lofty, most just mundane. This morning I heard from the critic, the magician, the sergeant at arms, the bum and the man that is nice and good. I think all of them have something healing or evolutionary as motivation in their advice, even if the advice is not helpful or wise.
There’s a moment that is a still point and quiet. That moment is alive and can be found in the midst of these voices. It’s an indefinable, ineffable, singular presence. I imagine that presence whispering “All paths lead to me. Be still.” I realized that the cat must know this on some level.
There is not one right set of details to define a daily life. I know that discipline without passion is a dead end for me. I also find that beginning anything from any place that is not stillness is often fruitless for my endeavors. I am solid as the mountain. I am free as the raven that flies around the mountain. And I can remember the cat dreaming on my chair. I have the privilege of choice even in the seemingly small things.
I walk back into the house. I put on new socks. I slip my souls into another pair of shoes. And then I will go to Starbucks, with my writing pen of course. Perhaps I’ll see you there in the coffee flavored air, with one eye open, purring inside your chest, breathing free for a moment as the world flies around you.
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Squall off the coast of Kauai, March 2009
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