Setsuled's Journal

It's just me, two cats, and three large air-purifier things here now. Gods, I love being alone, even under these circumstances.

Lucky the cat has been rather clingy, practically glued to my calf wherever I go in the house and meowing constantly. I was thinking he's like a girl who's chosen a man because he's always been sweet to her and provided for her, only to find in a seemingly threatening situation, she has a primal need to feel protected by him and she's not sure he's up to it--so she tries to find out by constantly demanding attention.

It was an interesting night's sleep. Victoria the cat was perfectly cool, content hanging out next to me while I read before she retired to the closet for the evening. Lucky, meanwhile, was continually pawing at my door to be let in and, when let in, he'd walk around the room for a few moments, meowing, before pawing on the door to be let out. He repeated this sequence of actions several times between 4:30am and 6:30am--and just leaving the door open didn't help, either. He merely jumped on my pillow and began pawing the wall behind my head.

However, I did manage to get to sleep at the incredible time of 1:30am, which I suspect I owe to lack of sleep from the previous night and a glass of whiskey. Surprisingly enough, Catch-22 is a much better book with a glass of whiskey. Suddenly prose that seemed half-hearted and distant became rather amiable and warmly enthusiastic. Suddenly it makes sense that this novel was a bestseller in the 50s.

I was genuinely awed by Sonya Taaffe's "Kaddish for a Dybbuk" in her Postcards from the Province of Hyphens. It's strange to think I converse regularly with someone so brilliant--the poem in question so nicely captures the atmosphere of grieving at a funeral and gives it a supernatural package as keen as anything Neil Gaiman wrote for Sandman--that wonderful feeling of seeing something absolutely fantastic and feeling every detail of the thing resonate with you as it's so human an experience as to be personally yours. She's impossibly good, this Taaffe girl.