I wonder what my cat thinks as she lies there in the Whole Foods bag she has come to call home, as of late. I suppose her interest in the starry night mouse toy and the pillow mouse toy and the jingley ball all remain because of catnip or noise, but she is playing with an old button that says England on it. This reminds me of the New Yorker "Future Generations" cover that we looked at at the beginning of the semester. A tattered bag and a rusty button makes for a happy kitty.
Another thing. She puts her head (and body, when she sneaks by my eyes) onto the warmth of my labtop and watches me type and move the mouse across the screen. She thinks the mouse and anything else that moves rapidly is a living being, and her complete confusion is given away the moment she puts her paw to the screen to discover that in reality, the moving thing is nothing. It doesn't exist; she cannot touch it. Perplexed at this non-physical being, she eventually becomes content with following the mouse with her eyes, and grooming herself.. and me.. because I think she thinks I'm a cat.
Her revelations must be endless, and even the paws that twitch in her sleep give way to the realities she could be seeing and creating.
Every day, seeing new things and setting out to bite, destroy, and lick.
First I want to know about your title: are you just using the word "apocalypsing" (as a gerund) as a synonym for 'overwhelming', as in 'to overwhelm'? What do we get from this downgrading of the word?
ReplyDeleteI like this way of thinking about the endless revelations of the cat; this could be a productive line of inquiry, to ask if (or how, under what circumstances) humans might be able to adopt a similarly 'apocalyptic' stance toward everyday life—and if so, would this make for more dynamic living, and even potentially eliminate the very thrust of apocalypticism as irrelevant, because the constant processes of "seeing and creating" never preclude revelations? This might be one of those cases of apocalyptic thinking used to short-circuit apocalypticism in the 'long run'—ah, but that 'long run' language is rather apocalyptic in itself, isn't it?