Part two: Permanent time

When the cats got out a few weeks ago, Greg wasn't worried at all. He calmly stated that the "cats always come back." He was right, the escape was temporary. But I stirred that postulate about cats around in my mind like it was a pasta-late.* I let it cook for a few seconds. Greg's sententiousness ended up sounding like poetry. This happens when I start reading poetry again. I've been going back to the Romantics lately, mixed in with a few old issues of Poetry Magazine. Not to mention it's a significant time in my life right now, so I pay more attention to off-hand statements that can be twisted into something moving. The game's changed, son, as some of my coworkers have told me recently. That's a pretty good statement itself, even if it's clichéd. It packs three ideas into four words. One, that life is a game; two, that said game has changed in some way; and three, that I am your son. It's not the only cliché I overheard at [THE CAT FACTORY] (more on the factory later). One of my overnight coworkers uncapped some canned wisdom that I thought people only said in movies and bumperstickers: "Life's too short to be angry, you know. You just need to have fun with life." I didn't balk. turn my nose up, or squint my eyes and stare down my nose when I heard this. At 12:30am on a Wednesday night, two hours into a night shift, and thinking about all that has happened over the past year, it made sense. It felt nearly poetic: the right words at the right time. I don't totally agree with the optimist's equation of life=fun+good. I still have my east coast cynicism out here in burritoland. But it's nice to keep in mind occasionally. Like when I'm having fun hiking at Tent Rocks, I can say, Oh look, I've discovered life! which is what you can do with dead stones in Go. I've started playing Go with Greg's as my sensei. Learning to play Go well is one of the most challenging things I've done, and I am not done at it. But more on that later. There's a great poetic phrase that captures a prime Go strategy. It also sounds totally awesome. A few games into my training I made some n00b moves, trapping some of my stones. I thought they were done for, going to be captured and taken to Go Gitmo, but Greg told me to "Make life from these dead stones." Seriously he said this, and I laughed. It's a real phrase used in Go books, and it's perfect, I'd say: poignant and charmingly metaphorical. So I've started using it. It's poetry to be used everyday.

There's more poetry. I told a friend about something that had happened to me a while ago and they said their "heart would have broken into a million pieces" if it had happened to them. I felt a little taken back when I visualized that while thinking about what had happened to me. It's not a startling phrase by itself, but at the moment it was said, it felt unusual, like poetry. I had another friend tell me some very important things that I won't repeat here, but it was great to hear that person say it, and it felt like poetry too. Poetry that isn't written down, doesn't last long, and maybe you forget it, but at that moment you hear it, or see it, experience it, whatever sense it comes to you by, it changes you a little.

I used to think of poetry as a permanent thing. It would last for the ages and transcend time. I wanted that permanence myself. Lately though, I've been thinking a spontaneous overflow of powerful emotions isn't always permanent. I think i always knew this too. I went through some old writing of mine and I found something similar in one of my many scribbled manifestos. I'm writing a new one now. One of the tenets is to stop desiring something permanent and enjoy the passing for now, and if something less temporary comes along, like a career, a great city I want to live in for the rest of my life, or, gosh gee even a girlfriend, take it up when that pizza comes to your door. But I'm not seeking anything lasting right now, except some sense of personal growth. This is fallout from my European travels, where nothing was assured. Experiences were had as they came. Those phrases I wrote above, they don't mean so much to me now as they did when I first heard them. But I took them to be something grand when I first heard them, and it felt great to do so. It doesn't really matter if those cats don't come back.

*Good one bro!

PS: i'm going to be updating again this week,! I have a backlog of posts, mostly better written and clearer then this one! But did you see that pasta-late joke? Classico! You can have it if you want. Bust it out at Italian math parties, right after you make a Fibbonachi sequence sex joke. All the mathematicians will love you and feed you extra cannoli, I guarantee it. And Shazam! there are now cats in my room, and one is playing imaginary whack-a-mole with his paws and the other thinks my bed is a fierce enemy. Well, the cat's right, the bed has been attacking my back relentlessly for weeks now. But this is my war, cat, so step down.