Make This a Conversation

I love you.
I know.
I want to spend my life with you.
I know.  I’m sorry.  I don’t know what to say.
I call bullshit

A myth exists that if you draw a circle on the ground a cat will sit in the middle of it and not move. The theory behind it is as crazy as the assertion. It has something to do with emotions and gravitational pulls like those of the planets to sun, an orbiting of attraction and repulsion, the desire for love and the fear of vulnerability. But cats don’t sit in circles. We tried it at home. It didn’t work. We, not cats, are more likely to be immobilized by circles.

Balthus loved cats. I love how my cat pushes her head into me, eyes shut, and cuddles that way. There is no fear. Total trust. More natural than most else that I know. Pure instinct and response. Love? I don’t know, and I don’t know why I bring up Balthus. I find his paintings deeply disturbing. Maybe he comes to mind because his is repulsive, his ideas of vulnerability and desire. Some perverse connection. The opposite of the cat, or is it?

I love you.
​I know.
I want to spend my life with you.
I know. I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say.
I call bullshit

“Emotion is composed of one part arousal to one part vulnerability and this internal paradox institutes a constitutional state of conflict in an animal’s makeup. Conflict is important because it generates energy and that’s important because energy demands motion. In other words, the internal contradiction between arousal and vulnerability in the animal’s makeup makes for a motive in its mind, i.e. a compulsion to move.”