Julie Benesh ~ Zuihitsu

(Translated from Japanese, Zuihitsu means “fol­low­ing the brush.”)

1. My cat’s eyes fol­low the brush. She feels left out, wish­ing her tongue were as wide and deep as the bris­tles I pull across my scalp, and that she could make it reach the length of her fur­ry back, her inky bot­tle-brush tail. She yelps a reproach and blinks an entreaty. She promis­es to strength­en my bones with her purr should I yield to her request. [For more infor­ma­tion about trad­ing favors with a cat, see #2. For more infor­ma­tion about cat-human rela­tions, see #3. To debunk a senior spouse’s tale/urban folklore/common mis­un­der­stand­ing about cats, see #4. Not inter­est­ed in cats? For more infor­ma­tion on the rela­tion­ship between plea­sure and hap­pi­ness, see #5. To skip to the bot­tom line, see #6.]

2. I know that such exchanges are trans­for­ma­tive, add val­ue, are greater than the sum of their parts; I have tak­en eco­nom­ics, she has not. She is lim­it­ed to being trans­ac­tion­al, but she is not unrea­son­able, not the least unfair. By suc­cumb­ing I will not make a mon­ster of her, nor of myself, no one will be tak­en advan­tage of, we will both become enhanced even if she does not learn how or why, which she will not. [For more infor­ma­tion about cat-human rela­tions, see #3. To debunk a senior spouse’s tale/urban folklore/common mis­un­der­stand­ing about cats, see #4. For more infor­ma­tion on the rela­tion­ship between plea­sure and hap­pi­ness, see #5. To skip to the bot­tom line, see #6.]

3. We have com­mon ances­tors but evolved into dif­fer­ent kinds of beings; these very dif­fer­ences help us to coöper­ate, and not to com­pete. Her purr makes her own bones stronger too, and yet she can­not do it alone. We are sym­bi­ot­ic, not to say code­pen­dent. Perhaps we are inter­de­pen­dent, almost like a new and high­er form of life, our own hybrid. [To debunk a senior spouse’s tale/urban folklore/common mis­un­der­stand­ing about cats, see #4. For less cats and more infor­ma­tion on the rela­tion­ship between plea­sure and hap­pi­ness, see #5. To skip to the bot­tom line, see #6.]

4. It is often said if a cat’s human com­pan­ion were to die and leave the cat unfed, the cat would feed on the human corpse. However, I fol­low true crime, and that is not the case. I am not sur­prised, if for no oth­er rea­son because I know that because cats like fresh prey they killed them­selves. If I were starv­ing I wouldn’t kill my cat for food, nor have I heard of a cat killing a human for food, unlike so many oth­er preda­to­ry ani­mals. [For rel­a­tive­ly uplift­ing infor­ma­tion on the rela­tion­ship between plea­sure and hap­pi­ness, see #5. To skip to the bot­tom line, see #6.]

5. The con­di­tion of hap­pi­ness is flow. Flow is a plea­sure, but not all plea­sure is flow. Flow is pre­dictable in its qual­i­ty, but the tan­gi­ble out­put of flow, its prod­ucts, if you will, are nec­es­sar­i­ly mys­te­ri­ous. [If you feel sat­is­fied by this end­ing, stop here. If you are con­fused about the dif­fer­ence between what I have writ­ten and the world in which we oper­ate, read on to #6.]

6. Capitalism mea­sures qual­i­ty in exclu­sive­ly quan­ti­ta­tive terms, a para­dox that is para­dox­i­cal­ly unmys­te­ri­ous, even anti-mys­te­ri­ous, an oxmoron­ic para­dox with­in a para­dox where­in every spread­sheet adds up to 0. [If this is dis­turb­ing or annoy­ing, read or re-read #5.]