introducing juno (Patreon)

I have something to tell you!…this summer another soul latched to my ownthis is sweet juno. she’s only newfor the uninitiated, bug is my first girl (that grey stone-faced epiphany on the right). bug and I have looked after each other for seven years. her general demeanor does not scream ‘get me a friend’, but neither does mine, you know? we had the space…bug sometimes felt bored…and when I travel for long stretches I have intrusive thoughts about her alone in the night, caterwauling into the unresponsive darkness of the flatso came juno at the end of july. first couple weeks were tough. juno was alive and bug was pissed about it. juno, a baby, was confused and disturbed. I felt both protective of juno and guilty for upsetting my and bug’s carefully constructed peace. no one was happy…yet. my mind became a matrix of cat politics. I became a cat. we scent-swapped. we site-swapped. all meals and treats were delivered nearer and nearer to the event horizon of the closed door which separated them. I thought, this would be a good way to get anyone to like anyone. eventually we graduated to playing in the same room. they still didn’t like getting close to one another so I did this anxiously, a frantic wand in each hand, arms like a scarecrow. go on, do it, laugh at me!mutual play came at the scratching post with a ball track, a peacetime beacon. I nicknamed it the geneva convention. relations improved. sometimes there were moments of revelation where I could see clearly their private communication, the little whirr of their consciousnesses looking to chord, something profound on display. sometimes bug slapped juno in the face a bunch of times. so it goes. they were pretty much buds by september. no cuddling or grooming but they love to play...their favorite games are wrestlemania, spiderball and RUN!!!!. at night they meet up and speak a language not meant for me. some days we all nap together in a soft pool made of breathanyway. welcome to november. I hope you’re sparkling like a dish in a cartoon. the theatre of politics plays on and distracts us and our friends from the real blue eternal thing. ‘why are you so busy with this or that or good or bad, pay attention to how things blend.’ ‘surrender’ is a word that’s been coming up for me. have some short poems I've been thinking of…this is by tess gallagher:What Cathál SaidYou can sing sweetand get the song sungbut to get to the third dimension you have to sing itrough, hurt the tune a little. Put enough strength to itthat the notes slip. Thensomething else happens. The song gets large.the first time I read ‘the song gets large’ I remember thinking yes, yes, exactly, I felt it in my stomach. ‘the third dimension’ – I like that too. another, this is by franz wright:The WorldMood-altering cloud of late autumnGrey deserted streetPlace settings for one–dear visible things . . .The insane are right, but they’re still the insane.While there is time let me a little belong.every word of this hits me in a different and crucial place thereby cocooning me in lightwhile I typed this poem google docs spat out two squiggly blue lines, prompting me to change ‘still the insane’ to ‘still insane’ and ‘a little belong’ to ‘belong a little’, which would ruin everything.a walt whitman ditty, you might know it:A Noiseless Patient SpiderA noiseless patient spider,I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.And you O my soul where you stand,Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.this was my favorite poem in high school. we studied it in the fall and so I think about it every fall. it made sense to me immediately. I continue to launch my filament. my soul, my soul, my soulspeak soonsav x