I saved a life last night, thanks to my shoddy Spanish. November 17, 2008

I was walking down the street towards my apartment last night when I spotted a cat. I approached the cat in excitement and reached out to pet her when I noticed something wasn’t right. Her back leg was twisted outwards and her breathing was labored. I placed my hand on her body to pet her and she cried out in a long moan. After a few moments, I realized that she had fallen from a window above and probably had a couple of broken legs and internal damage.

I didn’t know what to do, so I called 311 and they informed me that the ASPCA wasn’t open on Sundays, and that I could call back at 8 a.m. on Monday. I didn’t have until Monday. I called 411 and recieved a list of animal hospitals in the New York City area. I called each one, only to be told that I could do one of two things:
1) Call ambuvet, an ambulance service for animals, and pay 250 dollars for the cat to be taken to the hospital and then put into a shelter if I couldn’t locate her owner to take responsibility for the medical bills.
2) Bring the cat to east 62nd street and drop her off in the stray animal department.

I don’t have a spare 250 dollars, hello, have you seen the economy? The rising cost of my college tuition? My rib bones because food is expensive and not eating enough of it makes them jut out?
I also didn’t want to move the cat myself, she was obviously in a lot of pain and if she had bitten me, that would be a whole other problem if I couldn’t find her proper owner, and I didn’t want to cause any more internal pain or bone breakage.

So I was sobbing by the cat, talking to her, petting her head, and trying to figure out what to do. I finally decided that I would wait until 8 a.m. and call the ASPCA. So I ran up to my apartment and grabbed a blanket and ran back down to the cat and draped it over her and stayed crouched over her. People were walking by and saying things like, “She’s dying, isn’t she?”

I had intended to stay with her through most of the night, if not all of it, until I could call for help. I was cursing the options for animal rescue in the city, and crying, and paying careful attention to the cats breathing. She was large and clean, and obviously not from the street.

I saw a woman walking towards the apartment gate that I assumed the cat’s owners lived in, and I asked her in Spanish if she lived in that building and she looked at me with fear in her eyes and said no. I then saw a man turn the corner and I asked him in Spanish if he lived in the building and he said yes. I asked him if he knew whose cat it was and he said he did not.

He did, however, stand over the cat with me, and we talked about the cat and how I thought it had broken legs and that I was going to sit with the cat until I could find help for her, and he suggested that we move the cat into the building where its owner probably lived and I said that I thought it would hurt the cat to move her, and he said that it would be temporary pain and at least she would be warmer inside the lobby of the apartment building. So I said okay and he used the blanket I had covered her with to lift her and carry her on her back so that all 4 legs were up in the air and we could see them all visibly broken and a couple of them rubbed down to blood and bone and she cried loudly as we moved her inside and my heart hurt so much but there was no other choice.

Once we got her inside I asked the man if he could get her water, and paper and a pen, and he ran to his apartment and returned with all three things. We pushed the water near her, but she only used it to hide her head, and then I tore the paper in half and wrote a note on one half in English and on the other half in sloppy Spanish not to move her because she had broken legs and instead, to call 311 in the morning at 8 a.m. sharp and to ask for the New York City Animal Rescue people. We taped up the signs and I sat with her some more and rubbed her head and asked people walking in or out of the building if they knew who owned the cat. Nothing. Nobody knew whose it was.

Finally, three teenagers were bounding down the building stairs from a higher floor and they startled the cat and she looked up and I rubbed behind her ears to calm her and I asked them if they knew whose cat it was and they said no, they didn’t, but then a girl they were with said, “Oh! That’s Bri’s cat!” and she ran off to notify Bri and the teenage guys confirmed that it was her cat and so Bri came down and she was holding her hands over her mouth and she wouldn’t look at me but I knew she was listening to me, so I started to explain the situation and what her options were and her boyfriend came down after her and I told him and he called the ambulance for animals and then he said he didn’t have the money to take the cat in an ambulance and one of the other boys offered him a ride to the animal hospital on 62nd St.
He ran up and got a box and they lifted the cat into it and I rushed over to tuck the blanket around her and told them they had to drive carefully, and make sure she didn’t move around too much, and to keep petting her head so that she could have comfort in this traumatic situation and then we all moved outside and I hugged Francesco, the man who helped me move the cat into the building in the first place, and waved good-bye to the cat owner and her friends, and asked them to let me know if they saw me around the neighborhood, and they said they would and then I went home and thought about the cat for several more hours before falling asleep.

This will be dull, vague, and mostly worthless in regards to your time November 12, 2008

Stream of consciousness helps me get staling emotion and tangled thoughts out of my body. Shall we?

I keep seeing the people that those I have been involved with are meant to be with. I fall short of everything. I have had bruises on my ribs for the last two days and only noticed them today. I bought a new set of paint brushes two weeks ago. I rub their wooden handles between my fingers in the morning when I am eating breakfast. I have not been able to use them. My heart strings are all strung out. I am floating belly up in a tumultuous current. I will not listen to those songs that make me think of you. I have so little comfort and have forgotten how to create it for myself. I am so tired of creating everything for myself. I am so lucky to be able to create things for myself. It is selfish to want romantic love and to have the desire to be understood. Appreciation is the key word, and I can’t stop dreaming about balloons. I need to see a deer, somewhere that’s not in New Jersey and not with you so that I can apply that memory to other things. I need to remember to be more guarded. I don’t know if I can be open-minded without being naive. I want a kitten so badly that sometimes I frown. Down to 2 cigarettes a day, and I don’t know how to make it zero and some self-destructive tendency inside of me wants to do everything in excess, but I can’t regress. I keep thinking about your cocaine use and how I tried to save you and you were so horrible to me and how terrible it is that all I want to do is forgive you, and would if I hadn’t done so before and been hurt. Two years ago I could call a handful of people when it was raining outside and we’d dance in it. Three years ago. Four years ago. But now there is nothing, and I find the most secluded spaces the most comforting and the most peculiar sound is quiet and even when it is external I can not find it internally. Despite the beautiful perspective that I’ve been bestowed I will never allow myself to be content with myself because nobody can ever achieve perfection, internally, and I need to accept that but can not. I want to create on my own whim. I want to feel inspired by the energy of other people. I am not disheartened. I am sometimes thrust into the reality of aloneness and not only my own but yours and everybody elses and it is not frightening, but it is hollow and stable and open. I don’t want a yes or a no I want hands on my face and the words “I get it.” I can set aside the things I desire the most in exchange for what will inevitably bring the ache I find myself fascinated by. I no longer have a place that I can call home, there is no comfort here, and things are missing there, and things have changed there, and I am getting older every day and I forget that I am still young because I have been working for so long at finding the balance and driving so fast and so hard that my life feels controlled by a constant moving grid, rigid and exhausting and I am keeping up but just barely and all I want to do is sit down and rest my legs but there is more work and more time and less sleep and I can not handle that today is already yesterday and where are the things I’ve promised myself and are they possible and have I failed already and of course not. Of course not. Off course, not. My eyes are knots in their sockets. I have given in and now things will take their time to process.

Cockleshells and Pretense November 10, 2008

I have procured a jar full of cockle shells and do not know what to do with them. They smell like butter and thyme, since I rescued them from the owner-of-the-restaurant-where-I-work’s meal. He brought them in to be cooked and put on pizza, so he never touched the shells. As an always vegetarian and a sometimes vegan I was conflicted as to whether or not I should be taking them, but realized that not only were they headed for the garbage and the least I could do was to make sure that something came from their unfortunate death, but also that they were too beautiful to not let them become admired.  I wanted to make something from them rather than allowing them to be wasted, and although I am still conflicted about making things from them, I came up with a short list of things to do with them:

1. Cover an area of my guitar with them in a way that won’t influence the acoustics (but this will probably be too beach-y.)
2. Cover a picture frame with them  (but this will require a photograph of the beach and I don’t think that will fit into my particular decorative taste.)
3. Make jewelry from them (but this seems to be advocating their death for human vanity.)
4. Cover other random shit with them (but I don’t really have anything that I’d want to do so.)

ANY IDEAS? I have a whole jar full of cockle shells just waiting to be immortalized.

 

Also, I saw a man and a woman have their first kiss on the uptown A train. This is what I noticed about them:
-They must have just met that night because they didn’t seem to know much about the others tastes
-They debated film for almost the entire ride. She became flustered at some point while the discourse was obviously exciting him.
-She was from Australia and had a really awesome purse that unfolded like an intricate origami envelope
-They both wore Chuck Taylors. The dude looked like he was about 10 years older than her and bought all of his clothing in the 70’s. She had interesting articles of clothing but did not put them together in a thoughtful way (I only mention this as a comment on artistic taste, as I believe we dress to represent the sort of art we enjoy.)
-He kept moving closer to her, interlocking their feet without touching them
-Neither of them moved out of the way of people entering or exiting the train, even though they were stationed by the door.
-She claimed a film was modern because it had homosexuality, and he scoffed in an exaggerated fashion (I almost laughed out loud at this.)
-He finally asked her if he could kiss her, she didn’t hear him and his face turned red when he had to repeat the question.
-They finally kissed and then moved back into conversation immediately without any expressive indication that either of them were affected by the kiss.
-They didn’t see me observing them.
-I set aside my cynical notions about romance and was affected enough for the both of them.

 

Long story short, I’m a creep.

Oh, and remember bodega cat from a few entries before this? I saw her again in front of the laundrymat on my way home from work the other night and we got to cuddle for 15 minutes or so in one of the chairs outside. She kept pressing her face into me and purring and swishing her tail happily. She also started doing this cute thing where she licks my wrist and then nibbles at it and then starts licking it again. I love her, I should find out her name.

 I have so many other things I should be doing right now.

The Biological Geography of Emotion November 3, 2008

When I am worried, the emotion sits in my stomach. My tummy will physically ache when I am filled with worry.

When I am feeling overwhelmed and tired, I find pressing my fingertips to the center of my forehead, just above my eyebrows, to be slightly soothing. In the system of Chakra’s, this is known as the center for insight and one who observes and analyzes all things open-mindedly.

Most other emotions generally sit in my chest. Warmth, love, kindness, sadness, hurt-feelings, empathy, desire. The feelings that rest there are, to myself, mentally represented as three distinct poles. The center pole is the longest (I imagine the idea comes from the wind pipe and how my breathing is altered based on what I am feeling) while the other two poles are imagined as shorter and on either side of the long pole, running the length of my collar bone to the top of my breast.

This would visually be represented like a section of a musical organ. Which leads me to believe that such an image of my emotion developed because I subconsciously view it as an inextricable part of me, such as an organ itself (e.g. a liver, kidney, lung, etc). It’s sort of like subconscious dream language. Where an imaginary physical organ is represented as a musical organ because the things I compose stem from that organ (using a musical organ to write a beautiful song, using the imaginary organ that represents emotion to express in creative and tangible ways.)

Also:
My frustration is represented by the color green.
My happiness is represented by the color red and an oval.
My anxiety is represented by the color blue and a lop-sided diamond-shape. 
My sadness is represented by a deep grey.

This center of my body (the upper chest area) has become a large focus of my emotion lately. I am not sure why it sits in this particular spot, but it is perhaps because of my inclination towards hugging (no, I’m soserious.) I come from a very affectionate family, hugs were handed out before we left the house or before we went to bed. When I visit my mother or my mother’s family, we all hug a million times on our own whim. I have a very distinct memory from when I was 4, on a weekend day, waking up, rubbing my eyes as I padded down the hallway, entering my parent’s bedroom, walking in, having my mother pick me up and us cuddling in her waterbed. I remember wondering what a.m. stands for on the clock (I still do not know the answer to this.)

All tangenting aside, any positive emotion for me has been filled warmly with a hug. Any negative emotion for me has been dulled with a hug.

So, most of the emotions in my body float in my chest and take on the shape of a musical organ, because I consider emotion to be an inherent part of my being and my subconscious uses the double meaning of organ to represent both the physical, mostly unchangeable parts of our insides as well as the musical instrument that can be created from to exemplify that I use my emotions as fuel for creative endeavors. They float in my chest because when one is properly hugged by somebody they feel safe and comfortable with, the touching of two chests together is a gesture of both comfort and happiness.

And in my next post, we’ll investigate my tendencies towards being overly analytic. Yikes.