patience

does not become me. i try to wait (they also serve who only stand and shit), but i'm terrible at it. i rush through songs, i tick off my list-for-the-day like a housewife on meth. i meet new people and crash course their biography. at work i smack the plates down on the table even as i try, so help me, to gently settle the food onto the paper mat. driving cross country i count not miles, but states, hurtling through the imaginary dotted lines that atlas-separates Kansas from Iowa. i drink beer like water at an oasis. i eat shovel-fulls of Chinese and suck up Pu Pu like a Hoover. perhaps i am racing towards the end of my life. or maybe i'm trying to see, touch, experience, absorb everything and everyone in my path as quickly as possible so as to not miss anything. i watch myself roar down the road in 5th gear but it never slows me down. i rev the engine, i lurch through life. Buddha would have a problem with me.

nureyev revives fonteyn

he pulls her out of retirement. they dance on big stages across the globe. she's young again. he's leaping to inspired heights. they adore each other. the other night i'm watching the last 5 minutes of Toy Story 3 and working up a good cry when i notice my spinster cat, Sofi, on top of the foot stool. underneath is the new kid, Mao, who looks up at her with half-closed but curious golden eyes. Sofi half-heartedly paws the air with a matchstick leg. Mao's seems half asleep, but they're communicating. what was once fight and scratch has for the moment become what i can only describe as play, or off-hand shadow boxing. Mao has drawn her outside her stay-in-the-safe-closet persona and now they're in kitty love. she prefers to leave my room when i go to sleep rather than crash at the foot of my bed. she wants to be out there in the hallway with Mao. they've slept body-to-body when i caught them in an unguarded moment and the other morning. he stood watch at the door to the porch while she shat in her box, undisturbed, like the centurion boyfriend who guards the men's room while his girlfriend takes a hurry-up piss. it took months, this ever so gradual friendship and on Christmas day, i swear, as Sof was curled up on a couch pillow, Mao leaped up, clumsy tip-toed over to her and kissed her on her hard licorice-lipped kitty-mouth. a tiny cat kiss like a bird fart. they still wrestle and scratch and bite and hiss and spit, but it's closer to a good time than a hate-fest. so on top of Toy Story 3 i get this image of two ex-enemies in a paw-de-deux.