The Official "Nothing" Blog

The blogger sits and
waits for inspiration, yet
nothing comes to her.

Nightfall

Opening her eyes,
the owl queries the darkness,
but gets no answer.

untitled

Billowing curtains
dance rhythmically to a music
only they can hear.

An Error Rectified.

I mentioned I have three cats. Miles, a 10 year old male, Corie, a 3 year old female, and Zeke, a male kitten. I lied. Zeke is not, in fact, a male.

I must have subconsciously known. I was lying in bed one afternoon, and Zeke was curling up to nurse at the mole on my neck. She insists that it's not a mole-- that it is, in fact, an oddly placed nipple. And she will not rest (or let me rest) until she has made every attempt to get milk from it. I've tried to explain it, but cats just don't listen to humans.

At any rate, I was suddenly, shockingly, obsessed with seeing her backside. Zeke doesn't mind being handled in the least, so the only problem was getting her placed properly so I could see. Sure enough, she's female.

This wouldn't pose a problem, had I named this cat anything but Zeke. How does one feminize such a name? I have never heard a female Z name I liked, and certainly not one a cat would like. As T.S. Eliot pointed out, the naming of cats is a serious matter.

Zeke is a smart cat, I reasoned. She's more than capable of learning a new name. I started calling her Sophie, which has (to me) a connotation of both elegance and silliness-- perfect for a young cat. As I did when she was newly discovered, I petted her and repeated her name over and over for several days. I am sure she got the point. Her view of the matter seemed to be, "What the hell are you calling me that for? Oh, well, if I MUST answer to it." I swear by this keyboard that she accepted the name Sophie with bemused tolerance.

The problem with changing someone's name mid-career is that you tend to forget the new name. And of course, other people tend to forget even more. To my mother, Sophie is, now and forever, a Zeke. Half the time, I would call her (the cat, not my mother) Zeke as well.

Yesterday afternoon, lying in bed waiting for the kitten to give up on neckmilk for the day so I could go to sleep, it came to me: Zakia. It's feminine, and there is absolutely no reason why Zeke couldn't be a nickname for Zakia. They say necessity is the mother of invention. I believe desperation must also play a part.

At any rate, Zeke seems much more content with her lot in life, now that I've stopped calling her Sophie.

Schizo

The lone voice, crying
into the night. The voice of
Sanity denied.

All Is Vanity

All Is Vanity
Originally uploaded by Hannah Owl.

I looked into my mirror and saw
How Beautiful I was.
and I brushed my hair
Just So.

The Skull in my mirror
laughed at me and said,
“Looks are superficial;
Beauty comes from the Heart.”

“I’m Beautiful! I’ve proven it!”

It only asked me how.

I remember I had reached the Top
by clawing and pushing and shoving.
I thought of all the people I’d hurt
just to show how great I was.

The Skull merely warned,
“All is Vanity.”

As the years passed,
I watched myself deteriorate.
I became ugly with age-
inside and out.

No longer was I society’s Butterfly,
but an age'd old woman.
and the Skull began to laugh.

“Now look at yourself. What do you see?
The Truth, my dear, the Truth.”

“I’m still Beautiful!
No…you are right.
Why, Skull, why did I have to live this Hell?”

“You listened not to the warnings
and so you must pay the price.”

“Skull, what are you?’
“You know now.”

and I did. It was Death in all his Glory;
finally He was to take me.

The mirror enveloped me and my reflection.
Suddenly I saw myself at twenty.
The Skull showed the Beauty I’d once known.

Then I realized
the Beauty was in me-
is in me now
and radiating out from me.

Finally I am at Peace.

As I die, I think of the Skull’s words:
All is Vanity

The Name Game

Even today, the small town is distinguishable by the fact that everyone knows everyone else. The entire town turns out for weddings, funerals, graduations, even the grade school band concerts.

Children, for the most part, tend to behave better with such a set-up. If a child misbehaves, SOMEONE is going to inform his parents, every time. Wherever the children are playing, there is always an adult or two nearby, to keep an eye on things. Children grow up with an extended family of anywhere between 500 and 2000 people.

This extended family is particularly evident in whatever church or social groups the parents join. Everyone greets each family as they come in, and addresses each child by name. For most of the adults, this poses no problems. They were, after all, present at the birthing, the baptism or circumcision, first communion, confirmation. The adults know the children's names, have pinched their cheeks and said, "My, how you've grown," once a week for years. And children grow up murming a shy hello to a swarm of blue-haired faces that all look vaguely alike. What healthy child, after all, cares to differentiate between "old" men and women of their parents' generation? After the child has politely greeted the other adults, he is (depending on the situation) allowed to go play with the other kids, or, at the very least, allowed to sit in a pew and not be the center of attention.

This poses a serious problem as a child grows up. Allowed to roam the town freely by the age of eight or ten, he finds himself being spoken to by numerous adults whose names he does not know. No one thinks to introduce him. He has, after all, known these people since his birth. And, being a healthy child, he doesn't really care that much, in the first place.

The teenage years are a time of practicing social skills, separate from the family home. Teenagers join groups, clubs, churches, seeking their own identity. Now the problem becomes more serious. If a teen joins a church or a social group his family is not a part of, it's possible that introductions will be made, which ring a vague bell, but if the groups have a close association to his parents (a young persons' ministry in the same church, for example), it is assumed that the teen knows everyone.

Adults become more demanding of children during the teen years. Rather than just a muttered hello, adults expect an actual conversation, asking after family members and the like, and expecting the same courtesy. Despite rumors to the contrary, teenagers want to belong (on THEIR terms, of course). They want to fit in, to socialize, to appear older than they are. How does a teen ask after someone's family when he has no idea who that person is? If the teen has good enough social skills, he can fake it, until he gets enough clues to realize who he's talking to. If the teen is shy enough, or embarrassed enough, he will walk away, still not knowing who that was.

Most children grow up and leave home. Some, however, come back to the same community in which they grew up. Those blue-haired men and women suddenly don't look so old, and one realizes that they hadn't been quite as old as supposed. In fact, as an adult, one must work with (and socialize with) people of all ages. Now, being an adult member of a small society, it is far more difficult to fake social interactions. If one is lucky, an older friend or relative will be along to whisper names into his ear. If not, disaster is only one flubbed line away. At church, at temple, at the grocery store, the local diner, even the mini-mart, a slew of familiar faces pass by, expecting acknowledgement.

I seldom greet people, and seldom chat for more than a minute. I have a reputation for being stand-offish and rude. The simple fact of the matter is, I haven't the foggiest idea who anyone is.

Retard

When I was a child, I was in a special education resource room for 2 hours a week, for speech impediments and dyslexia. I understood the speech therapy classes. Hell, even I knew I couldn't talk properly. No one, however, bothered to explain why I was in the retard room. I didn't even hear the term dyslexic until after I was an adult. Having been put in the retard room, I was, obviously, too stupid for the mainstream.

This was a serious fallacy on the part of the children. Back in the 70's, as I have explained in other posts, there were limited facilities for children with a wide range of difficulties. Pretty much everyone with a mental or physical handicap passed through the special ed room at some point in their school careers. Not realizing this, I grew up assuming I was stupid.

Having more interaction with the "special" kids than most mainstreamers, I did know a few children who were actually retarded. I knew they were dumb, but that didn't bother me as much as how they looked, dressed, talked. Some of them couldn't unconsciously control their lip muscles, and would drool. Some had the physical characteristics of Down's Syndrome. Some had deformed limbs. One was a dwarf. One was in a wheelchair. In later years, my school became certified for teaching blind students, and we had a group of about ten. Not all of these kids were stupid. The dwarf, in fact, still lives here in town, and owns her own business. But children, like all people, are prejudiced against those who are different.

The word retard makes a great insult, does it not? It says so very much in only 6 letters. It knocks the person right off his ass, and down on the ground with the other animals, where he belongs, and raises you up a notch on the ladder of evolution. Retard was a common childhood insult when I was growing up, and I admit I used it as much as anyone else. At the same time, I had an empathy for the mentally disabled, having been in class with them, and been judged (even by myself) as one of them.

Oddly enough, when I was in the 6th grade, the school put together another resource program-- one for gifted students. I was the only person to be both in the smart class and the retard class at the same time.

I didn't belong in the smart class. I was, after all, a dummy. The school actually did make the mistake of putting far more children in the advanced class than truly belonged there. By some act of god, the administration realized its mistake, and corrected it the next year.

Even though I was an idiot, I loved the advanced class. We played around with logic, math, art.... I even got my first introduction to the computer-- an Apple II, which ran a form of BASIC. One of our projects was to learn to program the thing. Odd task for a retard.

In seventh grade, I stopped going to the resource rooms for anything other than the advanced class. It was just as well, because by this time, I knew I was not retarded, and I didn't understand why I was there. This would have been the perfect time for someone to sit down with me and explain dyslexia, and the point of the exercises I had been blowing off for the last few years. Had I understood there was an actual reason behind them, I might have applied myself.

In the seventh grade, the classes were divided by ability, in the hopes of better preparing everyone for the rigors of high school. Suprisingly enough, I was placed in the highest class for everything.

The peer pressure in Jr. High school is greater than at any other point in a person's life. A twelve year old will do almost anything to fit in, if only temporarily. I remember a girl, who lived on the next block. She was 3 years younger than I, and (still) in special ed. We had played together after school and in the summer for years. One day, I saw her at her locker, being bullied by my classmates. The only excuse I have is that I was 12. I joined in, attacking her just as visciously. She ran away in tears. And for a day, I had friends. Until those friends remembered that I was just another dummy, and turned on me, as I had done to Rebecca. Rebecca herself never spoke to me again.

In the eighth grade (the last before high school, for you foreigners), we were lectured time and time again over the importance of our educations, and how our choices now would influence our high school years, and our ultimate success. We had to meet with the high school counselor, to plan our freshman courses. As I had been in the band in grade school, he automatically arranged my schedule around band. I was too shy to tell him I had planned to drop band, and let him put me in whatever courses he liked. One of those was Algebra.

I was afraid of algebra. Not realizing that I'd already been learning it for a year, I refused at first to take it. There was another class, Introduction to Algebra, that I wished to take instead. It seemed logical. I didn't know algebra-- I needed introduced to it. The counsellor explained to me that it was the same class as Algebra 1, only broken down into two years. He told me I'd be bored stiff in a week. He also explained that for college, I needed to take geometry, trig, and calculus. He told me if I took the Intro course, I would ruin my life. Shyly, I agreed, aghast at my nerve in daring to argue with an adult male in an authority position.

Of course, I did well in algebra, and successfully managed my high school math career. Yet at odd times, I would remember that the intro class would have ruined my life, and I worried about those students condemned to take it.

I also began vaguely worrying about the retarded kids. How were they supposed to grow up, move out of their family homes, get jobs? What were they supposed to do with their lives? At that time, I had no answers, and I generally forgot about it within a few minutes.

One of the retarded students was in my gym class and had the same lunch hour I did. Valerie was the ultimate bully magnet. She actually was mentally handicapped, and as such people often are, overly trusting and friendly. I remember one lunch period, a group of kids were picking on her. They'd taken her lunch, and were playing keep-away with it. I wasn't 12 any longer. I grabbed the lunch, gave it back to Valerie, and told them to leave her the hell alone. Of course, the gang turned on me, but I felt I was far better able to handle it than Valerie was.

The kids left Valerie alone for a time afterwards, and she took to following me around the school like a lost puppy looking for a boy. I wanted nothing to do with Valerie. I was (almost) as shallow as the kids who had been picking on her. In order to discourage her, I was brusque and rude, but not outright hateful. Eventually she drifted away.

At the daycare center, one of our girls was severely handicapped. She was in a wheelchair, in diapers, could not speak, and could not control most of her body. She had to be fed, changed, dressed, bathed. I worried about her quite a lot. What was going to happen to her when her parents passed away? Who would care for her? Why would a loving god put her on this earth?

At the time, the only care facilities I was aware of were long-term nursing homes. I didn't know about group homes such as the one I would soon work in.

I had to leave my apartment while they renovated, so I moved back home. I needed a job, and in a small town, a person with little education and no transportation doesn't have much in the way of choice. It was the nursing home (I'd worked there before, and had no desire to do so again), one of the 3 fast-food restaurants, or the home for disabled. I didn't want to work in the home-- it was nothing but a nursing home, after all. I didn't want to repeat that experience. Mom just about literally dragged me to the home for an application.

I walked in, and was visibly impressed. The place looked homey, didn't smell like urine, and had pictures a person would actually like on their walls. The director impressed me as well. We got along famously. One of the residents was home (had a broken leg), and I was able to meet her. One of the requirements for taking the job was to have dinner with the group, which enabled me to meet them all. I liked what I saw, and took the job.

I have come to learn more about these people than I ever would have guessed. Something I was always vaguely aware of has become real to me. They are human beings, with the same emotions and needs as we all have-- no matter how well our brains process information, or whether we can involuntarily control our lips. We all need to give and receive love. And what's on the outside matters not a whit.

NIghtowl

It's almost 3 a.m., and here I sit. The cats are all sleeping, opening their eyes now and again to ask me if I'm ever going to bed. I'm tired, chilly, and I need to get up in the morning to clean the house. Yet here I sit.

It's so quiet tonight. No traffic, no tv, no radio. Even the stray cats have burrowed down for the night.

I look out into the darkness, and contemplate the meaning of life. Why is it we only do that in the wee hours of the morning? Is it, perhaps, because we are creatures of the light, and in the darkness our souls soundlessly cry out? Or, perhaps the shadows in the world make us consider, in the quiet of the watch, the shadows in our own souls.

3 a.m. is a time for soul-searching, for speaking to your god or gods, for striving towards a moral balance that you, your soul, and your god, can live with. So here I sit, godless, contemplating the meanings of a spiritual realm I do not believe in.

I look up into the cloudless night, and feel the same awe that the very cavemen must have felt. The wonder, fear, and utter loneliness of the human race sobs quietly in the dark while I smoke a cigarette.

The moon is exceptionally bright tonight. I stand in awe of mankind-- for we dared the wrath of the gods. I imagine I can see the footprints of Neil Armstrong and the other men who dared trod upon that desolate wasteland. I wonder what they felt, in the deepest, darkest part of their souls, as they stood in a place Man was never meant to stand.

The neighbors across the alley have a light on. They keep it on all night, every night. A moth, I am drawn to the light, glancing at it every now and then, to be sure it hasn't burnt out. It sooths and comforts me. It stands as a beacon of humanity and of hope. Hope for what, I do not know. I simply stare at the light, knowing that all is well. I understand in a new way why man created gods-- to drive out the demons that play havoc with us in the watches of the night. I put out my cigarette, turn off the computer, and lie down, knowing that dawn is coming soon. With the dawn comes the renewed promise. I fall asleep, dreaming of Noah, and of rainbows.