stoicism, the tao, and a new kitten arrives.

Maybe early in our lives, those first months, we lack something of that spark of consciousness, and mostly, we don't retain those memories.  Or so we think.

We are the stream.

We were the stream.

And then.

We learn and take on information, and we become like the stone, and the stream in part is that information that has seemingly weighed us down.  We are in turned being acted on by the stream, being worn smooth.

Being worn smooth is maturity in its many splendorous descriptions.

I saw two kittens, me the first human they've seen.  They didn't blow and hiss, but stared, as if in wonder, and I spoke to them, soothingly, or what passes for soothing from me.  I wasn't singing Body Count lyrics.

Somewhere in the indefinite space between innocence and experience, then, thought and action intermingling, charcoals on a page to be smoothed by time.   I suspect that without any fear, the Tao would have been with the innocent one, and myself, the experienced one, seeing the little animal, was having a realization of the Tao, and the Tao itself, something to which you might point distantly, but never touch.....

The cat was in my flower pot, a rectangular thing lying on its side, under the edge of a shelter.  It was a perfectly little resting place for the animal, but these oblongs, we know them too well.  I've seen relatives placed into the oblongs, and I've seen fire and rain.  I thought that I would see you again.

*I had asked too, that if the low man had elements scattered within that reflected the sage, would the same be said of the sage?  That something of the low man might be reflected in the sage?  My there be something?  A bowl of breakfast porridge?  Does the low man take the early hours for its proper beginning, in the lonesome half-dark slow-brightening thoughtspace between proper day and night, or does the low man sleep late?

Further, is the sage perfect in diet?  Advanced, knowledgeable, or simple?  Somehow I think the sage is not a perfect plate of spatterings of this or that, but a simple thing.

For instance, a woman in the old USSR reached the advanced age of 112.  She had a wood stove.  A small cabin.  Every morning, and they asked, what did she eat?  Oats along with a spat of pan-seared uncured sausage.  The sausage looked quite like dried sausage found around the southeastern U.S.

I have moments paradoxically of such self-denial and reward.  I think we all do.  Do we suffer through some penance and then later reward ourselves?  Like being nice at work, or talking to a tedious relative, or something rather adultish in the modern way.

The kitten will soon venture further away and may yet find itself at my door, where I can lavish loving care upon it, and of course, plenty of food.  The cats here like warm milk, and generally distrust anything particularly cold.  And for that, I don't reward myself, as that's not exactly a chore, an act of compassion to a pet.

But the cat showed something of the Tao in its blue eyes, and for a moment maybe there was a kind of wonder shared by us, maybe, something cosmic, beyond the cat looking upon a novelty, and beyond my realizing the novelty of a new cat, but something of the Tao passed in between, something of the real stuff of life, that push-pull cosmic gravity tug between innocence and experience, what some call the unfettered uncontaminated infant state and my own person, who wins and loses at various things, and maybe in some ways, 

trying to unlearn some things that I had picked up along the way.

Maybe that's the kicker in middle age when that Mid Life crisis hits for the man, or the menopause for the lady.  We had spent so much time learning things and picking up skills and doing, then we realize how much is vanity, and then the realization we should drop some of that learning and simplify.