Speaking strictly for the bipeds, we have a problem.
We’re proud of it, which only gives it bigger muscles.
We are afraid of ceasing to spin and ceasing to exist.
We are afraid of ceasing.
We are afraid.
If you were an alien from Nebula 41, visiting New Jersey for the first time, your questions would be several:
1) Take me to your leaders. We understand you have a Boss (Bruce), a Queen (Latifah) and also a Jon Stewart. We would like a Jon Stewart on Nebula 41.
2) Whither the hair of great size?
3) Whither the pizzas of inconsistent quality?
4) Do you bipeds ever slow down?
Answers: Sure, but you can’t have him. Everywhere. Everywhere, sorry. And, no. But maybe you can help us with that?
I’m suspicious as to Nebula 41’s ability to help. But cats, being both more celestial than any spaceman and more spiritual than any shaman, have a fighting chance.
Taylor Ham, when not fighting crime and dueling diabetes, likes to broker peace between persons and themselves. A gelatinous tuxedo with a strange story, he’ll gamely tell you how he came to Tabby’s Place from a soon-to-be-shuttered prison (literally true), only for us to take out all of his achin’ teeth, teach him about hugs, and introduce him to his best feline friends.
He’ll tell you that life is a savory sandwich, and he means to make the most of every bite. He’ll tell you he’s glad about the teeth. He’ll tell you he’s glad about your existence. He’ll tell you he’s glad about pretty much everything.
He will play with you, and lay with you, and give you grace enough to heal your entire innerspace. He will dress you in the tuxedo of unscheduled fun, unproductive exuberance and inflated elation. He will show you his extraordinary smile. He will kick the teeth out of the guilt that kicks you around.
If you’ll let him. Which is perhaps the greatest question of all.
I am arguably The Very Worst at allowing such delicate surgery to be performed upon my person. I can’t just stop and ham it up with Taylor Ham. How could I? There are appeal letters to be written, canyons of correspondence to kayak through, funds to be raised and unhinged blogs to be written and texts to be frenetically tap-tap-tapped…and that’s all before I get home to the groceries and the laundry and the laundry lists of accomplishments left undone at my peril.
It feels so perilous to leave anything undone.
It feels so exhausting to realize that nothing stays done.
It feels so scary to feel worthy only in the gasping instant when everything acts done.
To jam with Taylor Ham is dangerous business, and not just because Spaghetti might come and snap into your ear like a Slim Jim, or Rawlings might crush you with the full weight of his splendor, which is as dense as a neutron star and as sizable as Saturn.
To jam with Taylor Ham is dangerous, because you might fall asleep.
You might fall asleep — or, worse, fall into that placid peace-place where the music box slows down, and the vise unsqueezes, and your agenda exhales. You might make memories that you’ll never hogtie into words. You might waste entire minutes with nothing tangible to show. You might forget everything you need to do. You might remember who you are.
To jam with Taylor Ham is dangerous, because you might wake up.
You might wake up to the wonder of waste. You might wake up to liberation from haste. You might wake up to the possibility of being unleashed from the “urgency” that is rarely an emergency.
You might feel like an alien.
You might feel like a rebel.
You might feel like a cat. If you’re lucky, it might be Taylor Ham.
You just might stumble into the wormhole known as kairos time.
Being a cat, Taylor has a commanding knowledge of Greek (they all do; also photographic memories of Cheesecake Factory menus and the ability to sing the complete recordings of Johnny Cash and Ludacris), so he could explain kairos time more completely than me.
Kairos, in Greek, means literally “the opportunity.” Kairos is the moment in which “normal” time, with all its gnawing, gives way to grace. Kairos is the instant the world splits open like a pomegranate, pouring forth seeds of possibility and peace.
We’ve all been saved by kairos moments. They’re hard to set on paper, but you know them: the sky fills with sparrows, and your shoulders unslump. Ten minutes of stretching unfurls your furious body into something like joy. The breakfast clementine unlocks the secret of sweetness. The smile from your grandmother gives you back to yourself. The leap you feared turns into a leap year of faith.
The pause you tried to avoid turns into the power source you were too proud to want.
Kairos time is grinning like a goofus under every page of the calendar.
Waiting to jam with Taylor Ham.
To be floored by what happens when you stop making things happen.
To waste time, to baste time in the juices of attention, to be and be and be something other than a doer.
To see everything from outer space, with inner grace, through the eyes of cats and saints and angels.
To see yourself whole and loved, even wholly “useless.”
To punt the problems, even the beefy ones, over the asteroid belt for another day.
And when another day breaks, it will be okayer than we imagine. We will exist. We will resist the armies of urgency. We will let the kairos cats take care of our chaos. We will savor every sandwich.
I have so much more to write. But I’m going to go jam with Taylor Ham.
PS: I actually do have quite a bit more to say about Mr. Ham. Return here on 8/14 for details…
Taylor Ham sounds like the answer to everyday stress. Overwhelmed? Let Taylor Ham show us that lists of things to be done will still be there tomorrow, and “time spent with cats is never wasted.”