The Woman In My Life

I have this cat, Tiva. She rightly belongs to the City of Detroit and its denizens but she grudgingly came out to Idaho with me. The Mookfish obtained her and named her and raised her, and when he went off to the high seas I became her new full-time human. I never had cats growing up; I thought they were silly and maybe even effeminate. I thought I was suited to having a big, muscly dog to wrestle with and pack up in the car for camping trips. And then I was virtually alone in a new place and so was Tiva. And as lame as it sounds, she's the only real possession I have that it would sadden me to lose. She chatters with me, and yells at me, and gives me a hard-time. She likes to sit in boxes and chew on plastic and chase laser-beams and eat tuna. She likes to fight and lay stretched out in the sun. She likes to pretend she doesn't want my affection, and brushes up against me even as I sit here typing. She likes to rub her glands on the corners of things and purr. When I'm having an anxiety-attack, or a temper tantrum, or a rough go of things she hangs out near me and nudges my hand with her head. When I try to read she stands on the book and arches her back. Anyway . . .today I thought I lost her. She went out the door and vanished in our new neighborhood, full of other cats and dogs and supposedly even foxes and maybe coyotes in that big rubble and weed field a few hundred yards away. I put a Hamm's in the cupholder of my brother's car and idled down the street catching eyes from the white trash and African refugees and displaced Muslims of my neighborhood. I interrogated a tiny feral kitty as to her whereabouts. I climbed fences and slinked around trespassing in backyards. And then, after I'd given up, she sauntered up to the door and meowed through the glass. We always appreciate things most when there is the risk that we've lost them.

In preparation for grad school, I've begun to make the rounds and formally request letters of recommendation. It's SOP for academics I suppose, and all three of these professors probably crank out at least a dozen of them each semester. But I still view it as an incredible favor, one I hope I get to pay forward to some gracious genius ten years from now. Last week, I met with my History of Literary Criticism professor to talk about this. She was enthusiastic about writing my letter. And, because I'm risking the creative route, she asked if she could see some of my work. I e-mailed her a story. Somehow, this is the most self-conscious I have ever been about having someone read. And I'm also very interested to see what she thinks. More than that, though, she has taken it upon herself to contact several people at her alma mater. This is a school I would very much like to go to, and one I'm increasingly thinking I have a good chance to get into. Also, I introduced her to Literary Darwinism and we talked until well after her office hours were open and I suggested things she might want to read. I don't know how often that sort of thing happens.

My brother has been laid off from his shit/great job fabricating computer memory. One of the largest employers in ID is making deep cutbacks. The effects of this will ripple through Boise and touch the real estate industry, the service industry, the tax base . . .probably even me somehow. But it's just a sign of things. American life in a few years time will not look like it does now. There is a great reckoning and balance to come. The more I think about this and consider the factors, the more I realize the primacy of some dirt and rock philosophy that we never should have ignored. "The Truth will always present itself". We've been living on credit, on inflated value, on the sweat of others, in a dreamworld in which everyone deserves to own a house and bear children and fill their gas tank and have surgery. That time is nearing an end. 300 million untenable lives, and the imbalances waiting for us there in the future like some Judge Holden to make things as they should be. I am gainfully employed and insured and guaranteed to make X amount of dollars every two weeks for at least the next year. But I've chosen since graduation day to live below my means. To stow what's left of my income after intoxicants and book purchases and tuition and meager groceries and took pleasure in watching my savings account swell. And in that time I never allowed myself the taste of being well-off. I eat off a George Foreman and out of cans. I drink cheap swill most of the time. I steal music and movies. I pedal nearly everywhere I go. I buy everything second-hand. We call what is going on now a "Housing Crisis" or a "Credit Crisis" or an "Energy Crisis", but what it amounts to is that most of us have been living a lie for a decade plus. The Truth is about to present itself.