Here's a report:
The other day, I found myself out in the driveway, shoveling snow. This shouldn't be that bizarre an occurrence considering my locale, but the past two years have been shit with respect to snowfall and I've lived in places where snow removal has been someone else's responsibility. With the securing of a mortgage (via transferring my balls into the bank's vise), I've been granted the task of clearing said mortgage's driveway. Not to imply that I dislike the work. Indeed, I find the chore invigorating - outside, in the cold, laboring with a definite endpoint - and at the conclusion of which I can indicate palpable evidence of something useful having been accomplished. The driveway was snowy; now it is clear. I did that. Proceed to drink beer in triumph.
In any event, I was out, shoveling and after I'd done the required work, I heard a mewling from beneath the porch. A long haired, orange cat appeared, rangy, ugly, obviously street-worn with frost-bitten ears and matted fur. I promptly told the cat to fuck off, that we weren't doling out charity, and entered the house. The cat apparently took this as encouragement and hopped up to the porch in order to eat the spilled bird seed from my feeders and to lap at the melting snow on my porch boards. He then proceeded to mewl and cry at the door, going so far as to jump onto the bench and peer into my kitchen as if he'd been freshly turned out of the house for the day and was unhappy with that reality.
By that evening the cat was inside, perched in my lap; by today I've settled on his name as "Captain Lawrence Edward Grace 'Titus' Oates", of the famously doomed Terra Nova Expedition. He's ill-tempered with the other cat, drinks from the toilet, puked on the living room floor, is gross in general, and prefers my company.
Of course I like him.
I went skiing with A and Uly a week or so ago on Saturday. I don't remember exactly. Alcohol is a hell of a drug.
In any event, we went out to the old train tracks that snake down the Matanuska river. The tracks are out of commission and run all the way to Sutton, almost 20 miles away, and we headed out into the day in the mid-noon hour finding it beyond magnificent. The snow was ground down by boots and paws and our skis hissed over the already laid imprints. I bid them go ahead and stayed to myself, going slowly and looking for birds.
We went about a mile out then turned back, just before an area where there is a massive and on-going earth slump as the river takes its toll on the bluff. The trail is passable there, but we mostly always turn back at that point as we worry about Uly's (and our own) safety. Returning, I let A take the lead again and told her not to wait for me. She skied on and left me to my thoughts. The river below shushed. My skis murmured in their traces. My breath came in rhythmic rushes. For a moment, things were okay.
A and Uly stopped for me at an overlook near the trail head. A bald eagle coasted over us, descending, until he perched on the snow pack near the stream of rushing water in the riverbed below. We left.
Uly turned a year. He walks now. He's got his own shitter now and has used it twice. Just this morning, he was fussy and yawning and I asked him if he wanted to go take a nap and he nodded his head and said, "ya," before he started down the hallway, without me, toward his bedroom. I followed him back and he crawled into his bed. After I covered him up, I told him I was going to leave him and he should sleep well and long. He nodded again and I left him. Within ten minutes he was out, like a light, as the Old Man would have said.
I returned to the living room, where I had been listening to Pandora. A, who had been at the store, returned but soon departed again to ski solo. Now it's only me, alone, sipping beer and listening to hip hop.
Something about that seems so right.
Work starts again tomorrow.
I recently saw a facebook article from Cormac McCarthy wherein he gave an interview talking about how the 9-5 workday (I'm interpolating lots here as I only read the headline) is the death of creativity and that's why he's eschewed such a lifestyle. Can't say that I disagree there. Tomorrow will dawn and I'll arise and go to teach children (yes children) how to write resumes and set goals and compose cover letters so that they too might enjoy full employment as that is the endpoint of our current and collective economic delusion.
What of the cat's example?
What of the eagle's?
What of Uly's?
I'll leave with a line from The Weeknd's newest music vid, "All I wanna do is make money and make dope shit."
Kill me.
