I’m Just A Traveler In Other People’s Reality — Image by a Fellow Higher On The Trail
Invoking the Full Meaning of Life
How best to express sharing new life
when each moment deserves its face.
What seems apropos for the moment,
when the next moment fosters a unique experience.
Is it in a number?
The number of days?
The number of thoughts?
The number of heartbeats?
The number of turns?
The number of prayers?
. . . you can count the ways,
only to still not know life’s score.
Is it in a word?
Loving?
Caring?
Sharing?
Giving?
Sheltering?
Words to communicate thoughts and feelings
when manifested in knowledge and experience.
Or is it in art?
Transforming thought,
expressing feeling,
experiencing emotions and
the desire to evoke life,
even when distance
appears to separate a lifelong bond.
I wrote this in the 1990s. Since then, retirement and moved 1,000 miles from where we had spent 25 years, putting distance between bonds. In the twelve years since moving, we have watched the bonds drift away, causing me to question the desire to evoke life, even when distance can’t separate a lifelong bond.
We moved to the Sonoran desert with the illusion that friends and family would be beating a path to our new home in the desert southwest — not such luck. So we try staying in touch through social media, often questioning whether the bonds were ever real — confirming that we remain tourists in other people’s reality.
Old Jules was a 70-year-old hermit, living with three cats somewhere in the Texas Hill Country and writing a blog I enjoyed reading from time to time. Old Jules, who passed away April 21, 2020 at 74, had concluded that he has spent over a third of his life “being insignificant in the lives of others.”
In 1992, after 25 years of marriage and a career of 20 years, he began a new career and life in Santa Fe.
“All secure in the knowledge the extended family and friends remaining behind were part of my life in which I’d been and remained important.”
Over time he concluded it was all an illusion.
“Kids, young adult nephews, and nieces I’d coddled and bounced on my knee pealed out of my life-like layers of an onion. Most I never heard from again.”
He began to realize that he was merely tolerated, “. . . a piece of furniture in their lives.”
Over time he rebuilt his life with a more potent dose of skepticism concerning his worth and place in the lives of others, which resulted in his becoming a hermit.
“I no longer assume I’m important in the lives of other human beings and get my satisfaction in knowing I’m at least relevant to the cats.
Because cats, though sometimes dishonest, aren’t capable of the depth and duration of dishonesty humans indulge regularly.”
Old Jules had come to believe “. . . that life is entirely too important and too short to be wasted in insignificance.”
His new awareness of life is now in teaspoon measurements, “. . . measured in contracts with cats not equipped to lie. A determination in the direction of significance measured in teaspoons of reality,
as opposed to 55-gallon drums of dishonesty and self-delusion.”
“Teaspoons, I find, don’t spill away as much life in the discovery
when they’re found to be just another ego-wart of pride and self-importance.”
Bonds, illusion or not, have difficulty being when the moments are separated by time and distance, becoming gleams of light, for an instant, in the long night.
I understand where Old Jules was coming from and feel his disillusionment. There is, however, a binding force that comes from a homesick longing to be whole, to have completion, as Plato described in the myth of the human halves passionately striving towards one. Like all mythical totalities, humans are subject to the triple dramaturgical rhythm of primal completeness, separation catastrophe, and restoration. The most significant attraction effect occurs between the second and third acts of life’s drama, which is where I find myself today — maybe this is also where Old Jules is. I am learning to understand myself from a new divide, one half experienced, the other inexperienced — in such a way that I’m learning to understand myself in new ways.
Looking back on our move from The Woodlands, Texas to Tucson, I’m not sure which one of us may have experienced the most anxiety. One might think it would have been the cat, Kika (who passed away this past December), but Joy would probably argue that point. In many ways we have adjusted well to our new home, town and friends.
Now we are starting our fifth year here, longer than most friends and family would have predicted, especially since Joy has not grown to love southern Arizona as I have — we may very well be considering a different five-year plan after this year.
The four years we have lived here have allowed us to experience most of the things we took into consideration in making the decision to make the move: a new adventure, closer to Joy’s mother and siblings. We are now moving into our fifth year in the Catalina Foothills, not yet knowing what will be driving our next five-year plan, which is why I share again the following poem, “Birthday.” The poem could have very easily been titled, “Life.”
A couple of hours ago I said goodbye to Kika. I don’t know what her life was like before we gave a rescued mixed Siamese our home 4 1/2 years ago, but in a short period she carved a gigantic place in my heart. Right now it is soooo difficult to write anything without an occasional paw touching the keyboard — I know now it was her way of helping me write. God, was she helping me write!
I wrote this in the 1990s. Since then, retirement and moved 1,000 miles from where we had spent 25 years, putting distance between bonds. In the three years since moving, we have watched the bonds drift away, causing me to question the desire to evoke life, even when distance can’t separate a lifelong bond.
We had moved to the Sonoran desert with the illusion that friends and family would be beating a path to our new home in the desert southwest — not such luck. So we try staying in touch through social media, often questioning whether the bonds were ever real — confirming that we remain tourists in other people’s reality.
Old Jules is a 70-year-old hermit, living with three cats somewhere in the Texas Hill Country and writing a blog I enjoy reading from time to time. Old Jules has concluded that he has spent over a third of his life “being insignificant in the lives of others.”
In 1992, after 25 years of marriage and a career of 20 years, he began a new job and life in Santa Fe.
“All secure in the knowledge the extended family and friends remaining behind were part of my life in which I’d been and remained important.”
Over time he concluded it was all an illusion.
“Kids, young adult nephews, and nieces I’d coddled and bounced on my knee pealed out of my life-like layers of an onion. Most I never heard from again.”
He began to realize that he was merely tolerated, “. . . a piece of furniture in their lives.”
Over time he rebuilt his life with a more potent dose of skepticism concerning his worth and place in the lives of others, which resulted in his becoming a hermit.
“I no longer assume I’m important in the lives of other human beings and get my satisfaction in knowing I’m at least relevant to the cats.
Because cats, though sometimes dishonest, aren’t capable of the depth and duration of dishonesty humans indulge regularly.”
Old Jules has come to believe “. . . that life is entirely too important and too short to be wasted in insignificance.”
His new awareness of life is now in teaspoon measurements, “. . . measured in contracts with cats not equipped to lie. A determination in the direction of significance measured in teaspoons of reality,
as opposed to 55-gallon drums of dishonesty and self-delusion.”
“Teaspoons, I find, don’t spill away as much life in the discovery
when they’re found to be just another ego-wart of pride and self-importance.”
Bonds, illusion or not, have difficulty being when the moments are separated by time and distance, becoming gleams of light, for an instant, in the long night.
I understand where Old Jules is coming from and feel his disillusionment. There is, however, a binding force that comes from a homesick longing to be whole, to have completion, as Plato described in the myth of the human halves passionately striving towards one. Like all mythical totalities, humans are subject to the triple dramaturgical rhythm of primal completeness, separation catastrophe, and restoration. The most significant attraction effect occurs between the second and third acts of life’s drama, which is where I find myself today — maybe this is also where Old Jules is. I am learning to understand myself from a new divide, one half experienced, the other inexperienced — in such a way that I’m learning to understand myself in new ways.
— kenne
“Have you not done tormenting me with your accursed time! It’s abominable! When! When! One day, is that not enough for you, one day he went dumb, one day I went blind, one day we’ll go deaf, one day we were born, one day we shall die, the same day, the same second, is that not enough for you?
They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it’s night once more.”
Anyone who has a cat will recognize this image. It’s their nature to be in the middle of whatever you are doing.
Being a blogger, I have noticed that many bloggers share photos of their cat(s). The other day when I saw yet another blogger cat image, Kika was in her usual place asleep in a position similar to the blogger’s cat. So, I captured the above image — cats being cats!
Through our cats, each named Kiko, I was first introduced to Shaun Mullen.
You see, like us, Shaun also had a lovable cat named Kiko. And, like us, he named his Kiko from the Los Lobos song, “Kiko and the Lavender Moon.” Having never met Shaun, only sharing a few emails around the time of our Kiko’s death in December of 2008, I continue to feel a connection through his blog, “Kiko’s House.” This morning’s Kiko’s House blog entry is “Chin Chin (ca. 1998-2011).”
“Most rescue cats come into the lives of their new owners in cat carriers or by meowing outside of doors until they are fed. However, chin Chin or Chin has she came to be known, arrived in a pillowcase.”
We, too, now have a rescue cat, Kika. Although unlike Chin, we know little of her earlier life, other than frightened and skittish, she was not an abused cat. Having “. . . lived unhappily in a house dominated by thuggish owners and a big dog, and I would see her tiny black-and-white self peering at me through a lace-curtained window when I would pedal by the house on my mountain bike during morning rides.”
Chin was nurtured back to health, living with Shaun and his family for three and a half years.
“People ascribe great virtues to their pets and can be forgiven the hyperbole that usually accompanies their oohs and aahs.
But Chin did have a special virtue. She had been abused and neglected and then abandoned, yet she had great sense in her tiny head and great love in her big heart in adopting us. Believe me; it was not the other way around. And for a few short years, she gave us a joy that we gladly reciprocated.”
Our animal friends always bless us with love and attention when most needed. (Click here to read Shaun’s complete posting.)
I wrote the following poem about Kiko, two years ago:
He was in my shadow network Stopping when I stopped Playing when I played Sleeping when I slept Always by my side. When he danced, I would dance But never in lock-step, Only to the rhythm of shared music. With each step, he took my heart Building a crescendo of love. Now the music is silent As I move in darkness No shadow at my feet Only fallen tears of memories Keeping me close to his ways. But, darkness will not last For his name is the password To the ways of love And the light of the lavender moon That will always spawn his shadow.
Kika next to me in the passenger seat — iPhone image
Joy and I have taken two overnight trips since moving to Tucson. Each time, we left Kika at home and had a pet-setter check on her. He only previous trip was when we moved from The Woodlands to Tucson. We are now in Fort Stockton in route to Kingwood, Texas. And, this time Kika is traveling with us. Even though she is a big fraidy-cat, she’s real good traveler in the car.
I haven’t told her we will be staying with Fox and James, two of her not so favorite house companions.
When we first moved in to our home in the foothills, we saw a couple of snakes on the patio. Kathy told us that we needed an ‘indoor/outdoor” cat, assuming Kika was just an indoor cat, to keep the snakes away. Since the patio area is walled-in, she likes being outside with me, just as she did in The Woodlands. Well, our guard cat seems to be doing the job — no sign of snakes since she has been spending time on the patio. Don’t you just love it??!!
Now that Kika, our new rescued mixed-siamese cat has been with us for four months, I’m learning how much she is like the first mixed-Siamese cat Mary Ann and I got in the summer of 1966 in Okinawa. He lived to be 18 and is pictured with Katie in the image below. Like most tomcats, Niko was bigger with a broader chest and head, but otherwise the two are very much alike. Oh yes, Niko was more of a “talker” than Kika.
We still miss Kiko, but Kika has done a very good job of filling the void.
kenne
Katie & Niko Image by kenne (the original may have been taken by Mary Ann)
Kiko (May 1992 – December 2008) — Abstract Art by kenne
Kenne, Kika & Joy On Empty Patio (June 21, 2010)
RIP — KiKa, 20?? to December 28, 2013 
Sometimes Kika falls asleep on the job, but she’s always there with me when I’m at the desk. — Image by kenne
Self-portrait 
Images by kenne
