Motes from the cotton trees floating through the evening air like bubbles in an old, thick beer, the kind that’ll get you hammered after two bottles. The light on the grass is a corridor to nowhere. I’m listening to Neil Young’s soundtrack to the film Dead Man while the local stray licks herself next to the scooter whose guts I had all over the driveway yesterday. It’s cooler than normal, maybe 60.
I’ve never understood the expression ‘dog days of summer’. It has something to do with ancient astrology, and the ruling of the constellation Sirius over the night skies. But here in Michigan, it always seemed to be the time when we are all panting for breath in the heat, our tongues lolling out as we dog paddle through an ocean of humidity just to get to work, to see a friend, to do anything.
If that’s the case, then I am declaring these are the cat days of summer. We’re all alone. Not even the heat cups us in its palm. We sit and groom ourselves, perhaps lick a wound or two, all in preparation for when we really start off, when necessity and action clap together and bolt off after after the sickest gazelle.
For us domestic cats though, all’s waiting. We’re declawed, can’t even climb trees. It’s all licking, pacing, eating, pacing, mewing, pacing, pacing, pacing, like echoes of the jungle shadows that we once were.
I too am trying to scent the ancestral power on the cool of the evening, to harness it in my actions and in my stories. I don’t know what this creature is today. I don’t even know what this ‘today’ is. But I am putting a comb through my hair. I shave regularly. I keep my muscles limber and my eyes sharp, so when I do finally know, see it standing out in the open without a tree in sight, I’ll be able to pounce quickly, and snap its neck without much trouble.
On the Shoulders of Giants 