I’m tired.  I mean really tired.  There has simply been too much going on lately. 

Grendel is doing better, but he has been so sick for two months that daily improvement for the last week to ten days still brings him to a level below normal and healthy.  He does not play as much, nor is he as active as he would normally be.  Despite his continuing improvement, the entire situation has been draining both emotionally and physically.  It is not possible for me to watch an animal suffer, let alone a member of The Kids: they are my children.

Work is increasingly stressful, although one might wonder how it could be more stressful than it was a year ago, or even two years ago.  Tedious bureaucracy constrains me at every turn; political machinations birth stupidity like multiplying bacteria; the service level provided by other groups, even in personnel matters, is inefficient and substandard, making even the most menial of tasks excruciatingly laborious and difficult.  I fight constantly with other technology groups for the unannounced and unplanned changes they implement.  Anyone having dealt with such an environment would certainly understand what I mean: it is the typical American business environment where the clueless get promoted and those who do the work get stepped on.

I am worried about my family.  There is much joy in reporting that my grandmother is out of the hospital now, but her health continues to be poor and her overall condition is deteriorating.  Despite the tidbit of good news, the tasty morsel sours bathed in the tartness of a much more complex picture that unfolds as you step back from her situation.  Mom remains unemployed, her family is reeling from the loss of Jan and Charlie, the ongoing Texas drought has affected costs and conditions at the farm, health issues are popping up like cubicle workers who smell food, and a general veil of hardship seems to befall every member in some way that foretells certain doom…  Perhaps not doom, wishing not to contrive some horrific situation from general life events, but certainly it feels dark and foreboding.  Age, disease, finances, and all manner of living curses take shape in day-to-day living.  None of it is surprising or out of the ordinary, yet a family as large as mine increases the reach of the skeletal hand of statistics and probability.  I see its chilly shadow creeping from corner to corner, towering above everyone who shares my blood, and increasingly touching family members with its cold dead breath.

Restful sleep has been distant and infrequent.  Broken to its core by Grendel’s illness, I have unsuccessfully pursued its embrace for two months.  I lay wrapped in blankets with the cold surrounding me on all sides.  Kazon often rests next to me under the covers, his soft warm fur caressing my skin while his lead lays gentle on my arm or chest so that I feel his breathing — and it comforts me, yet not enough to engender sleep.  Grendel curls up between my legs or behind my knees depending on what position I’m in, his demonstration of habitual behavior a comforting normalcy, his presence always known to me based on his position and regimental approach to routine.  Loki, his motor running if there is but one bit of wakefulness within him, places himself always to be on me in some way, whether he lies on my arm or on my chest or draped over my abdomen.  Kako may or may not be with me; she is an independent woman who does as she may without regard for others, tending to her own needs above any other, but succumbing from time to time to her daily Daddy requirement and finding a place near Grendel where she might sleep both in contact with him and with me.  Despite being surrounding by such unmitigated love and care, the night brings me no comfort.  Its darkness cloaks me in its deep embrace as sleep beckons to me from a place I am unable to reach.  Perhaps it’s stress and fatigue, perhaps it’s the plethora of worry that now besieges me at all times…

I continue to focus on my writing as much as possible, yet even this comes at a price.  Spending so much time dealing with work lessens the time available to tend personal matters.  This often forces me to decide between writing or addressing the needs of living.  Do I take an hour and work on my novel, or do I sit down and pay the bills and work on laundry, dishes, and a litany of ignored chores demanding attention?  When I dedicate time to writing, do I focus on the career aspects (such as my novels) or do I seek the emotional catharsis inherent to blogging?  Both help me in some way, yet there is insufficient time to address both dutifully.  It is possible to weigh them separately and devise time for both that ultimately seems lacking.

America has become the enemy which for so many years we sought to overthrow.  We spy on our own citizens, we torture dissidents and enemies, we incarcerate based on presuming guilt rather than innocence, and we rob ourselves and others of the very human rights we claim to cherish and uphold.  Our sacred Constitution has been violated and degraded in the name of security, and fear now drives the American herd.  Disagreeing with or questioning the government is now considered treason.  Radical elements have taken control of government at every level, and we see elected officials passing laws meant only to segregate our society and legalize hate and intolerance while destroying equality.  People like me are made to feel that we are less than human and worthy of fewer rights than the fundamental majority and power-holders. 

The obligations of friendship are all about me, besetting me with needs and desires both subtle and gross.  Such pining does not diminish my love for these people; neither do the spoken and silent demands of friendship fall on deaf ears or a cold heart.  Lacking adequate time to fulfill my own needs and desires in this area while also satisfying the hunger of others gives rise to a depressive betrayal within me: I feel as though platonic disloyalty unabashedly vexes the unfulfilled promises of today.  When last have I visited with xocobra and LD?  How often are Jenny and I capable of spending time together?  Were not multiple assurances of seeing Wayne broken by unforeseen obligations and events?  Did not I just miss dinner with Rick, Mark and Brian because the calls of urgent attention cried out to me at an inopportune time?  Libby has been quite ill this week, probably with nothing more than a cold or flu, yet I have been unable to check in on her as frequently as I feel essential because the flurry of activity steals from me the time needed to do so.  Lee’s father passed away earlier this week and I was unable to see him before he left town because of my own job.  There are other examples, of course.

Unlike my normal tendency to shun and hide it, my own depression has been at the gate of my mind for many months struggling to break into my thoughts and invade my living.  Rarely am I unable to manage this, yet its beckoning call is omnipresent and venatic, stalking my happiness and cheer from the darkest reaches of my being.  My own weariness and anxiety conspire with this demon to wrest control of my soul and drive my journey through the days ahead.  What once was a path filled with light now appears to me as a darkly tangled slope surrounded by hands pulling me down to the fatal grave called progress.

Deep within my ancient heart beats the drum of a life wishing to be free.  Its rhythmic thumping pierces my very being, torturing my soul with solemn promises never to be fulfilled.  I have become my own living, clothed in the writhing flesh of space drawn ever deeper into the blackened tapestry of the night.  My spirit’s essence finds muted expression, and its calls are muffled and strained.  The life I wear is now alien to me, somehow transformed into that of another who is unknown yet familiar.  Whose life have I become?  What flesh do I now wear?  Whence comes this thrashing and dead doom?

What promise life gives measures only in a grain of sand.  Therein lies no other vow save one: this life is yours to do with as you please.  Empty of claims for longevity or happiness or health, living guarantees nothing except that I am on my own.  The proclamation is written upon my very being.  Yes, others may add to my life, but ultimately it is mine alone, and that aloneness is always evident.

I see it in the death of children and hear it in their voices on the TV as they ask, “Have you seen me?”  More little faces everyday torn from their world and thrown into the unknown…  I see it in the empty smiles on every face I meet and pass, hollow attempts to make me think they’re happy.  It is a game I myself play.  The suffering of animals, the extinction of whole species, and the compromise of our environment continue to suppress nature with human whim.  I say that things are fine as I hide the empty longing that I feel, keeping my heart concealed behind deception meant more for my own wellbeing than that of others.  It paints my face with the tears that no one sees, dried only by time and my own hands.  Lonely days give rise to aloneness, and aloneness breeds lonely days.  My silent dreams fall victim to circumstance, held in eternal limbo by the requirements of survival, forever squandered under the guise of tomorrow’s empty promise.

Where can the heart go free?  When does our advanced culture and society provide for rest and relaxation?  How many struggles must we endure simply to arrive at death?  I am caught like a life in the wind, always trying to wrest control of my own life from the grips of whatever may blow, tossed about near aimlessly toward ever darkening places and times.  Where can I turn?

The call of life cries out to me in whispers audible only in the stillness of silence.  Things happen that I just do not understand.  I gaze at my life from a lonely mountaintop and stand face to face with the emptiness of the writhing space I wear.  Looking for the riddles of why leads to the search for reasons, a circular swim in the winds of time.  I climb higher to escape the pain only to find the air thinning around me, breathing now labored, my chest heaving in a desperate grab for life.

So often, there is no why.  There is no hope for tomorrow because it is not promised.  That which is not promised quite often becomes all that I have, my todays stolen from under my chin while I am too busy to notice.  I am vexed by the secrets hidden from my mind.  For all I cannot understand, I flow on the mysteries of time like all others who share the roaming of life’s peaks and valleys.  It is always more than I expected, this living thing, certainly more so recently than I had ever imagined.  Time’s predation is replete with answers always held in the hands of another, quests unimaginably fruitless.

All things end.  Thus is the birth of good times and bad times, the rollercoaster of life upon which I ride.  With shadows closing in around me, I struggle.  This too shall pass.  It is only in the most complete darkness that we fully appreciate the light.

In Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats T.S. Eliot wrote “The Naming of Cats”:

The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
  It isn’t just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.

First of all, there’s the name that the family use daily,
  Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo or James,
Such as Victor or Jonathan, George or Bill Bailey –
  All of them sensible everyday names.

There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,
  Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:
Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter –
  But all of them sensible everyday names.

But I tell you, a cat needs a name that’s particular,
  A name that’s peculiar, and more dignified,
Else how can he keep his tail perpendicular,
  Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?

Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,
  Such as Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,
Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum –
  Names that never belong to more than one cat.

But above and beyond there’s still one name left over,
  And that is the name that you never will guess;
The name that no human research can discover –
  But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.

When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
  The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
  Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
    His ineffable effable
    Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name.

I name my children only after I come to understand their personalities, and it generally takes me a week or two.  Nicknames also develop during the formative and short time right after adoption, but they generally spring to life over months.  They, too, are born of gaining an understanding of who they are and what they’re about.

While I don’t claim to know the The Kids‘ “singular Names” as no human may know them, each of them is graced by me with a formal name and one or more nicknames.  Here are their various nicknames.  Some of them are linked to related posts; over time I will add something about each of them.

Grendel‘s nicknames are Sponge, Roly-Poly, Grendelkitty, and Grouch.

Loki‘s nicknames are Satan, Mr. Mouth, Lok (pronounced “loak”), Hunter, and Motor.

Kako‘s nicknames are Miss Thing, Pumpkin-Pumpkin (pronounced “punkin-punkin”), Woman, Lady, Sweetie Lady, Sweetie Girl, Hottie Momma, Miss Mouth, and Yoda.

Kazon‘s nicknames are Mr. Man, Baby, Da Baby, Baby Boy, Puppy, and Panther Kitty.

[shamelessly adapted from AmbivaBlog via Raising Up Sunshine]