The Morning Beignet

Ever since he came to live with us as a kitten at 10 months of age, he's displayed a certain look that warns the bystander when he is about to do something totally unexpected and something to which he considers himself perfectly entitled. 

That's the word. This Beignet considers himself entitled. Probably my fault.

He wore that look this morning when I first woke, raised myself up in bed, and spotted him sitting outside the salle de bains. A barely audible "unnnh" escaped from somewhere in all that fur and he abruptly moved toward the bed, disappeared from view momentarily, and a split second later he was floating above the horizon as though his eighteen pounds were as a feather. 

Donovan might describe it like this: there was a cat; then there was no cat; then there was. He made a perfect landing on the bed in mid-stride and lost not a mite of momentum as he trod across my chest and finally came to rest just below my chin. 

In all this activity, he never lost that expression of his; the one that said, What? as if I was about to criticize his behavior.

"You can lie there," I said, "as long as you don't knead."

He began to knead. 

I wrapped my hand around his paws. He stopped the pushing but he continued to open and close his claws. I was happy that we'd recently clipped them.

"You're going to have to move after all," I said as I gently urged him to decant. He resisted and moved his tonnage ever closer to me. "Don't put your butt in my face," I said as he 180-ed around. I pushed his hips away before he could lie down.

"What?" he said looking back at me from about midships of my stomach. I gave his head a nubbin that said settle in, get comfy.

This ginger-backed boy with a powdered sugar undercarriage looked so much like the deep-fried breakfast pastries of New Orleans that there was never a question about what to name him. It seems only right that he should have a morning habit to keep company with his name.

Beignet is really the ideal cat. I'm sure he was the cat model that all others were based on. His excellent qualities have won him the title of "Cat of the Year" for six years running and he's making a strong showing again this year. If he's awarded the title once more, it will be a new record.

And there's no doubt in my mind that he will win that title this year and every year hereafter.

Twelfth Night

Sunday mornings empty of the usual expectations are such a gift. Normally I would have been suiting up to teach mindfulness at Straw Valley but on Sunday last I was relaxing in the cypress alee and enjoying something on ice in an amber-colored glass. When Ms. Wonder strolled out to the rose garden, I was enjoying the peace that passeth all understanding, you know the one I mean, it comes to those who have done absolutely nothing to deserve it.

Rose photo courtesy of Ms. Wonder

In a world so full of beautiful things where we should all be happy as kings, or queens, of course, I was surprised to see the Ekaterina wearing agitation on the facial map.

"Poopsie," I said, "has the Empress escaped?"

"No, not that." she said, "Uma is sleeping on your cashmere sweater in the hall closet."

"Thank, God," I said not sure whether capitalization was required but not wanting to take any chances. "What's the matter then?"

"It's the Cove," she said referring to that ancestral homeplace of the Genomes in the North Carolina Blue Ridge. "Gwyn is trying to get in touch with you. I didn't catch the specifics. She seems upset. But I did make out that it has something to do with Mr. Jones."

"Mr. Jaynes," I set the record straight, "and yes, she is upset, bless her, and no wonder. I'd be upset too if Jaynes was standing below my window every night."

"What?" she said. She seemed about to add something more but then, experiencing second thoughts, closed her eyes and shuddered.

"Yes," I said trying to convey understanding, "they work in mysterious ways their wonders to perform in Crystal Cove."

"Does he still imagine that he's followed by a door with a bogeyman hiding behind?" she said.

"No, he's past that. Asked his doctor to increase his lithium I believe."

"See," she said, "restores balance. Have you given the subject any more thought?"

I gave her a look, a kind of aloof, lazy eyelid look. "I assume you refer to lithium," I said.

"Precisely," she said.

"I have Fierce Qigong," I said with a goodish amount of topspin.

"Yes," she said and nothing more. I found myself becoming more than a little hotted up. I took a deep breath and reminded myself that I am powerful and that life is good.

"Forget lithium, Ekaterina," I said using the formal tense to let her know that I meant business.

She made a moue. I believe it's a moue. Isn't that when you push the lips out and then pull them back again?

"Put lithium out of mind. Banish it from your thoughts. All the Genome needs is mindfulness, qigong, a vegetarian diet, the twelve steps, heaping daily doses of friendship, and pots and pots of coffee."

"Of course," she said. "I spoke thoughtlessly."

"Recklessly," I said.

"Recklessly," she said.

Now, this was more the stuff for the troops I thought, and I gave it time to settle in, enough time for the breath to return to the normal rhythm. The mental pebble sank to the bottom of the pool and the turbulent thoughts, like ripples on the water, became still.

At length, I returned to the topic. "No, it isn't specters that plague Doyle Jaynes. It's his weakness for love."

"He's in love again," she said and well she should say it. This Doyle has a habit of falling in love with every second woman he meets. Consequently, new neural pathways are being constantly constructed in his brain to make him even more susceptible to the glamour of the next woman.

"Oh, he's in love again," I said, "and it's getting in the way of managing the fishing outfitter. In fact, he's gone bust in that department and Gwyn expects it's going to affect the reputation and revenue of Two Fly, which is the biggest business in the Cove. She's more concerned about the fishing business than the fact that she's the object of Doyle's devotion.

"What!", she said. "He's fallen for Gwyn? The poor fish. He'll soon wish he were being followed by boogeymen."

"I'm not so sure it will come to that. He spends all day lying around his apartment listening to love songs and stands in the garden underneath her window all night hoping to get a glimpse of her."

"That's stalking," she said.

"It's worse than that," I said, "it's insane and all it's going to get him is fired."

"Did you tell him that?"

"I did and he told me he'd got it worked out. He's hired some guy that he calls an assistant but who will actually run the outfitter for him."

"Does that mean that everything is calm now?"

"Calm? In the Cove. Do use your intelligence."

"So what is the problem now?" she said.

"Well, I spoke to Qwyn on the phone yesterday and she tells me that Doyle sent his assistant, let's call him Alan..."

"Is that his name?"

"Yes."

"Let's call him Alan then."

"Doyle sent Alan to deliver one of those love poems and to speak on Doyle's behalf because Gwyn has barred him from the Inn where she holds court. And it seems that when Gwyn saw this Alan, she decided that he was one to take home to Ma."

"She liked him?"

"He was one of the juiciest."

"She wanted him?"

"He was so eloquent in his pitch for Doyle's suit, that Gwyn began imagining him speaking for himself and she found it much to her liking. In fact, when he left to take Gwyn's rejection notice back to Doyle, Gwyn sent her brother, my other cousin Winston, with a ring saying that she couldn't accept it and that he should take it back to Doyle."

"Wait a second, I missed the part about Doyle sending a ring."

"No, you didn't. Doyle didn't send a ring. With her quick Genome-like mind, Gwyn came up with the ruse on the nonce. You see, the ring and the message to take it back would be recognized immediately by Alan as a sign of Gwyn's approval of Alan."

"It would?"

"Ms. Wonder," I said and I put just a little topspin on it to drive the implication home, have you not read Twelfth Night by W. Shakespeare?"

"Saw the movie," she said.

"Then you will remember the ring," I said.

"Sure," she said.

"You remember too what Alan was supposed to do with the ring. He was supposed to refuse it and send it back with Winston."

"Is that what happened?"

"Nothing is as it should be in the Cove. No, it seems this Alan hasn't read nor has he seen T. Night. He kept the ring."

"Disturbing," she said.

"I'll say. The ring didn't belong to Gwyn. It was the ring of office for Molly Mysinger, who is being inducted into the Circle of Three at the end of the month. Gwyn beside herself with anxiety. She's achieved low orbit and is about to go into first stage release. She wants me to ride back into the valley of death with the United States Marines and fix it."

"And are you?" she said.

"That hell hole?" I said. "I know I should come to her aid but how can I? As someone once said, 'The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.' Or something to that effect."

"Jesus Christ," she said.

"I know! That about sums up the way I feel about it too," I said.

Choose the Hawaiian Shirt

I stopped at the window where Uma was inspecting the day and saw that it was one of the best and brightest.

"Ms Wonder, you were right about the morning. One of the juiciest," I said.

"Absolutely," she replied.

"Spring and all that," I said.

"Yep," she said.

"I think I'll crawl into the Thai fisherman's pants and go to the Park for some pastoral dancing," I said heading for the clothes closet.

I don't know if you have the same feeling on those days around the beginning of April when the sky's a light blue, the clouds are cotton wool and the breeze blows lightly from the west. It's an uplifting feeling that makes you pause to reflect that life is good.

Well, if you do have that feeling, then take some advice from me. Be very, very careful because Fate is hiding in the bushes with plans to do you dirt. I slipped into the upholstery of a country qigong master and attired for the energetic arts, en plein air, if that's the phrase, I toddled back into the bedroom just in time for the first of those blasted text messages.

"Oh, no," I said when I'd read it. "Wonder, you remember Cousin Gwyn, who lives with Aunt Maggie in Crystal Cove."

"Oh sure," she said.

"You wouldn't speak in that light, carefree tone if you knew what's in the text. The curse has come upon me again, Poopsie. Gwyn tells me that Aunt Maggie wants me to stop by the ancestral home on the way to Chattanooga next week. My mother must have told her I was headed in that direction. I'd hoped to keep it secret."

To people who don't know the CSI version of the story, it is difficult to make clear why I avoid this X-marks-the-spot place in the North Carolina Blue Ridge. Most people know of it, if they know of it at all, as a primo outdoor recreational area. White-water rafting, trout fishing, music festivals, and all of this embowered, if that's the word, in the beautiful, balsam-fir high country. This is the surface-level glamour that most day-trippers encounter.

For the denizens and relatives like me, the Cove has a darker, murkier underbelly. The place is bursting with witches, druids and shamans--pagans, the lot of them. Not that there's anything wrong with the pagani, or whatever it was the Romans called them. Paganize until your eyes bubble, if that's what suits you, but I have a medical concern. 

You see the levels of background magic in a place where you can't bung a brick without hitting a magician, is so high that...well, let's just say that I'm allergic. The stuff clings to me like static. It builds to a critical mass and then, pop! there's a loud report in the vicinity of the Genome and bits of reality fill the air like confetti.

Give it a miss, I hear you thinking, but how the devil can I? This Mary Magdalene is my last surviving aunt and an aunt that had a lot of input into the Genome that I've become. When she issues a direct order, I must obey. I am a slave to duty in her regard.

"I wonder what she wants with me," I said.

"I couldn't say but I suggest that you wear your Hawaiian shirts while there," said The Wonder.


"Yes, good idea. I need to have as much joie de vivre as I can muster," I said. She continued with suggestions intended to fortify me against the ravages of magical tinkerings, such as morning meditation, qigong, walks in the sun and other such well-intended rot until I couldn't take it any longer and tore myself away to inventory the manly outerwear of Hawaii.

"Excuse me," Ms Wonder said as I was carrying yet another shirt to the window for consideration. "You don't plan to take that shirt do you?"

"Of course, I'm going to wear it."

"I wouldn't advise it," she said.

"Why on earth not?" I said.

"The effect," she said, "it's loud to the extreme."

I turned to face her squarely. No one knows more than I the master-mind this daughter of the Russian... whatever, never mind that now. It was I who was heading into the valley of the 600 and it was I who needed to gird the loins...what's that phrase, oh just forget it. You know what I mean. I wanted that shirt. Nothing else could buck me up like a red and yellow hibiscus on bold palm fronds.

"I need this shirt, Poopsie, nothing else in the arsenal has the same impact."

"Nevertheless," she said.

"Wonder," I said, "I am feeling low-spirited and I will need all the cheering I can get. My mind is made up." I raised myself to my full height and gazed down from lazy eyelids. I'm sure Napoleon would have done the same.

"Fine," she said but she meant nothing of the kind.

Upsetting, that's what it was. If there's one thing a fellow needs when he's facing the firing squad, it's the support of the family. And I was feeling somewhat adrift, or abandoned, or what is it? Oh, yeah, I was feeling more or less that nobody loved me.

Having nothing to gain from hiding the facts, I put my feelings on the line to Ms. Wonder. I explained that although I understood her views on tunics and other torso coverings, I was in dire straights--though I don't fully understand the meaning of dire straights, I'm sure it applies in the current circs--and what I needed from her now was more of the rally round spirit.

She stood for a while in deep thought and I could see that my words had the desired effect.

"Then on consideration," she said, "I have a suggestion that may enable you to extricate yourself from the embroilment."

"Does that mean you have a solution?" I asked.

"I suggest that you consider packing immediately..."

"That's no help."

"...and leaving for California."

I stared at the woman. Had I heard her correctly? California? Could it be that her superb brain had come unhinged? I could think of no other explanation.

"It sounded to me like you said, California," I said.

"That's right," she said.

"California?"

"California," she said. "Consider that California is 3000 miles from Crystal Cove."

"What!" I said finally getting the gist. "Not that far."

"Somewhat less," she said, "but for all practical purposes..."

"Yes, I see," I said. "For all practical purposes. Yes, this suggestion is not too big and not too small. Poopsie, I've always said there is none like you--none. You stand alone. Are you sure you're not descended from the Romanov's?"

"I'm certain," she said.

"Well, no matter, the Orlov's were the masterminds responsible for bunging Catherine to the top of the Russian imperial rainbow, so no little wonder that you possess the brainpower."

"But I'm not descended from the Orlov's," she said.

I could make no sense of this whatsoever. I myself have read the Olewine family records and I didn't hesitate to remind her of this.

"I distinctly remember that Count Alexei Orlov figured into the story. He being the breeder of the Orlov Trotter, a horse known for outstanding speed and stamina, and also the Russian Wolfhound, a dog known for whatever they're known for. They're big, I know that. And I believe there was a chicken in there somewhere although I seriously doubt that a breeder of horses and wolfhounds would scarcely waste time with chickens."

"The story," she said, with absolutely no story-telling flair--flat about sums it up, "is that my ancestor was a housemaid in the employment of Count Orlov and negotiated with him to get out of dog walking duties."

"Walking the wolfhounds, you mean?"

"Precisely," she said.

"Oh, I see," I said. "Yes, I think I remember something about that now. Sorry for the mixup."

"Not at all," she said.

"Still, Wonder, you are remarkable. I wonder your head doesn't stick out in back to make room for that brain."

"Thank you, I think," she said.

"Not at all," I said.

Pirates of Penzance

I woke early, at least it had the appearance of early. The light filtering through the curtains was a pinkish hue and this is, I believe, a sign of early morning. I'm no an expert of course. 

Beignet was limbering up with a good long stretch, front legs thrust forward and butt high in the air. It felt really good I'm sure, although I don't practice the move myself. I tend to qigong rather than yoga.

Uma Maya was on duty high atop the cat tree surveying her domain and making sure that everyone was cued and ready for the day. Abbie Hoffman, I suppose, was high atop the kitchen cabinets to make sure he was no where near Uma. 

In short, all was as it should be. How any household can function without at least a dozen or so cats is beyond me. I'll bet Napoleon kept cats.

"Good morning, Ms Wonder," I said, and then after taking a quick glance out the open window, "It's a beautiful day."

"The bluebird?" she said.

"On my shoulder," I said.

"The sun?" she said.

"High in the sky," I said, "or fairly highish, and bright certainly."

"Clouds?" she asked.

"Puffy and cotton white," I said.

"Cumulus humilis," she said or something that sounded like it.

"You're joking," I said. "Do refer to the clouds and a newly discovered variety of early human?"

"The clouds," she said, "They take their name from the latin cumulo meaning heap or pile."

"Now I know you're putting me on. A pile of clouds? This is one of your practical jokes, isn't it? You're going to run me up and down the flagpole a few times this morning."

"I wouldn't dream of doing such a thing," she said, "I learned about clouds in my aviation weather class. Cumuli are part of a larger class of clouds know as cumuliform, which includes stratocumulus, cumulonimbus, cirrocumulus and altocumulus."

"My grandmother's name was Alta," I said.

"I misspoke," she said, "I meant to say alto. Alto-cumulus."

"Oh, sorry," I said.

"Not at all," she said.

A moment of silence passed. A moment not unlike the silence that reigns on stage when one of the actors in a community play forgets the next line.

"Poopsie?"

"Still here," she said.

"Do you know everything?" I said.

"Certainly not," she said.

"Well, then you have a sticky brain, much like the sticky brain that my friend Mumps has. By the way, did you say aviation weather? You actually took a class in aviation weather?"

"Hmmm," she said.

Another moment of silence passed, one much like the first.

"Poopsie, are you, or were you ever, a fighter pilot?"

"Beg your pardon," she said with a laugh, "did you say pirate?"

"I did not say pirate and you know it but that was the funniest part of the play wasn't it?"

I probably don't need to tell you that we had gone off-topic with this reference to the play but we had seen the Durham Savoyard's presentation of the Pirates of Penzance recently and it was still entertaining us two weeks later.

"I really enjoyed the sergeant major," she said.

"You mean the major general," I said.

"Are you sure? Didn't he sing 'I am the very model of a modern sergeant major?'"

I raised a hand. I yield to no one in my enjoyment of the works of Gilbert and Sullivan and I could easily discuss these Pirates all day, but we were on a hot topic and I didn't want it to cool.

"One moment, Poopsie," I said.

"Yes," she said.

"Just one moment."

The third period of silence passed. It was beginning to look like a big morning for moments of silence.

"What were we talking about before we jumped the rails?" I said.

"You were saying that it's a beautiful day," she said.

"So it is," I said. "The snail is on the throne and all's right with the world."

"The snail is on the thorn," she said. "It's God who's sitting on the throne."

"Ah, yes, that's right," I said, "Sorry, honest mistake."

"Not at all," she said.

"Did you say, pilot or pirate?" I said. But she only winked and then another one of those silences filled the empty space.

Once and Future Spring

"In spring, a livelier iris gleams upon the burnished dove," Ms Wonder said this morning as I struggled into the under armor underwear. I don't know how she comes up with this stuff but she certainly knows how to put things neatly, don't you think? 

I was still wondering how the dickens a dove goes about getting burnished when I entered the ring of ancient oaks on the grounds of Research Commons for morning qigong.

You are probably familiar with this ring of hoary trees if hoary is the word I want. It sits atop the hill that overlooks the post office on Alexander. I don't know how long this oaken ring has been here but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that it was here when Caesar drove the Nervii out of the Triangle. The trees are probably all that remains of a Druid grove or college. It has that look.

As I walked to the western end of the circle, the better to face the east and greet the rising sun, I noticed the open space was filled with ranunculi, and many of them buttercups, and I immediately time-traveled back to my college days and the spring semester that my old school chum, Mumps, and I were enrolled in BIOL 4120, the Botany of Flowering Plants.

This class was required for a degree in biology and it had been taught by Dr. Fowler for as long as that ring of oak trees had been in the Triangle. Fowler isn't his real name. I've changed his name because that's what people do when they write about other people. Not sure why. 

This doctor was one of those be-speckled and bedraggled birds featured in so many stories of arcadia. He eccentricated himself by wearing the same elbow-patched tweed sport coat every day, and the jacket was accessorized with the same tie. It was no ordinary traditional tie but a knitted species that stopped abruptly above the belt as though cut square with scissors.

One beautiful spring Tuesday this Mumps and I were canvassing the countryside looking for wildflowers to draw in our official sketchbooks, for accurate drawings were part of our final grade.

As I remember the sky was blue, the wind still, the sunshine warm and we had no sooner entered an open meadow when Mumps let out a "Eureka!" Turns out he had almost stepped on a flower that I called a shepherd's purse and he called a capsula bursa pastoris. He was like that--sticky mind. Anything he read or heard simply stuck. My mind--slippery. Still is.

If you were an innocent bystander, you would have marveled because it was the work of an instant for Mumps and I to sprawl on the grass and began sketching stamens and pistles like Billy Oh.

Now on these fine spring days the mind is calm and the spirit peaceful and the whole package is one perfectly suited to seeking enlightenment. And that is just what we were doing. The limbic systems worked overtime instructing the endocrine glands to decant this and that in good measure, heaped up, pressed down, shaken together, and running over. 

The result of all this chemical stimulation was consciousness elevated to that of rats with metal electrodes inserted into the nucleus accumbens and septal nuclei. And it was in this state of enlightenment that the striatum realized that it was time to leg it to lab or risk wearing the dunce cap for late arrival. We got a move on.

Now, this Dr. Folwer had a peculiar method of lecturing to lab students. He turned his back to us while scribbling on the chalkboard and babbling away on everything from dicotyledons to ovaries and just when you least expected it, he would dervish around and point a bony, arthritic finger at the victim and demand an answer to the question of the day.

So here we were, seated on lab stools and doing our best to take notes and not laugh out loud at what seemed to be the most trivial drivel we'd ever heard. You are aware, it goes without saying, that it wasn't really drivel but when one's consciousness has been elevated to a certain level, almost every subject seems not just drivel but absolute rot. It was this way with us.

Then, with the surprising immediacy of Judgement Day, the professor swirled around like a tornado and pointed the gnarled digit directly at Mumps, catching him right between the eyes, at point-blank range too. We never heard the question because the blow knocked James off his stool and onto the floor where he exploded with a guffaw that sounded like a steam boiler coming apart at the seams. It disrupted the class not a little.

I would love to remember how that situation was resolved because a story is never complete without a happy ending, and a happy ending is evident because we somehow got those degrees, but this particular story has no end. Bertie Wooster says that the difficult part about telling a story is knowing where to begin but for me, it's knowing where to end. Maybe that's because I don't really like endings. I like the kind of stories that go on forever.

I never enjoyed a college class as much as that taught by Dr. Fowler and I never enjoyed a college classmate as much as Mumps. Higher education comes in many forms and most of them are unexpected. That's life they say.