Winter's Tail End and the Mouse Saga pt.2

Winter's death grip is finally loosening. Though we woke up to snow this morning, the temperature has quickly risen from face-and-nostril-stinging to can-go-out-in-a-jumper-and-be-perfectly-comfortable. It already feels like a small weight has been lifted from the shoulders.

Update on the fireplace-mystery-visitor. My dad came over this afternoon with his inspection mirror and various tools to prod around. We removed the foil tape covering the flue and discovered a whole bunch of old newspaper packed into the cavity. When we removed that, out came a whole mess of mouse scat followed by a bundle of fur and miscellany, like chewed up paper and dried grass - clearly someone's humble abode. They picked a good spot anyway - no hawks, cats, or snakes would be getting them from in there.

The landlord joined us to assess the situation and decide what to do. My suggestion was to get a small double-door cage type trap to place either on the sort of shelf of the cavity up in the chimney, or down on the ground of the hearth which we would block off from the living room with the panel I use for stretching paper. Much to my dismay, he didn't like that idea, and instead took a trip up the road to the hardware store. He returned with a small arsenal of wretched traps - mainly two trays full of some ridiculously sticky substance, and two clamp traps. I made an uncomfortable attempt at talking him out of these and into something else but it wasn't any use; he's the type of person who sticks to a thing once his mind is set on it.

So now I'm sitting in my studio, which is also the living room, awaiting either the sound of a clamp snapping shut or the creature screaming as it tries to get out of the wretched sticky shit. I don't want to be here at all. The landlord will be back in a few hours tonight to check the traps, and again tomorrow morning. I want to remove everything at once and try something else - but I also don't want to piss off the landlord (who is also my uncle, and lives just upstairs) even more than he is at having a mouse in his house. The tension between my moral code (don't hurt anything, not even spiders or ants) and the need to maintain a good relationship with family / landlord is terrible. Thus my desire to flee from the situation altogether (out of sight out of mind, right?)

Last year we had a rat burrowing in the flowerbed beneath our porch. He was going to put rat poison out but I managed to talk him out of that (there are far far too many stray cats, dogs, pets that get loose, birds, raccoons, rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks, coyotes, wildlife in general in our neighborhood- anything at all could get into it and would suffer horribly) and into one of the door-closing cage traps. I asked him to let me know when he caught it, so I could take it down into the valley and release it, far away from the house and into the woods. To my dismay, when he did catch it, he filled a barrel of water in the back garden and shoved the cage, rat and all, into it for half a day. I didn't talk to him for two weeks afterwards (but never did tell him why).

I feel an incredible moral duty to remove the traps.
The sticky ones sound particularly bad. At least the snappy ones would, at best, be quick...to think of the thing suffering and struggling in that goo...(although I wonder whether there'd be some way for me to help the creature out should it fall victim to it...)
But at the same time I feel obliged to listen to the 'rules' of the person who owns the house.
At the price of a living creature's life though? ("Oh but it's just a mouse.") That guilt will weigh heavier on me than any winter day.

Stay tuned.

Edit: Moral compass wins. The shop has a catch-and-release trap specifically for mice that's small enough for the hearth. I hope the landlord doesn't get upset - I can't imagine why he would other than he spent $10 on his cruel traps - but, well, I won't budge of he does.

Endless Winter - Tipper Knows.

There’s not much I miss more in cold or wet weather than an open fire. The continuation of a seemingly endless, depressing winter has found me gazing longingly at our cold and barren hearth wishing we could bring it back from the dead. It’s illegal to have functional fireplaces in multi-family housing in our city, but most landlords have kept the original hearths in the units for decorative purposes. Such is the case for ours. 

The brick around it has been whitewashed, but the muddy-red tiles on the floor of it are original, or so they look. It was gas-powered, so the old pipe head, now disconnected from the main, still sticks up in the back. The top, where I assume some manner of exhaust duct or ventilation would have been, has been covered, curiously, by foil tape. It’s not much more than a good-looking, cold little nook in the wall. 

About a week ago Tipper started a nightly ritual of sitting in front of this scene with Seán Mhicí Ted Beag (our hearth gnome), and his candle, and staring at the foil-tape-roof.  She’d set herself down square in front, bright eye’d, tall ear’d, and with her tail twitching and swishing in that way it does when she watches the birds or squirrels or when I tease her with a toy. For a few nights I’d wondered whether a spider of some kind had come out of hibernation and sought solace in some corner, but there was nothing to be found - and surely she’d have pounced within seconds had it been a spider. Yet she continued every night to sit there, with some “crouching tiger” stalk poses mixed in, and a few moments of getting in the space and standing up to sniff the foil-y roof. Since none of my scrutiny returned the slightest hints of anything interesting, I could only guess that it was her reflection in the tape that she was amused by. 

I must admit to painting her as a simpler creature than she is. 

Jack and I were getting ready to tuck ourselves in for the night when I heard a little sound unlike all the little sounds I’ve grown used to hearing. At first it sounded like rain, or some sort of particles, falling on the back side of the tape. But sure it wasn’t raining - and didn’t it just rain yesterday, and a million times before that, and we never heard water getting in (does the ‘exhaust’ for the thing even go straight up and out anyway?) Sure enough there was Tipper the whole while - sitting there as was her wont each night, staring up, tail swishing vigorously back and forth. We both got down close, sticking our ears in Seán Mhící Ted Beag’s whitewashed cove, and sure enough - gnawing sounds, the sounds of little feet and claws moving, scratching and chewing at something, right there above us, separated by no more than a few layers of old foil tape. It sounded as though they were chewing the tape itself. But what WAS it and how on earth did it get in there?

Tipper knew the whole time. She must have heard it making its way there from wherever it came, whatever it is. Sitting and waiting patiently for the arrival of this curiosity. 

It being 1am we were not about to walk upstairs and ask my uncle, our landlord, for help. Nor were we about to try and cut the tape out for a peek. No indeed, with it being past Brógan’s working hours (10pm at the latest), and Tipper being only twice the size of a proper rat (if it wasn’t a mouse, or squirrel, or opossum, or mutant Cleveland sewer creatuirín), and Seán Mhicí Ted Beag having had no time to clear out. We’ve boarded it up with the panel I use to stretch paper and some cardboard, abutted by the coffee table, and are hoping for the best for the night.

I wonder what we will find in the morning. 

And right now I cannot possibly get “The Waterford Boys” our of my head;

“Well I wasn't long sleeping when I heard something creeping,

And gnawing and chawing around the bed post,

My breath I suspended but the noise never ended,

Thinks I you have damnable claws for a ghost,

Now to make myself easy for I felt rather lazy,

Well over my head I again pulled the clothes,

When Moses what's that, sure a great big jack-rat,

With one leap from the floor jumped right up to my nose."

March Still-Winter Notes

I don’t have enough decent material floating around in my mind for a proper post. Just bits and pieces. Everything is very in-between at the moment. 

After spending the two hours before it curled up with debilitating anxiety, feeling like my chest was being crushed, wishing I didn’t have to go and wondering if there were any possible ways I could hide in a corner or fake my identity so people wouldn’t talk to me, I survived the show. I’ve never talked to so many people nor shaken so many hands in one day before. This was a good thing of course, but it did leave me socially exhausted - likely enough for a year. There were a handful of fellow CIA alumni from years ahead of me (80’s graduates mostly) who were wonderfully supportive and kind but I couldn’t remember a single name after two minutes of meeting anyone and it continues to bother me. There were a lot of old friends that showed up, former Irish students, and a good deal of acquaintances -  many of which I never had the opportunity to thank or even say hello to because not a moment went by that I wasn’t either in a conversation or being pulled over to another, so I’m harboring guilt about that. It was an entirely new experience, all that being talked to and met. Overall I think it went well (we did nearly make back the cost of the 15 big frames), but I wouldn’t really know, my house sits too close to the work for any real perspective and I’m too privy to all the mistakes and should’ve / would’ve / could’ves. Brógan came along because I promised myself that if I managed to have a solo show while he was alive, he would be there, so there he was. He was mostly bored stiff in a sea of people just standing around and not doing anything worth his while (like feeding him their food, or throwing things, or procuring ropes to play tug with, or pools to jump in, or running), but he appreciated the pats and scratches and attention. I’ll not make him do it again, I promised. 

Now that that’s done I’m not completely sure in which direction to move forward. As a result of “choice paralysis” as far as actual work goes, and being desperate to do anything other then mope over the endless winter, I’ve managed to bite the bullet and get the bulk of my website done. It’s still missing some things, and the “About” section needs to be done, but the hardest parts are finished. 

Kamccafferty.com

Thirty came sneaking around the corner last Wednesday. I don’t know how. It sounds like such a long time for how short it has felt. A very healthy reminder to slow way down much more often. And pull my head out of my arse. 

It’s still winter, though everything but the temperature would have you thinking otherwise. The robins are back and with them their sweet songs and happy whinnies, the sun traipses higher in the sky and stays out far past her winter bedtime - cloaking everything in that beautiful warm light well into the evening, the crocuses and tulips have begun to yawn forth from their subterranean slumbers, and the skies are as clear and blue as any day in June. But the air remains spiteful and bitter, biting and stinging any skin it can find, and the snow from two weeks ago is still hanging about. We feel like we’re living in a fishbowl whose water hasn’t been changed in nearly 6 months, but I would still take this over August. There’s no real difference; suffocating heat that keeps you shut up inside or biting cold that keeps you shut up inside. At least in the cold you can wear ten layers and still go out and be warm, but there’s not much you can do for relief outside when it’s 105F with 98% humidity. 

It feels like change is hiding only just around the corner, ready but made to wait. Whether good or bad remains to be seen.

(Big thanks to Jack mo chroí for keeping me sane and grounded and healthy, Brógan for being a trooper in a sea of people just standing around and not playing fetch with him, and Joe for helping install) 

The Dregs of Late-Winter: Current Musings

Cyclical time. My grandfather's time. His father's time, his father's father's time. What was it like to wake up to the sun, only the sun - the sun as all the generations before me, before my parents, understood it, as all the blood in us once felt it, as all the trees and deer and ants and weeds still feel it. The sun set free, set wild, unobstructed by numbers - by hours, by minutes, by seconds, by slots, by schedules, by money, by appointment, by construction. A world felt and breathed and lived in, a connection deeper and older than any idea of time. A privileged freedom I have never known and ache deeply for.

Forgetting what it is to exist in the world. Screens hither and thither, everywhere; every gas pump every check-out lane every pub every house every room every wall every pocket, beckoning relentlessly, syphoning life minute by minute into a void as the world ticks on. And the way the idea of shunning these shackles receives scorn as 'weird neo-hippie hipster shit.'

For the first time since we've moved here, just eleven days over three years ago as I write this, we had a chickadee come to our feeder. Thursday, the day after Jack's 29th birthday, the second anniversary of my grandmother's passing. I won't forget it.


These two have stuck to me for a few years:

"Only a few of us, amid the great fabrications of society, hang on to our really childish reactions, still wonder naively what we are doing on the earth and what sort of joke is being played on us. We want to decipher skies and paintings, go behind these starry backgrounds or these painted canvases and, like little kits trying to find a gap in the fence, try to look through the cracks in the world." -Georges Bataille (from "The Cruel Practices of Art")

"We have misunderstood the stars. Clocks make our lives a slow motion frenzy. We can't get off the screen back into a world where we could live. Every so often we hear the current of night music from the Gods who swim and fly as we once did." - Jim Harrison (I can't find the source for this, it may be a misquote, but either way.)

Slight Spring in Mid Winter

I’ve sat here for four nights now trying to put into words the trouble that my most recent drawing has been. 

Trying to find the words for the way its stomach-churning howl echoed through the rafters of my mind, splintered here and there by the continual stream of voices that have gathered there to do their horrible dancing. Locusts, insatiable and restless; humming, thrumming, buzzing, consuming, eternally.

My dad would say “better out than in” but it feels like dirty laundry. Like punching yourself in the nose, then showing off the bruise - and forgetting how you got it. A bad dream, a fit, imaginary. Was this real? Was it me? I can’t touch any of it.

Reaching the shore after this one merited tangible, palpable relief. I’m making a point of not looking back at it, either. 

Today we had a warm spell and I felt alive for the first time since Thanksgiving. Muddy paws and boots alike - happiness all around. Chickadees (please please come visit us) in pines, bluejays in beeches, the eerie silence of a red-tailed hawk overhead, and the unmistakable trill of a lone kingfisher across the swollen river. Smiling in the sun, pale and ghostly from the winter, eyes squinting and stinging, the world looking washed-out in brightness, laughing with full hearts drunk on warmth and fresh air, feverishly wishing from the soles of our eight feet that it didn’t have to end. 

Mid-Winter Clearing

It took eight days. Eight long, frustrating days of battle against brambles in my chest and thistledown in my head. I feared at one point that my skull might shatter from the pressure and cast a million fluffy seeds free into the house (which would have been much to Tipper’s merriment) or that I might awaken to find myself merged with the sofa in a very Kafka’s-Samsa-meets-O’Brien’s-de Selby manner. And since I’m given to shelling myself with buckets of frustration when I’m not keeping up with things (this pleasant little passtime of mine falls under the category of ‘nice things acquired along my three-year misadventure’) I was lucky enough to top the whole charade off with a day-long stress-induced migraine. The freedom is feeling human again is most welcome.

Jack taught me today that there are no past or future tenses in Chinese. That I speak yesterday, I speak today, and I speak tomorrow. There was a program on the radio that I was sorry to have missed which talked about how language effects our perception of the world and the ways we behave it. I  vaguely remember reading something about this a few years ago when I was poking around in linguistic theory, and how my thoughts ran amok considering all the ways in which our worlds are limited by this symbolism. 

I equally remember reading vehement arguments against this idea (the details of which were far too onerous, if not downright fustian, in vocabulary for me to have truly internalized and been able to later recall). 

I can’t help but feel that there must be something to it. Language as semiotic, as symbol, as stand-in, as mirror, as at times imposter, and even simulacra; itself defining what constitutes any given thing, rather than the thing itself being the matrix. Is it possible that society understands and reacts to its world primarily through the ways in which it communicates it? Is it possible that my understanding of and relationship to the world I exist in is experienced only through my learned symbolism of it? How restricted our understanding, our ability to exist. I can’t do much but offer questions, as I haven’t enough authority on the topic to offer statements, or answers (and lest I step on the toes of those linguists who might come parading to my house with torches and pitchforks).

What a language doesn’t have words for surely says just as much about it as the things for which it does, so it seems to me. I remember learning my freshman year, in an introductory critical thinking and art theory course, that language is a failure. That it will forever shortfall the depth and bredth of the truths for which it attempts to stand in for. Made worse in efforts to translate across different tongues (and, are not our own minds, laden with their unique lived experiences, memories, associations, each their own tongue as well?). 

I don’t mean to sell language short of its absolute magnificence, or doubt my own love for it. To paraphrase David Chrystal, there is nothing more complex, nothing a greater testament to human creativity and innovation, nothing so impressive that we could possibly build with our hands or tools or technologies, as our languages, and all their incredible variations. 

I need to stop now or this post will end up thrice as long.

Mid-Winter Brambly Chests Day 03

I haven’t been sick enough to succumb to taking medicine in at least five years. The last time was when my dad and I both came down with the proper flu and were stuck on the sofa with high fevers and aches - nothing in the medicine cabinet seemed to help, and we tried it all. Typically when I feel subpar I just try rest, a boatload of greens, garlic, and turmeric, and a bunch of water and herbal tea. Usually that does the trick and prevents me from giving any money to drug companies and putting their rubbish in my body. But alas, here I am, bitterly waving my white flag with a cup of Theraflu in hand, spiting the state of myself and the chair I’ve been stuck in all day. 

I’m probably making everything worse by getting all worked up about something that’s out of my control. I did some yoga and meditation this afternoon, with hopes that at least it would at least chill me out, but it only exasperated things; I found myself thereafter curled up on the sofa with half a working nostril, a spinning feverish head, a whole new branch of thorns in my chest, and asking Jack (who was having a much better day today) if he’d run out for medicine.

It’s only been three days and I’m ready to bash my head through the wall with frustration. I love reading, and I’ve been playing plenty of zone-the-heck-out-of-life video games, but I'm way over my tolerance for both. My head protests when I start to think about doing actual work, like rebuilding my website or working on a statement, and while sitting on the porch was okay for a while there's no way I'm going out for a walk in the rain. 

My sympathy goes out to anyone who has any kind of chronic illness or pain. There’s a level of strength required there that I can’t imagine. 

Well, everyone around seems to agree that their respective bugs have lasted about seven days. So, just wake me up Friday week.