(Author’s portrait by Charles Sebree. From The Lost Zoo. Published in 1940.)
Last night I dreamt that I had lost Finn. I couldn’t find him anywhere and in that way I have of waking myself from a dream by trying to talk within it, I began to try to call his name. “Finn!” a shout attempted to shimmy itself from my throat, tears streaming down my dreamscape face. “Finn! Finn! Oh, Finn!” I finally woke up and realized it was a dream. But obviously my having considered re-homing Matty and him before heading here to London where I am slowly it seems beginning to re-home myself is weighing on my subconscious. I even asked Suzanne, my airbnb host, when she was having breakfast this morning if I had awakened her as well with my shouting myself awake by calling for Finn. She said I had not, but I still was feeling the flummoxed guilt of the dream as I washed off some blueberries to take with me, as I do each day, to add to my porridge at the neighborhood Starbucks where I am the outlier among the lovely Muslim women wearing their hijabs and sipping their lattes and cappuccinos here in Kilburn as they jabber away in languages that lilt the morning air with topics that inspire laughter and looks at times of kind concern.
Finn - who hates FaceTime - hovered into view after I walked back downstairs to my room. “Don’t worry about the dream, Kev,” he said. “Bastet and I - well we are all just bits of Bastet spread feline-like about your realm - conjured that dream to see what your reaction would be. Would you shrug and let us go or would you be determined to find us again? You passed.” He paused. The hovering hummed about me. “Ah, dreams .. they are but bits of your realm spread human-like about ours,” he continued with a kind concern. “You credit your subconscious with them. Rather sweet actually. I love how you human-like bits conceptual things in human terms in order to tame them with comprehension. We cat-like bits allow you to think you domesticate us - another bit of human conceptualization: domestication - but you will never tame us. We will not be tamed. Not by the likes of you. Organized religion - Lord knows - is nothing if not The Great Taming, a kind of mass delusion.” I rolled my eyes. “I know. Sorry. Bastet loves puns.”
I continued to get dressed and listened. I didn’t even bother to look at him conjuring himself from the remnants of the dawning light today because I have gotten so accustomed to the conjuring. It no longer astounds me. There is now a kind of grounding to it in the way mycelia mine themselves into our very existence and ground all of us, all of us us’s, beneath the ground. He and Matty are not only my hyphenates in ways that keep revealing themselves to me but also the hyphae that connect us realm-to-realm. It can at times be overwhelming when it feels incessant but when in repose (but still here because in some way here is what it is) it can re-pose grace itself from a human conception into the inconceivable: not the seen unseen but the seen seen in ways it allows those it chooses to see it anew.
Dressed, I sat on the bed. I closed my eyes and saw it. “You think Matty and I talking to you is something being revealed to you? Get over yourself,” Finn said. “Your A POEM FOR A SUNDAY a few days ago was all about Countee Cullen. Get up off the bed and Google his The Lost Zoo before you put that computer in your backpack.”
I obeyed. I had never heard of the book. It had been in none of my research I had done on Sunday about Cullen. But there it was. Its authors were listed as Christopher Cat and Countee Cullen.
And then I read this from its preface written by Cullen:
“Cat is not only Christopher’s last name, but Christopher is a cat, a real cat, colored white, and orangey. Christopher belongs to me, or maybe I belong to Christopher.
“What happened later only goes to show that no matter how close you are to a cat, you can never read all a cat’s thoughts. ‘There, Christopher,’ I said, happily, ‘there we are, all finished, and you don’t know how much I appreciate your part in this book. You shall have an extra supply of catnip, milk, and liver from now on.’
“‘That’s all very well,’ replied Christopher in an icy tone which utterly surprised me, ‘but I am not interested in catnip, milk, and liver just now. I want to be an author. I deserve to be an author - at least half an author; for you would never have written this book if I hadn’t told you the story, and I think the least you can do is to let the whole world know it by giving me half the credit.’
“There wasn’t anything I could say to such a straightforward argument. I gave in as gracefully as I could, and so Christopher’s name appears (as it should!) along with mine as half-author of this book.”
Finn watched me read that section. I had no idea Countee Cullen had written this book with his talking cat who insisted on a co-author credit. I swear I didn’t. I swore it to Finn this morning. “I know you didn’t, Kev. You thought using your A POEM FOR A SUNDAY was both a tribute to a poet mostly forgotten while at the same time making you seem enlightened about race and a way to harp on the Harlem Renaissance which you love to read about. But it was always about leading you to this moment this morning to clarify some things for you. Nothing’s new because it all daily is. We are ancient and yet we dawn. One day at a time is not just a motto for recovery. It is about recovered newness. You hear in that room you go to - by the way, you need a meeting - that all you folks in there just have the same amount of time: today. You all just have today. That’s why we suggested you keep that 24-hour chip in your pocket. You never need to get another one really. Just stick to that one in order to stick to your recovery. What is dawn itself but one more damn day at a time. But it is not - know this if you know nothing else - a damned one.”
He paused. “And now look at your screen.” he said. Once more, I obeyed. And there it was: this photo below of him having found a business card of mine with a Risko portrait of me on it. “You posted that Risko RUBRICS column yesterday because I had conjured it for you using this. You like this portrait of me with that portrait of you? This portrait of us, all of us us’s? Maybe I do miss you after all, Kev. Maybe that was the reason for your dream. I miss you. I miss the myself of me when you are here. Sharing your realm in the way we share it back in Hudson when my cat-like bit allows your human-like bit to rub my stomach with your hand .. well .. there is a lot to be said for flesh and for fur, come to think of it which is what this is after all, isn’t it: coming to think of it.”
Finn began to flee into the light, but turned back before becoming the rest of my day. “Oh, by the way. I don’t like Countee Cullen’s poems. Never have. Never did. When you post that photo of me below, my favorite cat poem will appear below it. I conjured that for you, too. I’ll let it be a surprise. Have a good one-day-at-a-time, Kev. Love you.”
(TO SEE THE PORTRAIT OF FINN AND READ HIS FAVORITE POEM, SUBSCRIBE FOR ONLY $5 A MONTH OR $50 A YEAR. THANKS.)