TWITCH HUNT

Twinkie, our one-eyed kitten, stretches out and falls asleep on her blanket. The world takes itself back. Cars, planes, our television. I brush my teeth. Do cats dream?

Time to write, and a little extracurricular entertainment. I tilt at windmills such as multiple, used in place of many. And there will be a plaque to honor my neologism, multivalent. Just to be sure, I google it. With lightning speed, a definition returns. So cancel the thunderous celebration. Time to join Twinkie.

At the first hint of dawn, around 5:30 AM, there is a tug on my ear lobe. Then it spreads over voluminous covers, searching under folds that might conceal mice, finally capturing a toe unfortunate enough to have twitched. I haven't told her yet.

Humans search for things she can't see. The far side of the moon. Or preparations for colonizing Mars. The Fast Radio Bursts from a galaxy so far away that we're hardly able to comprehend the distance, even though some of us suspect the flashes might be signals. Climate change doesn't concern her. Or the standard model adhered to by physicists, or extrasensory phenomena that suggest it should be revised. We don't live in hurricane alley, so rising seas, storm surge, insurance premiums, elections are not cat things. Buffoon leaders with big red buttons. She doesn't remember history, count wars, worship anyone or anything, though she's playful and affectionate. Twinkie is not worried about assimilation by Artificial Intelligence.

She's on my website, of course. She might appear again. Chances are 6 out of 7, historically, that past content was unimportant or misguided. That's OK. I'm not selling anything, and also not much of a consumer. Which brings us to my presumed invention.

The definition of multivalent is close enough for a gardener, including attachments, susceptible of various meanings, values, applications at 5:50AM, or any other time.

To continue ~

Care of our biosphere is being ceded to bankers and machines, giving rise to the first cyborgs. “Oh, but we are biological!” The earth has become an infirmary, with some lingering memory, perhaps only 10,000 years old, of wholeness. Rain forests and corral reefs are disappearing even as they remain part of us, the part that grieves. In an ordinary backyard, unsold, survives a multivalent universe that is also you.

Waking up, maybe we're not going to change the world much, save it, whatever. But here we are.

Here we are again, Twinkie and I, in the quiet time. She's stretched out asleep on her back now, paws in the air. What a laugh. And just like this morning, my toe, there – her paw twitches!