A tuxedo cat. I call him that, Tuxedo Cat because I don't know his name yet. I want to call him Sylvester, but I don't think that's quite right. I'm fairly certain it's a he though. A lively, fluffy haired, indoor tuxedo cat which caught me by surprise. I had no idea that I was allowed to have friends on the inside.
Maybe I'm allowed to have a tuxedo cat because I'm a non-violent person who doesn't act out. Nor do I manipulate people into various hang ups, desires, or fears, or, whatever random and bizarre ideas that waft into my consciousness at any given time. I save all that for myself, you never know when you're going to need it. Especially when you're an artist. All emotions are like paints in a box.
I just never thought I would be able to know, no matter how insignificant or inconsequential. Thanks to my tuxedo cat I have just a mere little glimpse into a very small aspect of a working mind. Or at least mine. It's a nice little present I got, for living through so much physical pain.
The Back Story
Technically I had heart failure, that's what the doctors said in the E.R. But then technically I didn't because it converted with the use if of adenosine. A drug that is injected with an I.V. It stops the heart and starts it back up to make the heart quit racing. Kind of like a reset button.
But the problem is, I had to go into the E.R. twice in one day. The second time they kept me and I got a pacemaker.
The best part of the operation was, at one point I woke up from the anesthesia while they were still working on me and I heard the people in the operating room talking about eating and restaurants. I said, "Can I say something?" They all said, "Yes." I began telling them about a restaurant I had just recently found in Old Town Scottsdale called Bootleggers. It's a smokehouse. It's just really good, excellent quality, and tasty.
After I went on about that they put me back under. But I woke up again and someone was stuffing the pacemaker in place. I could see her do it. It was annoying but I wan't in pain. I asked her, "Did you save my tattoo?" She said, "Oh yes. I looked around for a place to put it far from your tattoo." Shortly after that I went back under.
I told that to a friend of mine and he laughed. He said, "Leave it to you to be in that situation and have a conversation about food and restaurants." And he was amazed that I could be awake and conscious during parts of the procedure. Actually that surprised me too. But none of this is the story.
But it is kind of. As I was in immediate recovery I told my mom. It's not like you're fine one day then all of a sudden you have heart failure. I had not been feeling good for about a year. And it just got worse and worse until my heart said, "Fuck it."
Now, I remember...waking up in the recovery room. I remember that quite distinctly. Everyone was saying how great the surgery, went and the pacemaker is up and online, and there were no issues. As they were taking me to my room, that's when it started to happen.
In Walks the Tuxedo Cat
Well to be honest I tried to refrain from being happy, until I had no choice in the matter. Then I began to smile, I never again had to worry about my heart racing. No more trips to the E.R., for that anyway. I could plan things. If I went out to a restaurant or anywhere I didn't have to worry that my heart would again race. And if it did, I knew I better get to the E.R. And I know if it did happen, people would take me seriously. Which hasn't always been a given with me.
Anyway, the more happy I became, the more I was being aware of something going on with me. You see it's not just the heart problem that caused me so much bodily pain, it was also the years of being in body braces and casts that I also had to contend with. I mean, I believe what happened next is a watershed moment in my life. A life's worth of physical pain being washed away, along with an explanation as to how I survived with most of my faculties intact.
As I was being taken into my room and attached to gadgets, given a menu, some ice water, as well as the all important remote. I began to see things. Things that made me smile and be happy. It was almost as if I couldn't wipe that smile off my face.
It was like this, I saw some people being sort of led into an area, or they just wandered in. And I knew those people weren't people. They were emotions and feelings in the form of people. For me it was all of the elements that are responsible for my backbone. Or maybe if that's the wrong word then the courage and fortitude to not give up on myself. But I like the word backbone since my own spine looks like the letter S. Sort of like Richard III.
And I'll tell you, some of those emotions are not at all nice. It wasn't just all the happy flower thoughts. The snips and snails, and puppy dog tails, came right along with the sugar and spice. They are mean, nasty, ugly, swearing, filthy and grotesque, selfishness, guilt, stingy, and Bashful.
At first there were just a few people in what looked like a conference room. Then that room started filling up. So the proceedings were taken outside. I saw before me all these people milling around what looked like a small section of a structured concrete maze. At that point it did resemble a Dali painting. I said, "Any more? Lets get them all out. I don't want any surprises." That's when I saw my tuxedo cat for the first time.
I kind of knew I had an ally, something helping the proceeding along. My own personal Sherpa guiding me through the make up of my mind. He went out and scouted for stragglers and came back. And he was funny and cute. I even caught him around the corner smoking a cigarette. It was my fault though for being nosy. What he does on his free time is his own business.
This vision didn't just happen then go away. It stayed there for days so I had a chance to make something of it all. One thing that crossed my mind was. If I had died at any of the points in my life where it was a possibility, I would have never have known how this one aspect of my mind worked. When I came to that realization it just made me happier. It was like a present I received, a gift. The nurses were probably grateful they had a quiet happy patient. And I kept repeating those words, I never knew I was allowed to have a friend, or to know how this works. For days I said that, over and over again while smiling.
A Busy Man With an Agenda
My tuxedo cat is cute and fluffy and clean. But he seemed preoccupied after the unveiling. I couldn't pick him up or hold him in my lap and pet him. He was not always around, he seemed to have something on his mind. After that first night I found out what.
Let me ask you, did you ever start dreaming before you go to sleep? I have. Even when I'm not in the hospital or taking narcotics. It was sometime after that first night. I began to start dreaming before I went to sleep. But only for a few seconds. I interrupted myself because in the first place who wants to dream before you're asleep, that's no fun. Secondly something happened, my cat and all those people showed me exactly how my dreams work.
My dreams are for the most part in color and dull. I've had very few dreams that could make a good movie. It would be like watching your neighbor make breakfast.
Unless of course I'm having someone else's dream. I have that all the time where I know I had someone else's dream. Something misfired on the delivery system and I got someone else's dream. There's probably a technical dream word for that, but I don't know it. And I'm not going to waste time in trying to find it. For myself I feel like your dreams are like your fingerprint. They are you. So when I have a, someone else's dream, dream, everything about it is foreign. And the people I encounter in the dream seem to have their lives on the line in some way. I did a diary about this very fact a while ago called Sweet Dreams if you care to read it. But even when I have those dreams they are almost always matter of fact.
Anyway, as the beginning of the dream unfolded I saw my cat manipulate all those people (or emotions) into a story built on everyday occurrences and experiences I've had or known about. I suppose dreams are solely for your brain's amusement. But it's an amusement you can't find anywhere else. Things get misplaced and mismatched. I tell you, my dreams are not an exact science.
My cat was like a blind person trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle. Or maybe the better analogy would be the movie Nightmare Before Christmas. The heart was in the right place but the presents were less than optimal.
Now I know that if I have a scary dream there's nothing to worry about, or even think about because it's nothing more than a square peg being forced into a round hole.
And it's not to say my cat is incompetent, it's just stress and time constraints. And, of course, not knowing the difference between carefree and frazzled. Happiness and contentment, or fear and loneliness. Reality, imagination, historical past, present, comprehension, and dumbfoundedness, are all just tools the cat uses for my, or maybe it's entertainment at night. And there is no particular weight or distinguishing discretion involved in any of the elements the cat chooses to create a dream. Everything is given the same importance and meaning. There's no reason why, and it's folly to try to make sense of it.
But I saw it happen, I saw my cat gather together some specific things and arranged them to form what would have been a dream. But he put the ending before the beginning, the beginning in the middle, and the middle is a character and the plot is an emotion. No wonder I have too many dreams where the point of them is to figure out what's going on in my dream.
You see I always want to be right. I want to get it right the first time. I take my dreams as if they were one of those escape from the room computer games, which I hate. And I don't quit on them. Maybe it's also due to the fact I'm not a comic book super hero fan, or a sci-fi fan, or a western fan. So if I ever found myself in a dream like that I would stop it dead in it's tracks and say nope, try again. I would imagine dreams are cater made for those genres, but it's not for me. I like, Mars Attacks.
So What?
Well, these so whats. These are the only so whats that makes sense to me.
First. My first operation I had was before I was in kindergarten. So surgery is not a stranger to me. And since then, every 10 to 15 years of my life I've had some major heavy duty, life or death surgery. As a result of that, I don't cry much. I don't show a lot of emotion, except happiness and joy. I empathize and sympathize. But I don't generally let it all hang out, or let it go. Nor do I feel the need to bother my friends with my problems. Maybe that's why my friends always come to me with their issues. I always felt I needed all that inside, in order to tolerate the pain. And maybe I did, and maybe I do.
So maybe this was a case of my cat picking the right moment. There was a lifetime of things inside me that needed to come out. Maybe even emotions get claustrophobic.
And, I must admit there was an aspect of this whole experience that was like...Well done. Hats off for not going to the many bad places that exist to be the end of you.
Secondly. I wish you all could have an experience like the one I've described. I'm glad I've lived long enough to see what I saw, and know what I know. I saw just a tiny glimpse, the smallest fraction of how your body and mind work, to get you through tough times.
I guess all the important stuff happens back of the house. And it can operate on it's own with no help from you. And it's quite ingenious. It works with what it has. In my case it seemed to have worked with things that could neither be, taken away, injured from birth, or broken.
It's 6:00 am.
When I go to sleep I'm going to try to talk to my cat. Try to teach him the fine art of story telling. And I just now realize what his name is. I'm calling him Phineas. Maybe someday we'll go around the world.
I want to end this with a song. I like this song, even still.