How would God respond to making a mistake? Would planets collide or mountains slide into the sea? Or would the ledger of all life simply remain out kilter until a series of small events forced that ledger back into balance again? It's probably the l...
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October
2 cats in a doghouse day
To understand any happy story, you have to look at it through all the facets of a diamond. It's not quite the same for a sad story. More on that in a minute.
Before I begin stitching together the pieces of the next story, I ask you to imagine a cat falling from a great height. Imagine that cat tumbling at first and then rotating so its feet are splayed outward like a partly inflated parachute. This is the point in any story when you can't be sure whether the ending will be happy or sad. Then (as the cat is falling) I ask you to make the cat fall from higher and higher heights. After a while, it must seem certain to you that the ending of this miniature story would have to be a sad one. But for cats, that isn't always true. You see, for reasons no one fully understands, cats are more likely to survive a fall from 100 feet than from 30. Each time they blink their eyes, they would have a different view of the world. Maybe they would actually see one of their nine lives, then blink, and then suddenly see the next life. It must be wonderful to be able to break your life into useful chunks. That way you can skip all the ones where you're stuck in the doghouse.
It's October now – a month where the past always feels more present in our minds. They call this feeling ATITA. It is the dust of the past. It is the light sparkling through the smallest facet of a tiny diamond. It is, in fact, the fragments of memories that we'd be better off forgetting and leaving behind. But it's also an extremely funny word. ATITA. Just look at it. It's funny because it's the same word forward as it is backward and it even looks the same in the mirror. What other word is like that? I can't think of any.
So, my dear one, I only have a few more facets of the diamond to let you see. Like any story (happy or sad), this one gets broken into tiny fragments. ATITA. Is happy or sad? ATITA.
Now, back to sad stories. I read once that every sad life is its own peculiar horror, but I don't think that's actually true. In fact, the fragments of a sad story are different from the fragments of a happy one. In a sad story, you can rotate each of the pieces or flip them or switch one for another and it doesn't matter because sad stories are strangely interchangeable. It reminds me of all those letters in the alphabet that look the same when you see them in a mirror. A H I M N O T U V W X Y. Or the fact that the numbers 6 and 9 look exactly alike if you're standing on your head.
So, my dear Charon, listen to the fragments of this story as if you're hearing the words in a mirror or standing on year head. And imagine that cat falling from greater and greater heights. Tumbling and then relaxing. The story in your mind can go forward and also backward. Either way, it'll almost seem true. It's a fact. An absolute fact.
