For Every Tib and Tom Cat


dimarts

Cat Alone - 5 -


April 27










After the usual fights in the throng before the entrance to the stadium - with
my numbskull rapscallion (numbskullion?) friends a lot more daring than I, me
behind them, well protected you might say, unscathed in the end, though the
result on their faces nothing to write home about either, the quarrels having
been mostly of the bully and brag kind, with no blood spilled - and after the
extraordinary stunts due (their sheer possibility) to the build of the foreign
arena, with an accessible high terrace from which objects could be thrown
down into a cupola or vault whose roof had swatches of material upon which
everything bounced, and so everything coming down - bottles, purses, knives,
bunches of keys…, and then persons, as if the game were then some sort of
dwarf flinging, their shouts, their arms and legs flopping and flapping, small
persons, either thrown down by playful fiends, or else on a dare, inebriated
show-offish fools sending themselves down, a few of whom collided into the
hard metal ribs that held the bouncing material taut - a recurring calamity:
awful crashes from the raised platform to the rebounding cupola underneath,
some bodies missing the soft part and colliding into the cutting edge of the ribs
that undergirded the whole contraption, bodies severed in two pieces, broken,
maimed, smashed anyway, for otherwise the distance was mighty, at least
seen from the side, probably seen from on top it looked easy and near
enough, who knows, I can’t begin to imagine, too disgusted, and
flabbergasted - sliced bodies everywhere, and worse: the spilling of the guts,
the amusement and the jolly rebounding turned into a nightmare of goo
pouring from cracked crania and bodies ripped apart.



And yet we were amicably received - so we were, once inside the clean
edifice, with shiny kind of marble floors, the walls also polished, the corridors
spacious, the stairs majestic. One of the beadles or rather receptionists came
to me expressly; in an unctuous manner, though squandering not the shadow
of a smile, he invited me into the elevator, and up we went, me thinking he
was going to seat us in the proper place up the incurved bleachers. I think I
remember getting out of the box and being led by the smooth operator, but
then I must have fallen asleep, for otherwise how could I wake up.



I woke up free in a somber, misty, dank laboratory, and what was my surprise
when I lifted my eyes and saw myself up there, stretched out on a kind of
comfy ledge, there on my back, then, a faint smile on my silky face, in a row
where others also lay, all connected by their heads or brains, with conduits
like antennae or feelers going from head to head, nothing too showy nor
spectacular, but anyhow patent, and potent in a way, as if we were being
pumped or something, the brains picked and sorted and rearranged…, and the
weird thing was I wasn’t alone roaming free underneath my body, but they all
were, all the fellows in the row, at least their projections were also around, and
not happy at all to have me there, nasty specters all, the fellows we had
fought against before we entered the stadium, plus other creeps and bullies
like them, plus some of my friends now turned against me also, and yet, who
cared, it was even enjoyable, for they could’nt really move, they could never
reach and touch me, beat me - of course, they were silly spirits only,
remember? - ectoplasmatic teasers, in a fury, an almost laughable
exasperation, and me instead glad that I was over there, ensconced, looking
at my projection going about scot-free, without an added scratch, and hoping
for the best, a dyed-in-the-wool supporter, a winner deep down, stuck
for the moment in that foggy floor of a subterranean amphitheater for
experimental surgery, but anyway, otherwise fine enough.






Dies the male. So Saturday’s been shot. All the males in the house
are moping, useless as big lumbering sick dogs. Despondent mothers hanging
around, a nauseous thing to behold. There’s been a phone call this morning -
my sister saying that uncle Ron’s had a brain attack and is between life and
death in a hospital room over there in the town he resides in with his family.
Now is past midday and the men are themselves morose and bored to death.
A new phone call. I take the phone and go a bit off ways. Ron’s dead. I come
back into the dreary room. “-False alarm. Ron’s fine,” I say with one of
my fake smiles. They all breathe out as a single man reprieved. Without
another word, the five of them rush toward the TV nook, they fall on the sofa in
front of the appliance - they’ve turned it on, there’s the football match already
well underway. They start cheering, they burgeon again, again alive.
Replenished, given a shot of rejuvenating sap, they enjoy life, and what a joy
it is to see them now. They enthuse, they eat and splutter, beer flows in and
out from the punctures of the bloated tires of their faces. But no fear, they
shan’t crash. On the contrary. They are in control of their own beings. They
are the men. I go quietly outside. Into the garden. I kneel by the side of each
flowerbed - I pluck the tiny nascent weeds; with the pincers of my fingers, I
carefully yank the tender unwanted shoots out. One by
one.













dissabte

Cat Alone -4-





April 26




The wife and I, we are both into stunts. She performs in public.
Her pyramids of eggs attract the crowds and the cameras – thousands of TV
stations from all over the world carry her incredible appearances. Millions
upon millions
of eggs have been smashed on account of her several
record-setting, amply broadcast achievements. For her pyramids of eggs just
grow and grow, level by careful level, until the whole thing collapses. The trick
is to have on record the biggest pyramid still standing. She’s hated by all of
us, meek ovipositors, the snakes, the birds, the tortoises, the platypuses… We
wished she were already dead. To no avail, for she thrives, everyday more
popular.






Me, my specialty is humbler, easier, more clownish: I’m just Mr. Knocker, the
one who gets to knock over his own head, the one that smashes his noggin
once and again, just for laughs, of course. My head is always running into
walls
, into rocks, into corners, into pavements – falling, colliding, tumbling,
collapsing higgledy-piggledy down the screes… Cracked like a nut, shattered
into tiny smithereens as the shell of an egg. My stunts are really doomed from
the word go. Here comes his head a-cracking, ha-ha. Splinters of my
fractured cranium penetrating my brains, I nonetheless am still able to come
up with new ways of bashing my shell anew: I’m falling from planes, from
skyscrapers, with faulty rollers into the hard rinks… I’m a window-washer
whose precarious nest tilts and, lo, the flagstones underneath have the pieces
of my skull seasoned with a side dish of peppered brains. I’m moderately
applauded. My act, alas, is not for everyone.









Crocked tentacle, numbed hand in the form of a dulled crook, trying to
fish for memories
– dead little fishes camouflaged in the mud. Through my
ear into the poisoned marsh of my brains, the probing hook. That would be
living. Stopping to fish into each pond of dead water.






And then it snows. Cinders falling. Open your thickened hand that fished
nothing but tiny dead muddy fishes, half rotten. Here, those cinders melting on
the pachydermatous surface are your true experiences of just this jaunt into
the now.

















Never so well

Never so well
nyac!

Inosculated

Inosculated
anyocs de nyacs!

who the 'ell?

La meva foto
C.R. Morell his paltry efforts,

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