Cat Island
By Thom Gunn
Cats met us at
the landing-place
reclining in the sun
to check us in
with a momentary glance,
concierges
of a grassy island.
(Attila's Throne,
the Devil's Bridge,
and "the best Byzantine
church in the world",
long saints admonitory
on kiln-like inner walls.)
And lunch in a shady court
where cats now
systematically worked
the restaurant, table
by table, gazing into eyes
pleading "I'm hungry
and I'm cute", reaching
front paws up to knees
and always getting
before zeroing in
on the next table, same
routine, same result.
Sensible bourgeois
wild-cats working
with the furred impudence
of those who don't pretend
to be other than whores,
they give you not
the semblance of love
but simply
a look at their beauty
in return for food.
Models, not escorts.
They lack, too,
the prostitute's self-pity,
being beyond shame.
And we lack
what they have.
--------
The always delightful
gblvr and I had lunch at Lebanese Taverna and did our usual circle of shops nearby, which is why I now have very pretty $12 glass-and-Swarovski-crystal earrings from As Kindred Spirits and Adam had leftover hummus for dessert. It was a beautiful day but I had an impending headache all afternoon from the weather front. I was afraid it was going to blossom into a migraine, but several Advil and the arrival of the front staved it off. In the late afternoon I wrote a review of Next Gen's terrific "The Drumhead", which usually ruins me for everything else, but Sarah Connor was terrific this week...I can handle the Jesus allegory when it applies not to John Connor but to the terminator John Henry! Plus he was playing with Bionicles again, explaining their mythology to Savannah, and he agreed to let her duckies play in their world when she pouted because he said it was against the rules. And this week it was dead men instead of dead women, a much lower body count than typical BSG. Even so, we watched Xena's "The Furies" afterward.
thefridayfive: High School1. Would you return to high school life for a week? Why or why not? Not for anything. My least favorite moments in life are when people act like the social order in high school still applies.
2. Who were/are you in high school? A nerd. (The book sort, not the math sort -- does that make me a geek by contemporary standards?)
3. What was/is your favorite high school hangout? What did/do you do there? Rockville Library. I looked up things I was interested in on microfilm and in books.
4. What were/are your favorite three songs in high school? I'm too embarrassed to say but John Barrowman has recorded all of them. If he had never done anything else, I would adore him for that alone.
5. What was the craziest thing you did in high school? Heck, I don't know. Lied about my age and flirted with a sleazy dealer to get in free to a Star Trek convention?
vertigo66, do you remember that? *g*fannish5: Name the 5 most memorable tv/movie soundtracks. Going with original soundtracks as opposed to compilations of music I love, like Dawson's Creek...1. The Mission, Ennio Morricone
2. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Howard Shore
3. Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, John Williams
4. Empire of the Sun, John Williams
5. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, John Williams
