It’s not that I want to be mauled by a mountain lion, but I can imagine less fitting

deaths. We read every warning sign as an extraordinary measure of caution. This

practice must catch up with time. Anyway, warning advice only convinces you

your hands and body are worthwhile, can do something in a crisis. In truth an

advancing bear will advance, a mountain lion will shoot out and grab your dumb

face in its flawless jaw without you knowing it was there. I don’t say this to scare

but so we can make peace. If you must die, eventually, and you are a lover of

cats… Imagine your body as pieces you can offer up to the sky and earth upon

your death. Where would you place each limb? Where would you lie down your

pretty head?

The cutest mammals are killers of the right things. My cat takes an unmistakable

pleasure in eviscerating a lizard. I moved him from lizards and he eviscerates

nothing, but cries, maniacally to be combed. Dogs look at you with their sad dog

eyes. A neighborhood is defined by the park it surrounds. When you go out into

the neighborhood, do you feel a part of it? Or a passer-through leering at other

people’s ripe gardens? And when you sit on your porch? One type of anxiety is

reading your book intently so as not to say hello. Another is knowing the lock

sounds of all your neighbors’ cars. Another lying awake at night with pains you

invent, never convinced of their unreality. I woke last week too many times and

stayed woken, bathed. The doorknob broke off the bathroom door and I resigned

myself to live there forever. Old linoleum became my neighborhood and I

wondered how to exist always in a hard place. To free yourself from anywhere,

you must remember simple machines. I do not mean your hands, but that’s a

start.