When we got married, Sandy had two twin Tonkinese boys, litter mates. I grew to love them. They’re gone now. But their personalities were a gentle teaching.
Rico was the bigger of the two, darker in color, slower and more cautious, tentative, and reserved. I felt the weight of his fear and judgments. He was sweet but I imagined he was encumbered with a limiting self-awareness. Perhaps he over-thought his choices in life and his risk aversion kept him from being spontaneous. I related to him, and I felt protective. We were alike.
Cosmo, on the other hand, was lighter in color and light on his feet, curious, trusting of everyone, astonished by life’s minutiae, and up for anything. Sandy used to say Cosmo would go to sleep and wake up in the morning having forgotten everything he had ever learned or experienced. So, he was constantly mind-blown by everything. Every day was like when you’re six and you go to Disneyland for the first time and there’s Mickey or you’re fourteen and have your first kiss and it’s not your mom and it’s not on the cheek. I aspired to be like Cosmo.
Ram Dass once said that Aldous Huxley was like that, constantly exclaiming in his proper English accent, “Extraordinary! Extraordinary!” That could have been due to the mescaline.
Imagine the feeling of that, of being free from preferences, aversions, biases, likes, and dislikes. Imagine entering a gathering and not mentally putting everyone into your hierarchy. Imagine responding creatively to each new situation–which come at us rapid-fire–and not from rote or habit or “how I always do this”. Imagine trying the oysters just because they look so weird. Imagine encountering everything each day like Cosmo, meowing out, “Extraordinary!” in his proper Siamese accent, when the Amazon guy comes to the door or when the phone rings or when you draw your last breath. How liberating that might feel.
Ram Dass also said, “We’re all just walking each other home.”
Rico died first. We laid him on a brocade cloth and sat the night with him. Cosmo stretched out beside his brother.
I wrote:
You can sit with a
dead cat all night long and he
barely blinks an eye
Leave a Reply