2734 Sleeping with a little boy.

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Denis Johnson, "The Small Boy's Unit", Harper's, Oct. 2000, on the meaning of "everything is arranged" in Africa: "Everything is arranged doesn't mean you should expect to get anywhere or accomplish anything. In fact for sanity's sake these two ideas have to be banished. Everything is arranged means that all is complete, the great plan of the universe is unfolding before our eyes. So eat, drink, sleep. Everything is arranged."

------------------------------------------------

I've been working today trying to get control of paper. I haven't made it to the recycle center in literally two months, and it's getting hard to move in the kitchen for bags of paper, plastic, and piles of cardboard. I've got to find a better way to store this stuff. It would be even better to find some way to keep all this paper from entering the house in the first place.

---------------------------------

Miss Thunderfoot has been gone about six weeks, but her influence lingers. Jasper is still nervous in the den, Thunder's territory. On Sunday he explored the room past my chair a little bit, but he's still timid, and turned and ran when I moved the chair.

Also, when Miss Thunderfoot was alive, he wouldn't get on the bed at night until he was sure she was solidly asleep, about an hour after I went to bed, stayed diagonally opposite her, and would leave if she moved, and definitely was gone before morning. The past few days he's gotten on the bed when I settled in, but he still won't go near the upper right side, where Thunder slept.

I sleep on my stomach or side, and he will get on top of the back of my legs and knead, knead, knead, a long time, until I bend my knee enough that he has created a well between my legs. He'll curl up in there until I have to move my legs and he gets pushed out. The past few days I've found him tight against my knees when I wake.

He has also started purring. Never used to purr. And he "talks" to me more now. I've noticed before that when I had two or more animals, dog or cat, they'd relate to each other more than to me, even when they didn't get along, didn't socialize, like Jasper and Thunder. Then when I got down to one animal, I'd suddenly discover aspects of the remaining beastie's personality that they'd never shown me before.

Interesting.
.