Cornelis Visscher: The Large Cat (1657)

" … I have no idea from precisely where this one came."

Me and My Mellow Cat

"Winter, my life is moving slow.
My dreams have turned into yesterdays
with no place left to go
and so I find myself
on this dark side of the sun,
just tryin' to find the ones I used to be."

I despise my anticipation of winter more than I've ever actually reviled the season in practice. It seems an insult after a long dry summer and an easy autumn to face a frozen world and the indignity of socks. Coats come out of the closet and hats come back into fashion. I button up the garage. I took what remained of the pop-up paint shoppe to the landfill yesterday and tossed it into the bin with a gust of wind. In practice, I rather revel in sitting before a fire, peering out the window into a frozen expanse. It almost seems like a snow day from school wherever a snowstorm comes. I feel as though I'm getting away with something. In practice, my winters feature languid afternoons and evenings with a satisfied cat warming my lap, both of us dreaming.

"Happy, for me she comes and goes.
Laughing crystal teardrops on the silence of a snowfall,
with my Mellow Cat, sleeping by my side,
I'm just waiting for the sound that will open up my eyes."

I sense a tension whenever transitioning. I feel a similar one when spring threatens. It's as if I don't quite feel as though I deserve whatever's coming. I've usually grown accustomed to the current season, whatever its insults, and would almost always really rather continue as is rather than change, but change is coming. Change is always coming, always impending, threatening for me.

"Warm and cozy
we can last the night.
I'm not in much of any mood for sleeping.
Just a little bit lonely,
it's gonna be alright.
I'm not about to sleep this time away."

The warm and cozy redeems winter. Whatever else it offers, the opportunities to cozy up remain winter's greatest gift. Let the snow drift up to the window sills just as long as I retain front row seating with a blanket and a cat. I wake each morning with a genuine sense of mission. I have a driveway to clear, and a front sidewalk, and the neighbor's, clear down to the end of the block. I consider it my civic responsibility to not let that sidewalk get away from me. After, sodden socks tossed into the laundry basket and cat securely in my lap, I revel in the season, one which so generously offers me opportunities to feel as though my presence really matters. Perhaps another cup of coffee as the fire catches in the grate.

"It's just Me And My Mellow Cat
lookin' out at the world,
through half-forgotten yesterdays
upon a snowy swirl.
And if I have not gone crazy yet,
tryin' to live my dream,
I'll sit here with my mellow cat
and find something to believe."

The belief's the thing. Some claim to labor for their supper, but I'm convinced that we all toil in search of and in service to our belief system, the one we own and/or the one we seek. Who hasn't struggled to find the belief they needed to warmly embrace their circumstances? The alternative seems to offer a life that wasn't supposed to happen, a regrettable existence. I seem to always be in search, often in earnest, of something I can really believe in, rather than some lukewarm alternative. I'd rather run hot or cold over lukewarm, any day, Amen.

"Someday, my dreams may all come true,
the crystals on my windowpanes
will change to something new,
but my mellow cat,
he understands the time,
with a dream to dream and a morning sun to shine."

I often infer wisdom superior to my own upon my cats. I marvel at their intelligence and also at the distance between our worlds, and yet we still manage to comfortably share our existences. I'm confident that many if not most of my actions will always remain utterly baffling to them, as theirs certainly are to me, as well. If it weren't for projection and an active imagination, I would never manage to understand the first anything about either of them. Yet, sometimes even the least of them seems to embody the utter depth of understanding and wisdom, inscrutable though they remain while sitting there without ever saying anything.

"Warm and cozy,
we could last the night,
I'm not in much of any mood for sleeping.
Just a little bit lonely,
it's gonna be alright.
I'm not about to sleep this time away."

This song, too, ends repeating its chorus. It serves as my all purpose winter mantra now, and has for all of my adult life, for I wrote this song, or this song visited me, when I was on the outward edge of my adolescence. It convinced me that I might actually have some ability to write songs. Like the best ones, I have no idea from precisely where this one came. It found me, sitting beside a frosty window, peering out into a consuming darkness, waiting for dawn. I'm still waiting.

"It's just Me And My Mellow Cat
lookin' out at the world,
through half-forgotten yesterdays
upon a snowy swirl.
And if I have not gone crazy yet,
tryin' to live my dream,
I'll sit here with my mellow cat
and find something to believe."
© 1970 by David A. Schmaltz, all rights reserved

©2022 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

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