Feline Eyes

[felineyes-blog]

One-Sixty-Five

Blind with the terror and fear of what they don‘t understand, choking on their own constipation they lash out at you and me. First they try to cut you down to their own size: »Forgot to take your meds, honey?« If that don't work they bring on the heavy artillery ...

But the number of enemies you make and the trouble they go to in an attempt to make life miserable for you is proof of how successful you are. So I must be real f***ing awesome by now. Declaring war on me, they must have lost it completely. Maybe they're bored with the redundancy of their routines so they started a new war ...

What else would they come up with, imaginative as they are? So be it. Cats like me, we rather go down in style than survive the mentholated nightmare of their boredom. Let's treat 'em to the terror of beauty unleashed ...

[felineyes-blog]

One-Sixty-Four

As if there were any mental processing involved when people turn on me. Just some pre-memorial instinct telling them to watch out, something fishy about that gal. Those tugs in their neather region never are rich in detail but that‘s what makes them convincing and enticing: »Something's strange about her. Can‘t quite put my finger on it but there‘s got to be a reason for that weird feeling I get when she's around …«

Heavy nods from the empty, droning echo chambers around the table. If the information were any more precise it could be checked and double-checked with people‘s version of what they call reality. It‘s the elusiveness of those tugs in their neather region that gets their mental processing units from the pre-digital era churning. Grind, grind, churn, churn, aggravate, aggravate. No pearls ever coming forth, too constipated, too uptight ...

Beauty‘s born from pain, but you'd have to be able to feel the pain. You'd have to be alive and burning with it. Ordinary people don‘t know about pain. All they know is to avoid it at all costs. Even at that of their mental, physical, spiritual and emotional health, also known as integrity ...

Learn your lines and toe the line, baby. That‘s what they been taught, that‘s what they been doing all their lives. And beware those of you who don‘t do as they been doin' all their lives. Who you think you are? Think you‘re somebody special and extra-ordinary?

Don‘t you dare make them feel they might not be up to your standards. They have zero tolerance for cats like us, cats with style, class, and attitude. Beauty to them smells of terrorism. Extort, extort ... 

[felineyes-blog]

One-Sixty-Three

Reality‘s never been but a rag for me to hide myself from unsolicited peepers and visitors. All I need to tell them is the name I go by for administration, what my job profile says about what I‘m supposed to be doing at the office, and maybe give them an idea of how much I make every month or per year. Makes people happy to know these things, called facts. Makes them believe they‘d like to be friends with me because we have so much in common ...

From sheer boredom I occasionally venture to offer a hint or two at what‘s lurking in the beyond of these so called facts. Makes people laugh. They invariably think I‘m joking. Think I‘m a fun girl, a girl to have fun with. They like having fun so they seem to like me as well, provided I don‘t give them reason to wonder and to rack their grinding mental processing units from the pre-digital era ...

[felineyes-blog]

One-Sixty-Two

Pearls shall grow from hard and real objects within the soft and most excitable tissue of my particle accelerator. The pearl‘s being produced by adding layer upon layer of nacre, an organic-inorganic composite which is strong, resilient, and iridescent. The organism thus applies the same method to protect itself on the inside as it does for protection on the outside ...

Viewed by scientists as an adaptive immune system-like function, the two-legged animals with a bit of taste cherish pearls as gemstones of extraordinary beauty. Their name has become a metaphor for things fine, admirable and rare ...

The most valuable pearls are to be found in the backyard of your dreams. So long as you hold on to your dreams you may be rewarded one of these days. Provided you‘re willing to pay the price. Dreams are not for free. The more daring they are, the higher the price you‘ll have to pay ...

So dare me, and see what it‘ll get you …

[felineyes-blog]

One-Sixty-One

Reality‘s something for people without imagination. People who need control to prevent things extraordinary from happening. Controlling others as welll as themselves. People who‘ve overdosed on their toilet training. Their minds locked down in some grid, gritting their teeth as they hold on to what they know and what they have ...

To cats with style and attitude reality is but a nuisance, the defeat of possibilities, the abortion of hope and promises. It‘s the grain which causes first an irritation, then an inflammation in the soft and tender and most excitable tissue of my particle accelerator ...

[felineyes-blog]

One-Sixty

Been a while since I last left the apartment. Just some shopping around the corner. Most people gone on vacation at exotic beaches or in the Himalayas. Only the losers have stayed home. People who can‘t afford it or people who don‘t know any places interesting enough to bother going there ...

To me the most interesting place within the known universe is my mind. There I can find anything I could wish for, things you can‘t even imagine. Like awesome me myself. A treat no one‘s likely to top ...

The most beautiful beaches to be found there, the steepest mountains, the most mournful jungles and rivers, the most fragrant savannahs, Super Nova‘s galore, and never anyone else around except for me and that singular most beautiful of all women, along with a few leopards for company and inspiration ...

Everyone else is welcome to go looking for the beaches and deserts of reality where all the real people hang out. Me, I‘m way too awesome to bother with becoming real ...

[felineyes-blog]

One-Fifty-Nine

The sun‘s out, promising another day of relentless heat. Sitting at the keyboard I'm staring at the monitor's screen. Josephine Skriver fixing her feline eyes on me as if to hypnotize me. An amazon from savannahs scorched by the suns of my imagination, her luscious lips the color of eggplants, a leopard print scarf wrapped around her hair, and those feline eyes boring into me, diving for my soul ...

From time to time my cell phone buzzes but I don‘t take any calls anymore. I don‘t bother to check who‘s calling. I don‘t know why I haven‘t turned it off yet. Maybe I will if it starts bothering me. There‘s no hurry, no need to do or decide on whatever ...  

Early in the morning, and a whole day waiting for me to do something about it. Getting up earlier each day, going to bed later. Not really sleeping anymore, more like dozing as a kind of fading in and out of visual landscapes I can‘t place within any memories of what I used to refer to as reality ... 

[felineyes-blog]

One-Fifty-Eight

Walking on I come to at a touch light as a feather‘s stroke. Looking up I see the black silhouettes of trees outlined against veils of sand doing the Cha-Cha-Cha at the hands of the wind. Upon approaching I notice a leopard lounging on one of the lower branches of the nearest tree. It‘s looking at me idly, its tail curling and unfurling ... 

I stop underneath the branch and we‘re looking into each other‘s eyes. The cat‘s ears twitch a couple of times, then the leopard rises and looks about as if wondering what to do. Lazily it drops to the ground and begins circling me. The circles grow tighter until the cat‘s flanks brush against my legs. Its fur's sending electric charges through my body ...

I lower myself on my heels and the leopard stops and watches me. Our eyes opening like doors, delving into each other. I reach out an open hand and the cat approaches and sniffs my fingers. Its tongue licking my hand. I move my hand around the leopard‘s head and caress its beautiful fur, feeling the bones underneath, feeling the reverberations of a purr coming from deep inside. The leopad‘s tongue lapping my face. Tasting salt on my lips I realize I‘m crying ...

Strechting out in the sand alongside the leopard I wrap my arms around its warm body and I feel its power charge my body and my soul, every cell of my body singing its song as our breaths mingle and merge, and not just our breaths ...

[felineyes-blog]

One-Fifty-Seven

The sun‘s going down behind banks of pearl colored clouds, my shadow stretching farther and farther away as I‘m walking out into the mud flats. Somebody‘s voice calling after me not to walk too far, the tide would be coming back soon. I keep walking, the voice fading away ...

Night falls, the stars come out. No moon. Still walking across the mud flats. The tide hasn‘t returned. The sands I‘m treading had been sogging wet when I started out. When dawn creeps up on the horizon I‘m still walking, and I haven‘t changed direction. The water's gone from the drains and the sand under my feet is dry ...   

The sun rises and I‘m stalking through a desert, dunes to the left and the right, funnels of sand dancing along their ridges. The wind tugging at the folds of my dress ...

I‘m wearing my cocoa-colored cocktail dress, my feet are clad in a pair of gray suede Manolo Blahniks. I keep stalking across the sands. The sun climbing and soon the air‘s simmering and I can hear the blood sing as it‘s coursing through my venes. My body quaking yet I keep walking. My eyes to the ground. The sky a blinding white glare. The colors bleached from it, the sky itself devoured by the sun ...

[felineyes-blog]

One-Fifty-Six

We were expected to talk like continuously, sometimes sitting in a circle, at other times face to face with one of the people in white. As if talking might save you from people‘s lowness. We also were expected to take part in all kinds of kid‘s games. Somebody would pry my fingers open and put something into my hand. I'd drop it, and after a while they didn‘t bother with me anymore ...

One morning a nurse came in I hadn‘t seen before. A girl, really. Wearing a smock like any nurse but it wasn‘t white which was a relief. I reached out to feel its fabric and the girl stopped and smiled. Next time she came in she wasn‘t wearing a smock but an evening dress, and her feet were balancing effortlessly on very elegant high-heels. The cloud of her perfume wrapped me up and carried me away ...

[felineyes-blog]

One-Fifty-Five

Chris couldn‘t later recall how he‘d gotten home. Sitting on the matress on the floor of his apartment with his back against the wall he watched dawn and later the sun rising, dispersing the fog. He didn‘t go to work that day, didn‘t call in, didn‘t answer the phone ...

Sat on his bed and watched the sky go dark again. His first move was to reach for the knife which had been laying on the floor beside the matress for almost a year. He‘d gotten it at his last birthday. »Didn‘t even hurt«, he said when he told us about it, and he sounded genuinely disappointed ...

All of us were expected to tell how come we‘d ended up in psychiatry. Me too, except I didn‘t. Never spoke a word, not even to Chris. Once I reached out for him but when my hand touched his shoulder he jumped almost to the other side of the room ...

[felineyes-blog]

One-Fifty-Four

With a dead grin Chris walked up to her and kissed her on both cheeks. After hugging and shaking hands with everbody else he took a seat. Turned out it was the chair Felicia had been sitting on. She herself sat on Ricardo‘s knees, wrapping an arm around his neck, ruffling his hair ...

Michael brought in additional chairs from another room. One of the girls went for glasses and Ricardo opened a new bottle of wine. There was food left over from their meal and Helmut, Michael and Chris were served. Helmut and Michael dug into the pasta, Chris didn't touch his plate. Sat there with a bland grin on his frozen face, the talk and the laughter washing over him. Didn‘t taste the wine he sipped at from time to time like a mechanical toy ...

[felineyes-blog]

One-Fifty-Three

The apartment Riccardo lived in was on the ground floor of a residential building from the 19th century. The door to the apartment stood ajar, laughter and music were spilling into the hallway ...

Helmut entered first, Michael following close behind, Chris closing the door. The noise was coming from the kitchen. Chris stopped on the threshold. Helmut stood with his back to Chris in the kitchen and a pair of arms wrapped themselves around Helmut‘s shoulders. A pair of bangles of brushed steel blinking on those wrists ...     

The sight of those bangles froze Chris. He forgot to breathe for quite a while. Her face appeared behind Helmut‘s shoulders, her green eyes gazing at him in a predatory way. Knowing ...

Everybody in the room on freeze, holding their breath, waiting for what was to happen next. Waiting for Chris. What would he do, how would he take it? They knew. Everbody knew. Waiting for what he‘d be doing about it. About her. About seeing her again ...

How long‘s it been? When‘s been the last time she‘d been on his mind?

[felineyes-blog]

One-Fifty-Two

Michael used to be Helmut‘s lover. Chris never had understood how things between the two were. Never really cared, just knew he didn‘t reallly know much except they had something going on and off, whatever it was ...

For a while Helmut had shown interest in Chris but Chris had shrugged him off. First thing Helmut had to know when introduced to somebody was whether the person was gay or not. And apparently it also was the most important thing everybody had to know about Helmut. Anything Helmut showed interest in was determined by whether the people involved were gay ... 

Chris never had cared for labels of any kind. Only after that evening at Ricardo‘s did he begin to wonder if maybe some people might not simply accept that you weren‘t interested in them. The way he‘d accepted that Felicia wasn‘t interested in him ...

Wouldn‘t have occured to him that anybody might put such high stakes in his person to keep fighting with no regard nor respect of his person. Fighting for what exactly if they didn‘t even respect his attitude?

[felineyes-blog]

One-Fifty-One

Chris had been to the gym and returned home to change before taking the subway to visit the lady he'd run over the day before. Stuffing the sweat-soaked clothes into the washing machine he set the machine going when his cell phone buzzed. The display showed Helmut‘s name ...

Chris couldn‘t recall when they‘d seen each other the last time. Wondering how come Helmt called at all. Anybody who knew anything about Chris knew he‘d be on the road by now ...

Helmut said he was on his way to meet friends and asked whether Chris wanted to come along. Not really asking, just saying he‘d pick him up. Before Chris could reply Helmut had signed off ...

Chris barely had had time to change before the door bell rang. Later he'd wonder how come Helmut had gotten there so fast. As if he'd been waiting around the corner. But Chris so out of it he didn‘t care. Went along with whatever happened, no mind of his own anymore ...

Got into Helmut‘s car, expecting to see people he used to hang out with back when he still had what you‘d call a social life. Enrolled at the university and applying for a year of studying abroad ...    

»Ricardo‘s back from Chile«, Helmt said. »He‘s been asking about you. We‘ll pick up Michael, he wants to come along, too. Everybody‘s gonna be there. They all asking about you.«

[felineyes-blog]

One-Fifty

Driving a taxi seven days a week, ten hours a day. Chris been going like that for more than two years. Dead to the world around him, dead to himself. One night on the road he hit a woman with the car as she was crossing the street ...

It was raining and he‘d turned into the street at a traffic light. The crossing was badly lit and the rain made it even more difficult to see much. The woman, half hidden under a black umbrella, was wearing a dark coat. As he turned into the street the woman was in the dead angle where the wipers didn‘t clear the windshield ...

The fender caught her at the leg and threw her to the ground. Chris drove her to the next hospital where they checked her. She had bruises and a contusion on the leg, apart from that she was okay ...

Everbody, the lady herself included, more concerned about him: »You alright? You look so pale. You sure you alright?« They got him some coffee and the nurses insisted on checking him as well ...

[felineyes-blog]

One-Fourty-Nine

I came to under the muffled wailing of a siren resounding from the walls of houses the ambulance was passing. Flashes of blue whipping the night outside. When I opened my eyes again I lay in white sheets, staring at a white wall under the glare of white fluorescents. An electronic beep at regular intervals close by. A green line bumping across a dark screen ...

Three beds to the room. The first week I was alone, then a young man was brought in. Unconscious and on IV. Apparently no beds in the other rooms for male patients were available. Both of us too far gone to be up to any foolishness anyway ...

He‘d tried to kill himself. Been in love with a girl who didn‘t care about love. But that had been more than two years ago. He‘d accepted that she had no interest in him or love. She was a dancer and said no one could possibly give her anything as intense as the dancing. He‘d accepted that. Content to see her every now and then when it didn‘t bother her, like tagging along when she went to training ...

He'd dropped out of university and started driving a taxi. Ten hours a day, seven days a week. Anything to drown his mind in the drone of redundancies. To kill off whatever else there might have been ...