Homecoming / Year of Funerals
Have you ever heard of the kitten distribution system?
Ruby Ruby, Los Angeles.
Sometimes, when the universe decides you need one or you just deserve one, it will give you a kitten. Nearly 12 years ago, a 2-lb blue-eyed cat crawled out of the bushes in Gardena, CA and adopted me. I don’t know which alien planet she came from, but she stayed with me until her very end on earth. Yesterday, she died suddenly by my side, halfway through her breakfast. As many of us can dream, she died doing what she loved.
Once I realized what was happening, I rushed her to the vet ER. But the whole thing, including the highly illegal speed racing I did on the way there, was over in a mere 20 minutes start to finish. There was no heartbeat; she was gone.
Let’s call it.
This was the second Sunday in a row that I find myself indulging in a little public park crying. A week ago, I wasn’t sure why, but now I know. I was mourning.
Not for my cat, at least not consciously. But I had just made it home from Greenpoint Brooklyn the night before. The place I used to live.
Back in Brooklyn that day, on the Greenpoint Ave platform, waiting to catch the G, I realize you no longer need to sprint to the middle of the platform to catch it because the train isn’t literally short anymore and also goes up into Queens?! These kids are spoiled.
My cat was spoiled and that’s ok. She deserved it. Maybe some of these kids do too. Who am I to say? Sometimes I’m spoiled, too.
For example, the reason I was in Brooklyn was because the night before, I was standing in the booth of an LCD Soundsystem show. Watching the sound guy’s movements correspond to the lighting changes on the stage and in the room. I love a professional.
I was in the the crowd….but removed. A crowd were surely half or more of the people were younger than I am, some considerably. I blew out of New York 13+ years ago now and I listened to them then. The crowd knew every word to the every song anyway and that’s what counts.
But, you’re telling me that these youths like a band that was cool when I was their age? And the band is still cool? But now they’re playing in a shiny new venue in the formerly uncool neighborhood we all used to live in because we couldn’t afford a “cool” one? but now no one can afford it because a ferry came and made the entire joint accessible to Manhattan and finance bros decided to move in? Fuck me. I’m an old.
Or in LCDisms, I’m losing my edge. (The kids are coming up from behind.)
And maybe that’s fine. To be softened by time.
Being alive in the world a while can polish your edges if not eliminate them. We don’t have to stay tough forever or we can let it rest once in a while. For me that night it meant not being in the main body of the crowd but secured in a bubble inside of it, not being jostled. Not fighting the bodies. Not all the way in the mix. I was invited to the show by someone who could tuck me into the booth in the first place where no one could touch me and I could bop in peace. People on the other side of the fence kept staring at me to try to figure out who i was and why i was standing there. And as my friend put it, the answer wasn’t celebrity but special needs. Seeing a show where I am safe from [what have you] lowers the activation energy required to get me to show up by a large margin. The show was perfect, every song.
And twelve hours later, the crying started.
I had traveled a ways to get in for the show that night, in constant motion until it was over. It took a while for the impact to hit me of making that pilgrimage to a once familiar place to hear a band I loved when I lived there. Long enough ago that things have changed considerably. Nostos Algos.
By the time I rounded the corner back in my home town at noon the next day, I had already slept (briefly), gone on a voyage through Greenpoint (carbohydrates and memories), walked the empty morning sidewalks, left the city and made the drive back up into Metro North territory.
No thoughts of staying for the after party. Not drinking at all. Not even driving home late at night doing felony speeds on the Merritt Parkway. (I’m sorry. YOUR HONOR, MY GOD!)
Besides it was the Year of funerals. Friends, family, pets, and past selves. (Still want a Porsche tho because vroom vroom amor fati).
I’ve crossed into the realm of the elders.
Every day it seems, men all over social media scream about how they only want “young” women, but, baby, aging is a gift, one. I’m not about to spend my finite time on earth with someone who doesn’t get that. And two, no one asked. We are ALL getting older, always. Staying alive long enough to note the change in a beloved place after you disappear from it and before you return. That’s something to cherish. Because everything ends, except time itself. **
And every time a man online screams “You’re gonna die alone with cats!” I just think of how my optimal dying situation, if we ever got to choose, would be “Smoke a huge cannon of a joint and then curling up in bed with a bunch of purring cats and fall asleep for the last time.” You can’t scare me. That’s my fucking dream.
Anyway. The day after the show it hit me. How long it’s been. How far I am from there. And how much I love myself for doing all that. For not listening to anyone but myself. For living where I wanted. For fucking around. For finding out. For taking off. For coming home.
New York, I love you.
And, Ruby, I love you. And to anyone reading this who has lost a loved one this year, may their memory forever be a blessing and may we endure our “age” together, Amen.
Xx, IS.
A Porsche GT3 touring edition in paint color Ruby Star.
**One of the saddest parts of losing someone is how time has the nerve to keep passing after they do. But for those who seem to think they can insult someone by noting that they’ve survived the passage of time: If we are to read Revelations 10:6 in Greek: “Χρόνος οὐκέτι ἔσται.” In the end, the angel swears “there will be no Time.”
The end of the Ages.
When we mortals cease to age, time has ended the “showing forth” of [God] — the second coming to Christians — has begun. So before you call women old on the internet, are YOU ready for the rapture? That’s what I thought. So, I’d be careful what you wish for. ;)
