Donate
Whaddya say?

Whaddya say?

I have a secret.

Sometimes I have nothing to say.

(I can hear my entire extended family collectively asking, “Would you please provide some evidence of that extremely dubious claim?”)

Maybe it’s not exactly a case of nothing to say.

Jessie and Cody do not need words to speak.

Maybe I have so much to say that it’s hard to do it in words, and I don’t know how to paint.

Some days — days like this day, this week, this pandemic, this year — I feel pressure to sing into the abyss. I tell myself it’s for whoever reads the frippery I’m flinging, but I know it’s really for myself.

Most days, the words come, miracles before my eyes that spin dust into stardust into speech.

But some days, I’m dumbfounded and struck dumb.

It scares me, more than empty food bowls scare Olive, more than closed doors scare Walter, more than atoms scare Heather.

Pete says “pshaw” to words.

When the words go still and the music goes silent, I don’t know how to process the world. I don’t know if I’m still worth my salt, even a single shimmering grain, if I can’t speak something of worth into the sky. I don’t know if my joys and my fears and my invisible essence really exist if I can’t externalize them in words upon words upon words.

But cats need no words to deliver deliverance.

And that’s when I remember that my words are not holding the world together.

My words are not the Source of hope.

My public words are just one speck of a smidgen of a sprinkle of a sparkle to light the darkness. Frankly, a single email exchanged with a friend may mean far, far more than any grand pronouncements to the masses.

Fiesta knows how to party in sacred silence.

My words fail.

Hope doesn’t.

And at such times, I thank the Lord and the Place that is Tabby’s for the never-ending stream of gratuitous cat photos.

So in these times of high hopes and freezing fears, I will let my words be few.

At least for today.

No promises about the Thanksgiving table, though, fam.

 

Leave a Reply