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After scanning its face again and again,
I began to scale it, picking my holds
With intense caution. About half-way
To the top, I was suddenly brought to
A dead stop, with arms outspread
Clinging close to the face of the rock
Unable to move hand or foot
Either up or down. My doom
Appeared fixed. I MUST fall.
There would be a moment of
Bewilderment, and then,
A lifeless rumble down the cliff
To the glacier below.
My mind seemed to fill with a
Stifling smoke. This terrible eclipse
Lasted only a moment, when life blazed
Forth again with preternatural clearness.
I seemed suddenly to become possessed
Of a new sense. My trembling muscles
Became firm again, every rift and flaw in
The rock was seen as through a microscope,
My limbs moved with a positiveness and precision
With which I seemed to have
Nothing at all to do.
My head knocks against the stars.
My feet are on the hilltops.
My finger-tips are in the valleys and shores of
universal life.
Down in the sounding foam of primal things I
reach my hands and play with pebbles of
destiny.
I have been to hell and back many times.
I know all about heaven, for I have talked with God.
I dabble in the blood and guts of the terrible.
I know the passionate seizure of beauty
And the marvelous rebellion of man at all signs
reading “Keep Off.”
My name is Truth and I am the most elusive captive
in the universe.
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Gerard, I think the cat train toy is a kind of homage to Tama, a Japanese cat who became the honorary stationmaster of a train on the Wakayama Line in Kishi Prefecture in 2007. Her appointment as stationmaster led to a 10% increase in ridership on the Wakayama Line. In 2010, the station building at Kishi was remodeled to look like a cat’s face. Tama died in 2015 at the cat equivalent of 80 human years but has been succeeded by two cat assistants and a deputy named Nitama.
Per Wikipedia: “After her passing, thousands of her fans from all over Japan came to pay their respect. She was honored with a Shinto-style funeral at the station and was given the posthumous title, ‘Honorary Eternal Stationmaster.’ She was enshrined at a nearby Shinto cat shrine as spirit goddess Tama Daimyōjin on August 11, 2015. . . . Nitama’s first official duty was to be conveyed to her predecessor’s shrine to pay her respects.”
Photos of Tama, her assistants and deputy, the Wakayama train painted to look like a cat, the Kishi Station after remodeling, and the Shinto shrine to Tama at the link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tama_(cat)
I hope you don’t volunteer Miss Olive to be the feline face of California High-Speed Rail.
Absotively nyet!
Wandering ’round the net, looking for a bit more background on Tama, the Station Master cat in Japan, I somehow ended up reading about a little publication called The Organ, made on San Fran, edited by some guy called van der Leun.
Reading Richard Lupoff’s intro to The Organ Reader, http://www.ramblehouse.com/organreaderchapter.htm , leave me wondering if that guy van der Leun, was nuked too much, not enough, or just right. 😉
IF I had a cat, I just might get one.
IF.
Hmmm … my kittie my actually like that thing … hmmm
Gerard, you and Miss Olive might enjoy Neko Cafe, aka Cat Cafe the movie; Miss Olive can view it from her perch in the Cat Train that I’m sure you have on order for her.
“In Akihabara, Sakura Sakuragi (Yurika Kubo) runs cat cafe “Mocha.” She listens to her customers’ troubles there. The various customers that enter her cafe also take comfort in the cats that reside there.” https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9703882/?ref_=nv_sr_1?ref_=nv_sr_1
I’d tell you what I thought of it, but alas! I haven’t yet found any subtitles, and my Japanese is quite limited (i.e. nonexistent) so I can’t, at least not yet!
Jim in Alaska…. Yes I was nuked far far too much… far far af faaa rrrr toooo moooch!@@$#%$
Cats like boxes with escape holes and lookouts, and humans like watching cats in cute situations.