Monthly Archives: January 2011

Jan 31 2011

nermal: in memoriam, by way of a photo essay

L.G. Nermal was born on August 9th, 2010. We didn’t meet him until November 11th. Some people say that cats adopt humans, not the other way around. Nermal didn’t adopt us: he never once gave a sense of ownership or superiority to either of us.

But he did choose us, out of the crowd, as it were. The very next day we had him in our home.

L.G. Nermal - day one

He was pleasant to the other cats from the get-go. They, on the other hand…

Not pictured: Switters's sense of impending doom

It was Ashley’s turn to name the new pet, and it took her a few days to come up with something. She eventually settled upon Nermal, from Garfield, because he made happy little quasi-twittering-type-noises just like the cat on the cartoon. And because, well, he wasn’t quite normal.

I added the L.G., which stood for Little Guy. The idea was that the initials would change over time or whenever a couple of adjectives were needed to describe him or his behavior.

He never got the chance to be anything but a Little Guy.

He liked to hang out in whichever room Ashley and/or I were in. Even if he was just sleeping.

He also liked helping us with homework.

The other cats, in time, warmed up to him. Randal isn’t one much for other living creatures as all, but he liked Nermal because Nermal played with Switters, meaning that for the first time in over a year Switters wasn’t forcing Randal to play with him. Switters and Nermal played together a lot initially.

They even kinda became buds.

Nermal had three favorite activities.

Any time I did laundry he would play in the empty laundry basket, sometimes moving it from room to room. I’d set it down by the closet, put some clothes away, and I’d find it almost in the living with one L.G. Nermal inside it. He would playfully attack anyone – felis catus or homo sapiens – who happened to walk by.

He also would run into the bathtub just as soon as someone finished showering. He would sit in the still-wet basin and watch fascinatedly as the droplets ran down the shower curtain and the walls.

And he loved it when we came home with groceries. Not because he was interested in the new foodstuffs. No no. He loved the bags.

He was a gift to us, and especially to Ashley. The other cats aren’t as friendly with her as they are with me, for reasons only they know. Nermal, though…Nermal loved her and wasn’t afraid to let her know. Any time he cuddled up to her, she was happy. He would sometimes wake her up in the middle of the night just because he wanted her to pet him for two minutes. Then he’d let he go back to sleep.

Christmas Eve. Ready to go.

Not long after the above picture was taken I noticed a sudden change in Nermal’s behavior. Normally in the morning before work I’d put some food in his bowl and he’d eat it like there was no tomorrow. (He was the loudest eater I’ve ever heard, especially for a cat. Sometimes it was just gross to listen to him.) Then he’d go over to the big boys’ bowl and eat their food.

On this particular morning – a Monday about a month and a half after he brought him home – he ate about five bites of his food and then started scraping the floor next to his bowl. When I came home from work later that day, there was food still in his bowl. This was unprecedented.

This behavior continued throughout the week and into the next. We’d battled some fleas right around the time that Nermal’d come into our home, so my guess was he had worms. The next day, though, was when I noticed his belly.

See how small his head is? That's because his tummy is huge.

Two weeks ago today we learned that he had F.I.P., something for which there is no cure. We chose to take him home and care for him rather than having him put down. These last two weeks were rough. He stopped playing with Switters. He stopped running into the bathtub when I got out of the shower. He slept more. His stomach got bigger while he got smaller.

We tried not to hold out hope, but at any sign of normal behavior – even just eating solid food instead of the Ensure we were told to give him – we both secretly and silently hoped that he was getting a bit better. I tried not to tell myself that maybe he’d just learn to live with his big belly, that maybe he’d achieve some type of homeostasis with it and he’d be the first-ever cat to survive F.I.P. It sounds crazy, but then again…I live with a woman who was not supposed to live past ten.

And I think this was especially hard for Ashley. More than just losing her buddy, Ashley knew what he was going through and how it felt. Back in the summer of 2007, her lung-function dropped enough that she didn’t have energy to eat. She couldn’t find a way to get comfortable that would allow her to breathe. She felt like she was suffocating constantly.

The problem with F.I.P. is that it dumps nourishment from the veins into the belly. The belly swells, unable to drain. In time this begins to compromise lung-function.

Ashley hated that he was suffocating. She hated that he was going through what she’d gone through.

But that was why he chose us. Whether he knew it then or not, Nermal had an anomaly in his genetic code that would eventually cause him to die. In Ashley, he saw a mother who would be closer to him in a fundamental way that his own feline mother would never be. He saw a mother who would understand.

There’s another reason he chose us, but I’ll save that for another time.

Last Sunday was when I knew Nermal wasn’t going to make it. He’d developed a wheeze to his breathing and he couldn’t sleep for lack of comfort.

And he stopped looking happy.

I didn’t think he’d last the day. Late in the evening he climbed onto my lap and as I watched him lie there unable to sleep, the tears started. Ashley and I began our mourning then. We were up very late that night, neither of us wanting to be asleep when our little guy couldn’t fight anymore.

But he made it.

None of us slept well at all this week, especially after he began to behave erratically.

Finally, he was capable of little more than lying around.

We moved his box from room to room so he could still hang out with us like he liked to do so much.

Saturday night, around 7:30, I knew somehow that it was time. I scooped him into my lap and sat with him on the sofa, swaddled in one of the fleece blankets he loved so much. I kissed his little face and told him that we loved him, that we would miss him so much, and that it was time for him to go. He lied back in my arms and went slack. He cried out once or twice and Ashley and I moved him to the bed, where he could be warm.

Ashley told him then that it was okay to go. She said, ‘Go play.’ She bent over him and combed out his fur, fur he’d been too tired to clean for the last week. She cleaned him up and made him soft again and that is was brought him peace enough to let go. Inside his little shallow-breathing body, Nermal fell asleep.

Four hours later, L.G. Nermal exhaled for the final time. I was right there with him, holding his little paw. When I heard the final exhale, I knew it for what it was. I put my head on his little side and listened as his tired little heart stopped beating.

And as crazy as it may be, under that sad sound I also heard him purring. I knew he was gone, but the purring sound outlasted his heartbeat by about thirty seconds. I wouldn’t believe I heard it except that no scientist anywhere can tell me how it is that cats purr. Let alone if a cat can purr after his heart stops.

Nermal did.

Once he was gone I moved his paws closer to his body. I wrapped his tail around him. I held his eyes closed. I scooped him up, kissed him a final time on the cheek, and put him in his favorite blanket so that, as Ashley’d said, he wouldn’t be cold. Wrapping him in it, I placed him in his box.

L.G. Nermal died on January 30th, 2011. His was not yet six-months old.

And I cried. I cried and cried and cried. I’m crying again.

But that’s okay. I love our Little Guy Nermal, and I know I’ll miss him for a long time. I’ll think of him every time I get out of the shower. Every time I do the laundry. Every time I use one of the fleece blankets he loved so much.

I know how you were when you died, little buddy. But I’m going to choose to remember you differently. I’ll remember you like this, which was the third day after you’d come into our lives and the day I knew I loved you.

Goodbye my friend. I hope you’ve found a way to be able to play again.

Jan 29 2011

saturday things vol. 3

With every birth there comes the afterbirth. Just so, with every purchase there is the after-purchase: accessories.

When I bought my Kindle a few weeks ago, I did something I don’t usually do and bought a case to go along with it. Normally I wait on these kinds of purchases – let myself get a bit more comfortable with the device before I decide what lagniappe pieces I may or may not need.

This time I not only splurged on a case, but splurged on the expensive case.

The Kindle Lighted Leather Cover

It’s a very durable case with an elastic strap to keep it closed. Amazon has it available in lots of different colors, enough to keep pretty much everyone happy I’d imagine.

I especially enjoy how the Kindle is affixed into the case. That’s right. The verb I used is affixed.

Inside are these two little notches. I know, I know. We don’t need no stinking notches, right? Well…

The lower notch has a slight curve and the upper notch has a latch. The Kindle slides onto the lower notch, and the upper notch can be pressed with your thumb. This system affixes the Kindle securely into the case, so I’m not worried about it sliding out while I reading or while it’s in my backpack.

The case, of course, does add some weight to the device but it’s not uncomfortable. And honestly, using it makes the Kindle feel more like a book in my hands. The only real problem is that the keypad is a bit tough to type on while the case is attached. But the notch system makes the Kindle easy enough to remove if I need to do some hardcore typing, which pretty much only happens when I’m scouring the Kindle Store for free classics.

Now, lastly: the light.

The same case without the light costs $20 less. So…was it worth it?

The light slides out from the upper-right corner. So far it seems fairly sturdy, though I do honestly believe this’ll be the reason I’d need a new case. Like I said, it’s sturdy, but when sliding the light back in it feels like the thin piece of metal will eventually buckle.

That being said, it’s an LED light and provides plenty of light to read by, without be overly bright for a sleeping companion. Furthermore, and probably my favorite thing about it, is that the light runs off the power of the Kindle. Yes, of course powering the light reduces the battery life of the Kindle…but not a great deal. And it’s totally worth not having to buy a pack of AAA batteries and keep one around at all times in case I want to read in the dark.

Here’s where, for me, the case is worth the extra twenty clams. I’m not a person who can sit for long periods of time comfortably. This, unfortunately, goes against the entire practice of reading. With the case and the light, I can move around, change chairs, lie on the bed, the sofa, read upside-down, back-to-the-room, on the floor.

And yeah, that helps me read for longer periods of time. Which helps me read more. Which, yeah, is worth an extra twenty bucks.

Jan 28 2011

you and me we were the pretenders

From the long hallway that is the memory of things I’ve read, I seem to recall some story in which one of the characters was constantly receiving articles clipped from newspapers. I think the sender was the character’s mother, but could be wrong about that.1

In the time of the novel this is nothing out of the ordinary.

But yesterday it most certainly was out of the ordinary.

I don’t get much mail at the library and most of it is flyers for various university goings-on. So a fully eight-and-a-half-by-eleven inch envelope with my name handwritten in ink across the front was about as strange as seeing Lady Gaga in sweatpants.2

The handwriting looked familiar but I didn’t think much of it. Opening the envelope,3 I found a note and a half-page of newspaper. The note was from the professor of the class I took last semester.

Hi Bo. I saw this article on Sunday and thought you might like to read it, if you haven’t already.

Back up. Did you see that?

On Sunday.

Yep. She was sitting at home on a non-work day, relaxing and reading the Sunday Times, maybe with coffee or tea. She came across this article4 and thought enough of it to clip it from the paper with the intent of sending it my way. At some point she brought it to work. She wrote a note. She put it all in an envelope. She wrote my name on the front and sealed. She dropped it in campus mail.

Think about that for a minute. Think about everything that went into it. The human interactions: between her and the paper, between me and the paper, and between her and me.

This is far more touching than cut-and-paste.

Far more touching than email.

Far more touching than a computer screen.

Because she could have done it. I’m sure the article is available online5 and she could have very easily just looked it up and done the copy-and-paste-and-email thing. Probably would have taken her far less time.

…time.

That’s the problem. Right there. The sacrifice of real, analog human interaction for the illusion of free time. After all, if I only spend 30 seconds on you, that’s more time for me, right? Maybe it’s not free time. Maybe it’s the origin of that horrible phrase: Me time.

I get that today’s world has us constantly crunched for time. But the only reason the world is pressing us for time is because it’s giving us so much shit to pay attention to.6

I’m not proselytizing here; I’m every bit as guilty about this as everyone else. Probably more so than some. Some of the shit out there is enormously entertaining. Some of it’s even interesting. Even enlightening.

But I fear we sacrifice human touch way too much.

Send someone an article. Print out a picture of your kid and mail it to his or her grandparents. Write someone a letter. Have a conversation with your brother. Your sister. Call everyone you would normally text. Go somewhere with a friend and leave your phones off.

Technology isn’t a bad thing. But be human while you still are.

  1. I also think the character lived in an apartment in or near Chicago. This fact leads me to believe it’s the main character in Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle or one of the characters in Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections. But it really could be anything.
  2. or hearing Taylor Swift sing a song about how she thinks the guy should totally keep dating the girl he’s with and how she completely supports that decision.
  3. Maybe the 6th time I’ve used the letter opener that came with the desk. If only the phone could fall into such disuse…
  4. W/r/t David Foster Wallace.
  5. Yep. Right here.
  6. And we all know damn well that 90% of it is shit.
Jan 27 2011

no offense to harold bloom

1
So after making like Brett Favre for a while1 I finally dropped the grad class I was in. And I dropped it for probably the only reason that made complete sense to me:

My heart simply isn’t in it.

I could go on and on about this reason and that reason and my instincts on the matter and all, but essentially I just couldn’t bring myself to care. Partially I don’t really care for or about the whole grad-school gig, but largely I think this was due to the course material.

Literary theory and criticism.

I’m all for learning as much as one can from a text. I’m all for using ideas from other fields2 to elucidate a text and maybe learn things that weren’t intended or even overtly present.

For other people.

That sort of thing isn’t really for me. I’m interested in language and how it works to create a story or a poem. I’m interested in the overall effect and appeal of a text. I’m interested in how the text and I interact to create that effect, that appeal.

But I’m not interested in tearing it apart.

And that’s what theory and criticism feels like. It feels like contorting the text to mean whatever the hell I want it to mean. It feels like a bunch of bullshit made up and applied by people who want to use art to aggrandize themselves.

Some might say I’m wrong or that I’m selling the whole thing short. Maybe that’s true, maybe not. But it’s just not for me, that’s all this comes down to.

  1. Harold Bloom being the person I blame for setting up the literary canon, including the divisive and desperate need to theory-and-criticism the shit out of everything.
  2. W/r/t his waffling on retirement. Not w/r/t how he treated some the women involved with the Jets organization. I like to take girls out to dinner before sexting.
  3. Philosophy, psychology and social anthropology mostly.
Jan 26 2011

on re-reading

Those who study linguistics call the act of reading a frozen form of communication. I have always whole-heartedly disagreed with this label. The words on the page1 do not change, that I’ll grant.2 But to say that the interaction between the text and the reader is permanent in any way is a fallacy.

Leave emotional responses out of the argument for a while if you will. Think about how the act of reading intellectually is affected as one reads.

A description of a character on page 600 can retroactively change how a reader has visualized that character up to that point.

Filling in a piece of the plot – having a Bond villain give every detail of his nefarious plan as the novel draws to a close – pulls together pieces that a reader simply couldn’t pull together before, and does this retroactively.

A book starts out by teaching the reader how to read it. It sets up expectations that it will later consciously manipulate, changing everything the reader how known all along.

Reading isn’t a frozen form of communication. It’s time travel.3

Re-reading, then, is time travel with a simultaneous self. The reader is current in the present, in the here and now. But she encounters her past self within a novel’s words. She remembers things she forgot, discovers things she missed, and gets to experience the text with the singular advantage of having already experienced the text.4

This is why I enjoy re-reading. As fun as it is to read a text without having to concern myself with where the story is going, which lets me focus on other things like language and characterization, it’s also fun because I run into my previous self around certain corners. Not just thoughts I had at that point in the book, but even where I was – physically – when I read that passage. I remember where I was and how I got to where I am now – all within a single sentence or metaphor.5

It really is like having a flux capacitor.

Back in December I decided to re-read Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series. When he first finally published the last three books back in 2004 I was astoundingly pissed at how he finished the series. It wasn’t just the ending or that I’d been invested in this story since the eighth freaking grade, he did some things that just really upset me.

A lot.

I haven’t read any of his books since. Not the new ones. Not even my old favorites. That’s how mad I was.

Thing is, while I remember why I was so mad, so upset and betrayed, I know that just like everything else, since 2004 I have changed.6

A lot.

So it’s worth giving Mr. King’s opus another shot. I am enjoying it, yes, but I’ve not yet gotten to the parts that pissed me off so much. So we’ll see.

But whatever the case, whether I change my mind or not, I think I’ll continue to enjoy running into my old self.

As long as I don’t rip a hole in the time-space continuum.

  1. And/or screen, for the e-reader-inclined.
  2. Statement describes reading experience typical of most readers. Individual results may vary.
  3. Without the need to
    1. Buy a Delorean
    2. Hit one’s head on a toilet
    3. Invent the flux capacitor
    4. Steal plutonium from Libyan terrorists.
  4. Much like how Marty McFly knew to find Biff at the Enchantment Under the Sea dance because Marty’d already experienced this experience. Just so, Marty encounters his past self. (Well, actually avoids his past self.)
  5. Though let’s recall what Milan Kundera said: “Metaphors are not to be trifled with. A single metaphor could give birth to love.” Certainly that kind of power could also navigate the temporal realm.
  6. The world has moved on, it seems.
Jan 25 2011

Nermal update

This is how we move Nermal around these days. He wants to spend most of his time in this box. But he also likes to be in the same room as me and Ashley. So at night we move him – box and all – into the bedroom. If we watch TV/read in the living room, the Nermal box comes along.

He is tired most of the time but can’t really sleep. He doesn’t eat other than the Ensure we force into his mouth with a syringe. He doesn’t play.

He hardly even meows.

We know it won’t be long now. We do what we can. We love him. We hold him. We cry sometimes.

And we move him and his box around. So he’ll be comfortable. So he’ll know he’s not alone.

None of this will cure him. None of it will make him better.

But we do it anyway.

Jan 24 2011

things i’d think i’d be good at but i’m really most egregiously not

Drawing and painting

I’m a very creative person. I can write creatively1 and I can make music. I play several different instruments. I can craft some scary-ass pumpkins. I’d think then that I’d be able to draw and to paint. But I can’t. I can make abstract paintings, but they look like someone who didn’t know what they were doing found a bunch of paint and brushes and canvas and then ate all the paint and vomited on the canvas, brushed be damned. But I can’ draw. At all. My drawings look like those of a three-year-old with aspirations of living in an insane asylum.

Book clubs

Man, do I love to read. I read widely and I read well. I read ‘genre’ fiction and ‘literature.’2 I read plays and poetry. I still read the newspaper. But I’m horrible – just horrible – about being in a book club. Every time one of my friends suggests I be part of one I agree to it…and then never read a single book. I guess I just want to read what I want to read when I want to read it. I can’t say. But I apologize to those of you who’ve invited me into book clubs that I’ve then ignored.3, 4

Being patient with people

I’ve learned that being a very understanding and accepting person does not at all help me be patient with people. In fact, sometimes understanding why a person is behaving the way they’re behaving makes me more impatient because I can see how stupid they’re being. Furthermore, understanding how people work, on an individual basis, helps me predict what they’re going to do and how they’ll behave. Yet in some cases this foreknowledge only drives me to be more irritated with the person for doing exactly what I knew they were going to do, especially if they seem surprised at the way they’re behaving.

Being a people-person

I like people. I really do. Without human interaction I would starve. I would have little to think about and little to write about. But all the same, people annoy me. I hate crowds, even small crowds. I hate any situation that involves a lot of people in a small space, especially if they’re making a bunch of noise. Ashley has suggested that this may have something to do with some of the physical abuse I endured as a child5 and maybe that’s the case. But people, in general, bug me. Freak me out. Give me a severe case of the howlers. But I can’t avoid them, and can’t avoid being fascinated by them. I think what I want to watch them without interacting with them. I think I very much so want to be alone in a crowd.

  1. Fairly well.
  2. Fake distinctions made by the Academy. The only difference, really, is fiction that everyone reads and fiction that people get PhD’s in so they can spend a life writing about it.
  3. I was once in a book club of two members. Even then I didn’t keep up.
  4. Sorry Michelle.
  5. She likens dealing with abuse to dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder. I’ve seen this likening elsewhere and there does seem to be something to it.
Jan 23 2011

driving

It seems at though I’ve committed to blogging every single day. I’ve always wanted to do it, but…well I guess it just wasn’t my time. Today is the 23rd day of January and so far I’ve blogged every single day. That’s all the evidence I need to show that I mean to take it seriously this time.

When we move a previously marginal aspect of our lives to the center, we start to be very much bothered by things that before were mere trivialities. My favorite poetry teacher back in the day told me something about titles I’ve never forgotten: How you title a piece gives the reader a map on how to read it.

I’ve hated the title of this blog ever since I started using it. Part-Time Buddha was simply the name of a blog I had a long time ago. I liked it then and it fit that blog at the time; it served its purpose and did it well.

But it hasn’t fit this one at all. I just borrowed the name from an pervious version of myself until I could come up with something better. And then I never did.

See: I don’t feel like a Buddha, part-time or otherwise. I don’t feel enlightened. I don’t feel like someone others would (or should) seek for wisdom, for guidance. For calm and peace.

Most of the time I just feel broken.

Not broken as in shattered. Not as in irreparable. Not as in sad.

Just broken as in broken down. As in beat.

And for a long time, really since I was about eight years old, I’ve thought of my life as simply a pastiche of other lives that’ve touched mine, a rough collection of experiences condensed into snapshots that together make up the stained-glass window that is my life.

Some people think that viewpoint is very sad. Whether it is or is not, it’s an idea I’ve never been able to disabuse myself of.

So I’ve given this blog a new title that feels more appropriate to me. That gives my readers a clearer map for driving this thing.

The new title is from a poem by T.S. Eliot called The Waste Land. This little excerpt that follows might be my favoritest-ever moment is all of poetry:

A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock.
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

Wow. I still gets me every time.

Furthermore, you can now find your favorite friendly neighborhood blog at this URL:

aheapofbrokenimages dot com.

Those of you who have my blog linked from your sites will not have to update the link. The old URL will work just fine.

Thanks again for reading, today and always. I’ll try to stay with the posting-every-day thing.