Chapter 19 — Cat Drop
Rufus examines the frailty of life.
Followed by Chapter 19 —— Cat Drop, in which Saskia tries taking another animal back through time.
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Hello Friends,
Today’s chapter is a reflection on the idea that we all chart our own paths through life, and by “we” I include any living thing. It’s curious distinguishing between life and not-life, but life is idiosyncratic and special.
It’s the sort of thing that we obliviously sail on by on most days——well, maybe obliviously isn’t quite the right phraseology, but I think you understand what I mean; it’s not front and center of our consciousness. Once in a while, however, that blissful unawareness is punctured, and the preciousness of life is impressed upon us. I was reminded of this a few weeks ago by a triplicate of tragedies, and the griefs they precipitated. Like all griefs, they each had their own dimensions, but, in meditating on them, I was struck that two included an element that was grief about something that was yet to pass.
It’s strange how the crystallization of a certainty is something that comes in degrees and different colors. You can know something is coming, and still maintain intellectual dissonance about the prospect. Then, you get a piece of information——one confirmatory element——and suddenly everything becomes more real.
On a brighter note, around the same time, my youngest had a pretty triumphant month or so that culminated in her winning one of those giant oversized checks at a business competition for high school kids, and after a slightly rocky track season last year, finished this season back in form.
Moreover, my eldest is flourishing on the other side of the world. She’s loving her chosen studies and combining them with sailing and swimming, the latter of which she is adding a new dimension to, having joined the Serpentine club which allows her to swim in the lake in Hyde Park, London.
It’s heartening to see the next generation stepping out into their own lives and thriving. To see them realizing the hopes I’ve long harbored for them. Most profoundly, that they are happy and wringing the most out of life!
Unfortunately, the one certainty in life is that it will one day end. The how is a mystery until we wish it wasn’t. This is one of the chief allures of the time travel genre, which, when I think about it, is a little strange when the underlying realm under consideration is fictitious; it’s odd that the mystery of how something will play out is more gripping, when in a very real sense it is an arbitrary outcome, the direction of which is at the whim of the author. But although I, the author, might well be seeking to maximize emotional and story pull the trust you’ve placed in me and the unwritten contract we’ve made should give you confidence that the final outcome will all make sense.
In the real world, the outcomes of life’s uncertainties don’t always make sense, and their specifics can be harrowing. I suspect this is the root etymology of the phrase is: Fuck Cancer.
It is a two word mantra, but words struggle to express what you don’t appreciate until with a clarifying solidity they become something you do understand. Again, fuck cancer. Life might be long, but it’s not forever, so really try to be present in the moments of joy that exist along the journey and all the wonderful experiences that you get to live while you still can.
This week, more than ever, be kind to someone and keep an eye out for the ripples of joy you’ve seeded.
Cheerio
Rufus
PS. If you think of someone who might enjoy joining us on this experiment, please forward them this email. And if you are one of those someone’s and you’d like to read more
And now, back to the comforting world of fiction: here’s chapter nineteen in which Saskia tries taking another animal back through time.
— 19 —
Cat Drop
Saskia guffawed, choking on her drink. “What?”
“How come you don’t arrive naked? When you ‘slip’ in time?”
Saskia cocked her head, checking Mica’s face for double meaning. But her question seemed genuine. “Why would I?”
“Well——”
“Besides,” Saskia interrupted her before she could explain her thinking, “you saw me at the racetrack the other day.”
“True, and at no point were you naked.” Mica reflected back on that adventure; something was bubbling up in her mind and she grappled to catch it. She made contact: “But you weren’t able to pull me back with you. Do you think that’s because I’m alive?”
Saskia considered Mica’s hypothesis, but her own mind was careening in another direction, to whit, she gave voice to her hypothetical spitball: “I wonder what would happen if I was driving a car while slipping in time.”
“Maybe not such a great idea to try that.”
Saskia agreed not, with a shake of her head. “You think I should try another animal?” She answered Mica’s question with one of her own.
It was a risky proposition. Science and literature were filled with a litany of characters playing with tools and concepts they didn’t really understand. And not just science fiction. Well before AI, there had been a day when it was perfectly accepted to x-ray your feet to determine shoe size.
While both women mulled their own thoughts, Mica’s cat slinked into the room. The svelte feline attracted both women’s attention.
Saskia turned from the cat to Mica again. “Did the world slow down——actually, first: did the world speed up when I was pulling you to the finish line? Back at the racetrack?”
“What do you mean?”
“I pulled you forward through time. Which made the world around us look like it sped up. Right?”
Mica looked blankly at Saskia, as if the other woman had, out of the blue, started speaking Polish. “To say you pulled me is a bit of a stretch. I let you lead me.”
“But everyone around us. They all looked like they were moving really fast.” Saskia stated this as if it were fact, but buried in her declaration was the nervous implicit question: “you felt it too, right?”
It was surprising to both of them that they’d shared a lived experience and simply assumed the other had perceived it as they had, only to find that was not the case. But, as their incredulity subsided, they each shared what they remembered.
Mica described how Saskia’s grip was initially very loose, as they made their way to the finish line, but tightened dramatically when they turned for the betting windows. She reaffirmed that she never felt time dilating either faster or slower, and reminded Saskia how her grip became painfully tight right before Saskia disappeared altogether. The two women contrasted this with Saskia’s essentially inverse experience at the racetrack.
“Perhaps,” Mica posited, “living things care about the direction of time, but inanimate objects don’t.”
“It’s weird. ’Cause, as you noted, my clothes come with me. But where does what I’m affecting stop?”
“Do not revisit your idea about trying to take a car back with you!” Mica playfully reiterated her earlier admonition.
It was strange though, when you thought about it, that not once had Saskia’s clothes stayed in the prosaically progressing “present” when she went forwards or backwards. And that, despite Saskia’s failed attempt to shift Mica’s perspective.
Mica could see the seductive allure in Saskia’s curiosity to try another animal, but she intervened categorically when Saskia’s eyes had fallen on Mica’s fluffy Russian Blue. “You’re not trying Fish.”
“Fish?” Saskia asked, confused.
Mica picked up her flopsy feline and stroked his grey fur. “He’s silky as a fish. It’s an ironic name!”
The corner of Saskia’s mouth tipped up in joy, but in her mind she saw herself picking the cat up. It wasn’t such an unreasonable experiment. If the cat stayed and she disappeared from the present, it’d just drop. Cats were good at landing on their feet. “Sure, I look a little haggard, but I’m still here. And besides, I tried taking you back in time with me,” Saskia reasoned. “I could hold him over your bed.”
“I’ve got a better idea,” Mica dismissed Saskia’s proposition with a safer alternative. She’d been battling ants around Fish’s food station, and given her willingness to wipe them away with a eucalyptus oil cloth, it hardly seemed a tough stance to sacrifice one to science. That said, it turned out to be trickier to catch one than either woman had initially expected. In the end a sheet of paper was used as a trap and transport.
Once on the paper, Mica lifted the page and gently swept the unwitting volunteer onto Saskia’s hand. They watched as it explored the new surface underfoot, scurrying from Saskia’s palm to the back of her hand and back again; around the world in eight seconds, as it were.
Saskia stood at Mica’s kitchen table, orienting her hand so that the ant stayed directly above the center of the white sheet of paper. “Alright, here goes nothing.”
She slowed time down, and, as she did so, the ant slowed too, becoming easier to keep in place. That alone ought to have been enough to tell Saskia all she needed to know, but just to be sure, she decided she needed to reverse time altogether.
Then, glancing up, she saw herself appear, out in her peripheral vision, circumnavigating the table. She almost surprised herself out of her plan.
“Dddiiiiddd iiiitttt wwwwoooorrrrrkkkk?” the newly appeared Saskia asked.
All Saskia knew was that to answer this question she needed to go back in time. She redoubled her concentration, stepped back from the table and stopped time altogether, easing backwards for a moment as she rounded the table.
Stunned by the appearance of the second Saskia, Mica glanced back at the first Saskia just in time to see her disappear.
Meanwhile, above the table, like a rising platform with a box on it, and someone willfully pushing that box to the edge, the ant suddenly found itself mid-air. And in the same way that the moment the box passed the edge of the platform, and the platform no longer exerted any upward lift, the ant now went crashing down. Hardly a perfect analogy, as the ant never really ‘crashed down’, and the platform in question never switched direction in time, but still ...
More or less by luck, Mica flipped her focus back to the ant, right as it dropped onto the center of the white page. The insect barely paused to take in its new, flatter world. Instead, it launched into a wonderfully graphic staccato Brownian motion that only lost its crisp definition when it left the white paper to the flecked brown grain of the wooden table.
The returned Saskia stood across the table. “Well, turns out I can’t even move an ant.” She laughed.
Mica looked up at her. “But, now I really do believe you can move you through time.”
