misc: amanda looks at cat drawings.

Misc items are random writings of mine that don’t fall into formalized essays or coherent thoughts.

Lettuce Cat

This world is so cruel and mercurial amidst the fact that there is no guarantee of hope, joy, or anything that makes it bearable. Even the basic conditions that we require to survive are held out of reach for some through inequitable access.

But even then, even in such an inhospitable world with creatures as sensitive and rabid as us, there are glimmers in the dirt of humanity of what we truly love and what truly matters — what holds its’ grip on us and gives us the strength we need to endure a world that we live on as a byproduct of.

Those glimmers are lettuce cat.

A suspicious cat sleeps in a bed of lettuce. Maybe it does not approve of the labor practices employed by the lettuce farm. Nevertheless, sleep well cat.

Milk Boy

God is dead — we have created him and killed him. And in his place, in his absence, and in the flesh of the ever present wound of humanity and our existence and evolution through religion and greater purpose — lay someone who drew a very small milk mustache on a cat. And that is what makes the wound worth healing.

A black cat reminsicent of the night sky looks up from a bowl of milk with a mustache. Nothing will ever be free from the stain of morality and the ability of humans to comprehend it and choose poorly anyways, but this mustache cat is the closest humanity may get.

Unlikely Friends

A cat in a raincoat looking at a frog with mild fear, and great hope for friendship and positive relations.

The love that makes me know I’m mortal and capable of loss, emotion, and impermanence is the same love which the cat in the rain coat looks at the frog with. A love that can only be so powerful because it is temporary.

Any form of love that cannot die is a love that must endure repeated loss. The love I feel for both the cat and the frog knows of loss, and will not confront it — but will rather use the loss to deepen the love and appreciation of the moment, knowing it will never be here again.

A Slumber Deserved

For much of my life, I stumbled around in other people and places looking for a home. I went to all of the places where others found home, and I just found rooms, places, people, and nothing more. To be told that home is everything when you cannot seem to find it seems like a loss that you cannot cope with.

Relationships lost in any context became devastating, because I didn’t lose the person — I lost something that could’ve been a home. I spent 20 years wondering and being kicked out, like a shelter dog from house to house.

Slowly, to ease the wounds of being exiled from other homes, I drew into the things I loved. I found special interests, colors, scents, songs, and other worldly items that I imagined would feel like home. After collecting them, and using them, I became them. What I loved in the world is what I became.

An astronaut cat sleeping soundly, warmly, next to blinking lights, fish, and stars. It doesn’t know about the future, but it doesn’t need to. The warmth this cat has is beyond any sort of external irritation or fear.

I did. And slowly, surely, and steadily, I’ve found myself being at home. I’ve found myself unwinding into a space that is irrevocably me, and mine alone. A home that is built out of love, care, and attention, by myself and for myself. This cat, sleeping, surrounded by stars and ethereal fish, is what home feels like to me. Just like the brave space explorer pictured, I have warm cats, dark colors, soft lights, reminders of the stars that I’m from, and a person who I love and trust to keep me warm and to build a home for me: myself.

Coffee Cats

In a cosmic sense, nothing truly is of any importance, nothing has to be the way it is, and the definitions we assign to things are arbitrary and based on fleeting emotions and circumstances. In such a world without structure, it feels as though everything may be truly random and meaningless. There is no meaning to be found in a cosmic sense, but we are an extension of the cosmos itself.

We come from the same elements and place, and we cannot throw our arms up to the heavens and sigh about lack of meaning when we are concious parts of the heavens. We assign meaning, as we are the cosmos. If it’s important to us, that’s what matters.

In that sense, meaning is not what things are, but what we make of it — meaning is more a reflection of ourselves than the thing at hand. In that sense, meaning can be used not just as a method of proritizing the world, but of loving it. What we find meaning in is the reflection of us in different ways, shapes, and forms.

Outside of a human level, the cosmos seems impermeable and full of random consequence and circumstance. Even on an human level, just because we can assign meaning does not mean there’s clear lines in collective meaning. The lines are blurred, nuanced, and never clear. But sometimes, in the heap of meaning and randomness and organized chaos that the human world is today, we see items or assets that stop us.

They grind us to a halt, and truly make ourselves filled with joy at the meer sight of it: it contains a reflection of us so deep and significant and validating that the essence of meaning flees in its’ very sight. To be so deeply connected to something may evade meaning.

cats frolicking in a bubble tea drink, at peace, surrounded by stars and warmed by the trust and community found in each other.

This image of cats swimming in a coffee cup has evaded meaning, and has only produced joy and an image of myself in its’ reflection that makes me proud to be an extension of the heavens that can value it the way I do.

Collective meaning is hardly clear, but personal meaning cuts through you like a knife — without explanation, rhythm, or ability to comprehend, only giving you the option to feel. These cats swimming in coffee have wedged themselves into my heart like a knife, from which joy eminates and nothing else matters.