Or You Could Love

Inspirational song: A Few Words for the Dead (Marillion)

I started building a giant set of shelves on the floor in my living room. So far all I have put together are the sides and top. It's lying on one side, creating a little playpen on a dropcloth, and so far I have caught three of the four cats sitting in it. I can't tell whether they think it's a stage or a cage. Do they want to be noticed, or do they want to be restrained? Maybe they think it's protection. What sort of instinct is it, to want to wrap walls around oneself, in order to feel better? At some point we all do it, don't we? We want some sort of separation between us and everyone else. But we still want to be seen and understood, or at least respected. The only cat who didn't play in the pen was Athena, my most emotionally damaged cat. She doesn't like strangers, she doesn't like being picked up even by friends and family. I still get bit by her on a regular basis, and I am her favorite human of all time. She is the only one, I think, who sees the shelf-fort for what it is: a trap.

At another point in my life, I would have the television news on round the clock on a week like this one, and I would be reading everything I can find on the internet during the commercial breaks. It's not that I'm numb to shocking reports of unimaginable violence against large groups of people per se, but it does feel like it is coming with such frequency that I can't stop the progression of my world for it every time a new repugnant act hits the news. I would never get anywhere. I would just retreat into a high-walled fort and cry in despair to realize that after all of these centuries, humans still find ways to be so incredibly barbaric, to prove that life has no meaning for them.

I refuse to hide. I refuse to let the sludge of humankind slow me down. I am going to continue down my own path, and I will not let those agents of terror drag me backwards to their archaic hateful world. Right now the world is recoiling in horror, as it should when faced with this filth of humanity, and those affected will and should grieve. When the time of mourning has passed, I hope the vast majority join me in doing the only thing that can kill this disease on our planet: Love. Give it. Receive it. Fill yourself with it. Don't let them win, ever.