La Musica del Silencio by Elena Dudina
(The Music of Silence)
The wise are wise only because they love. The fools are fools only because they think they can understand love.
Paulo Coelho
No wise man ever wished to be younger.
Jonathan Swift
Self-pity is our worst enemy and if we yield to it, we can never do anything wise in this world.
Helen Keller
I have no faith in human perfectability. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active - not more happy - nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.
Edgar Allan Poe
Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise in time.
Theodore Roosevelt
This poem is shorter than my usual nine to twelve lines. At the time I wrote the poem my cat had disappeared and I thought she had died. She had gone through a bad patch and was looking disoriented and pathetic to the lady who lives across the street. My cat was rescued by this lady who had no idea who she belonged to. She lived there right through most of the winter, but one early spring day the cat came back home. She lived once again with me until one day not that long ago I ran her over because she couldn't see that well and could not hear the car start up. She had gone behind the car and something distracted me right before I might have walked around the car to make sure. She had been doing this lying in the way sporadically as I was driving in and out for several weeks. She is not old any more but is instead under a modest shrine in my back yard right next to the house. She was 19 years, 3 months when she died of her insistence in choosing to lie right behind the car, the street side.
Now That's Old
You have a cat, thinks
she's a bird when not a dog.
I have a cat too,
so old and ragged
she quit thinking or hearing
unless she wants to.
August 3, 2009 10:24 AM
poor kitty... though maybe she knew it was time?
ReplyDeleteI like your quotes Christopher.
I think I needed them tonight.
And I wanted to also say to you how beautiful your blog looks with the artwork you use. You didn't use to post with pictures, did you? And now I am wondering when you started and how long it has been since I have been away.
My cat by the way thinks he is King. He is probably very proud of his catness, but he rules the dogs and the birds... so he is king of all he sees.
Of course right now he is lying here beside me and is just a cute lil' puddum (don't tell him I said that!)
Loving you.
~liz
Yes, Liz, you are right that she knew it was time, but that doesn't mean, I think, that she was happy at the last to be going. It was quick but not instant. I of course was crushed.
ReplyDeleteThe images date from the time I finally got high speed for home. It is easy to find pictures to post now that it takes no time.
I had a King cat. He was a beneficent ruler who beamed like the sun on all he surveyed. He was almost never cross and he tolerated the very young of every species. They all loved him. Finally in old age he got a bit cranky. He was a Red Birman, pure bred as best I could see, but came to us as a stray youth of two years. He lived through the demise of my marriage, the move to this house and many more years besides. He died at nearly twenty three and therefore lived with me for nearly twenty one years.
His name was Raggedy Blue after his amazing blue eyes and the tear in one ear, which he never wanted touched.
ReplyDeleteRaggedy Blue -- what an amazing name. Our "dog cat" has tears in his ears -- even a piercing of sorts -
ReplyDeleteI am so glad you have high speed now. What fun. Does that mean, now if I post a song, you will be able to listen to it? :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQX0yhb-kUc
I love that song.
Christpher. I am so sorry about your old old kitty who lay in the road unable to hear. I can imagine how crushed you were. Because I can't imagine going through something like that.
Peace,
Liz
p.s. my word ver. is "sochmita" Funny -- my cat's name is "socks" Maybe I will call him Sochmita :)
I had one cat in my life. He found us, as a stray, the way all of our aniamls have come to us. He met the same fate, under the wheel of a neighbors car.
ReplyDeleteLiz thanks for the vid. I am not happy at the expense but I am happy with the speed. I think the Raggedy Blue name was serendipitous. It fit so well and has always touched people like it touched you.
ReplyDeleteI am still not done with the burning hurt that I caused my cat's death like that. It's just not as frequent now. There is the memory of what happened immediately after I felt the thump. That memory is grim.
Annie, I think the best cats are the strays. At least they have been for me.
I think it's that way so often for all of us, thinking and hearing when we want to.
ReplyDeleteI love to think that your cat was across the street from you, perhaps watching from the front window from time to time, biding time 'til she was well enough to go home.
xo
erin
Erin, perhaps we are a bit more sophisticated in our selective sight and hearing, more subtle, perhaps we might hear the car start up as we have for most of twenty years. I think she could hear many things but they were all distant and easy to ignore. I notice that I now can fall asleep with the TV on, the brightness and the noise no longer mattering as it once did. I think I may understand a little where she was at. I know without question though that tones in the treble did not register with her. I suspect her supersonic hearing, was gone.
ReplyDeleteShe lived in the laundry room at the back of the neighbor's house, I am told. I suspect she came home when she was no longer welcome over there, doing her bad in house things over there as easily as she did over here.