When you have a cat, every day is filled with moments like this.
(I can tell she’s purring just from the way her stomach moves when breathing.)
(Compare this to a very similar clip I made of Dolly six years ago to see how far I’ve come with video.)
The first spot was a curve on her cheek near the corner of her lips. It would only appear when she was smiling a certain way.
I have this picture of her reclining on the chaise with her head thrown back on the pillow in laughter. It’s horribly composed, and I can hear her telling me how weird she thinks she looks in the picture, but it captured the expression perfectly.
The smile wasn’t particularly alluring. It was goofy even. But that’s what I loved about it. She was this angel, this siren, this muse to the world, and I was the only one who could see her like this; cheeks pulled back, giggling uncontrollably, burying her head in the pillow from self-consciousness whenever I pointed out the spot and tried to kiss it. I was the only one for whom she let her guard down, even if only for a passing moment. It was so adorable and intimate at the same time.
I used to be a crier. Any strong emotion, good or bad (though more often the latter), could bring on tears like a reflex. Now, I can’t remember the last time I cried, which means it’s been a while. More than a year, I suspect.
Getting misty-eyed doesn’t count; that’s too easy. A poignant scene in a movie, the right song at the right moment, even seeing someone demonstrate a Tai Chi movement with masterly detail and precision can cause my heart to swell, but the feeling only lasts as long as a few blinks after the blurred vision. When I refer to crying, I mean when the tears are enough to overflow and leak.
When I was young, the kids in school would laugh at boys who cried — much less socially acceptable in this culture — but I was never embarrassed about it. I thought it was natural, the way some people are gay or Caucasian. I thought I’d grow out of it, the way one grows out of a fear of the dark gradually and subconsciously, but I kept crying well into my 20s.
I’ve always wondered if my dad has ever cried, even as a child. I can’t picture him doing it, not even when my grandmother dies. He’s so carefree and logical that I can’t see anything affecting him emotionally. With my dad as my early model for a man, I’m sure this is part of the reason I don’t feel like an adult yet. Society teaches us that adults, or male one’s at least, aren’t supposed to cry.
I’m not sure why it’s been so long for me. Maybe the therapy, combined with my study of Taoism, has evened out my ups and downs, helping me acknowledge my weaknesses (so I’m not as hard on myself), as well as the uncontrollable nature of life. Maybe my life is stable enough now that I didn’t need that kind of release.
I turn 30 in 10 months, and I wonder when I’ll cry again.
This is awesome.
So the English word “serendipity”, which is difficult to translate into other languages, comes from a story named The Three Princes of Serendip. If you’re interested, you can read story in it’s entirety (it’s short) on Wikipedia.
The strangest part is when one of the princes deduces that a woman was nearby:
I guessed that the camel must have carried a woman, because I had noticed that near the tracks where the animal had knelt down the imprint of a foot was visible. Because some urine was near by, I wet my fingers and as a reaction to its odour I felt a sort of carnal concupiscence, which convinced me that the imprint was of a woman’s foot.
Which basically means that this guy noticed a puddle of pee, dipped his fingers in it, smelled his fingers, then got horny, plus or minus hard-on.
That is some medieval Sherlock Homes deduction shit going on there. What if he later found out it was really moose pee? Would he be able to admit to himself that he was sexually attracted to moose?
