Greatest among the powers who illuminate is one called Watchman. He it is who says 'Mercy is found only in shadow.' But he does not say that mercy is nowhere found; and shadows lie long at the Labyrinth of Lions.
Nephew, make a fist of your hand. Muscles move beneath the skin. So powers move beneath the skin of the world, at impulses equally invisible, but greater. . . . My nephew, I have said that the powers of the world are moved by secret impulse, but the converse is true also. The fingers move the hand which moves the soul.
“Now, go on ahead, show respect, and LISTEN CAREFULLY.”
— syrupwit
My evening was going downhill and then I logged on to find this in my inbox (which, to be clear, made things better). I love that you're enjoying this video so much:
*Your Cruelest Friend voice* This isn't Dragon Age fanfiction, so I'm not going to tag the blog.
(I wrote this in 15 minutes as a warmup, timed, while mostly not allowing myself to stop or edit! Thank you so terribly much for the prompt, Alexander.)
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What can be said of Big Ears, the Cat Horrific? What other animal commands such potent memory? Man may be an animal, and a spirit as well; but cat is no spirit, and a cat with spirit such to imitate a man -- such a fact cannot be borne, cannot be borne, cannot be borne. Big Ears had big ears, for a cat, but not for a man. They had tufts at the edges and went up alarmingly. The tufts, not the edges, although those also went up. Big Ears had a frightening face and a gentle raspy tongue. Few experienced the gentleness of that cat. I will get to the name in a moment. You must forgive me, I cannot help rambling. The name -- when you said the name, everything in my heart and mind became immersed in fizzy water, scattered through with bubbles like fizzy water, and my thoughts and intentions were upset like a glass of fizzy water, a trickling waterfall. Big Ears. Well I remember that cat. But I must tell you.
Big Ears, the Cat Horrific, was the ruler of a small enclave of cats who lived under a truck. The truck had been idle for years, decades, centuries, or possibly just an hour, depending on who you talked to about it. Big Ears could leap on top of the truck, and that was why he was the cats' ruler. They elect their rulers based on criteria like this. Cats are not smart. Human beings, of course, are not much smarter, so don't go swelling your big apely head about it. Apes -- apes can imitate. I imitated Big Ears in his courage, his largeness, at times his generosity, at times his ferocity, at times his lust for fish, at times his lust for dirt -- cats can have pica -- I forgot what I was saying. As a cat with a spirit imitates the spirit of a human, living so close to humans as cats do, so I chose to imitate and play the ape to Big Ears, the Cat Horrific. Why Horrific? Well, I will tell you in a moment.
It's hard to know what to tell anyone. Words get lost most of the time, between people, as if we were passing them over our shoulders and behind each other and tossing them, sometimes, with weak wrists. I have limp and weak joints. It's because I didn't get enough nourishment as a child, like a cat who was the runt of the litter. I'm lying. But what about? You couldn't know. Big Ears knew things sometimes in the way a cat does, due to their extra senses that are simply normal senses for them. Can you imagine if we went around telling dogs -- in my imagining, dogs are sentient -- can you imagine if we went around telling them that we had special powers because our vision is so much better than theirs? I think that would be unbearable of us, the terrible apes that we are.
Who gave Big Ears his name and his title? I have not told you of his paws. They were larger than his ears, very plush, and very intimidatingly clawed. But he was gentle with them to kittens. I couldn't abide a cat who mistreated kittens. I don't know if cats see that as a matter of any importance, but it mattered to me, which is why I went into the diamond and lab equipment trade (long story) with Big Ears and not his competitor, Tormelion the Fierce.
Cats are a bit like candles: they flicker. Oh, no, that's the flame, or the spirit of the cat. I have already said that most cats have no spirit. Are not spirited, as humans are. Spirits have been on my mind lately, as I am quite old now and can feel mine departing from me. Soon it will move down to the silence of the shallows, the shallow pool, the still and shallow and quiet pool where all spirits eventually sink. They sink through there, play around in the river mud, meet a pebble or two -- I have spoken to pebbles who said they met many spirits -- and pass through, like a sigh, to the other side of the earth. The great secret of spirits and passings is that nothing ever leaves. That should not comfort you. I didn't say it to comfort you.
Big Ears, the Cat Horrific, lives on in the popular imagination. Of humans, perhaps more than cats. Not many humans live in the popular imagination of cats. There's more a single human, maybe two. There's a cruel human and a kind one. The kind one is stupid. Cats need to be clever, even when they don't have to deal with a cruel human. You will forgive me for presuming to sound like an expert on cats. I've only done business with one for 50 years; I am as apelike and two-legged as I've ever been.
Is it true you sometimes speak favourably of the Theravada teacher “Thanny Bhikk”?
It’s true that I’m still loving his book The Mind Like Fire Unbound: An Image in the Early Buddhist Discourses, which I've been going through slowly for a few weeks. Clear prose and an appealing way of talking about the original texts that he cites. I’m a bit overwhelmed by the proliferation of classical texts in translation, original and translated books, and other information available on his website, but it all looks good.
We know I’m not particularly well read or informed with regard to this topic (Buddhism and Buddhist texts). It’s possible that my opinion may change when I gain more context or read more deeply in a tradition. At the moment, though? Feeling pretty darn favorably, and speaking so.
To see the chasm yawning below him, the intricate windings of that great, tortured crack in the Martian crust, induced nausea and the beginnings of vertigo.
