On the way up to work this morning walking through the Tenters and what do you know it but the cherry blossoms are out already. Obviously they come out weeks later on the Northside where I grew up. But I've been walking past these cherry trees for years and while the urge to start singing Sakura rose up in me as strong as it would in any man I had to ask myself: when will these trees ever learn? Yes it's been mild the last few days, Saturday was warm and sunny (yesterday was, well, let's forget yesterday) but winter lasts long these years. Last year it only started in January and while everyone thinks it was a warm summer it was below ten degrees and pelting down in July: May was horribly cold. Winter goes on and on. November and December tend to be pleasant. These trees will never produce cherries while this goes on.
They produce cherries on the Northside you know.
Anyway, I stop to say hello to a cat with some weird facial deformity and the poor thing runs away. This is quite unusual as cats tend to lose their timidity around me. Honestly, since I was a kid. I mean I always thought if I had to choose I was a dog man (though it's a bit like 'are you a breast or a leg or an arse man? Yes! No which? YES, YES, YES!') but cats prefer me. Though I do seem to remember they preferred me when I was hairier - kittens had a thing for big beards and actual cats tried to nest in my big hair. Then I remembered a snippet of a dream I had last night which involved me violently picking up a cat and throwing it away (with extreme prejudice - I think I must have been affected by that US
doctrine I read about yesterday, known as the
'Ledeen doctrine' of 'throwing some shitty little country up against the wall once a decade just to show we mean business' HUH! YEAH! I met that guy (who no doubt is even weedier and nerdier than me or I wouldn't
dream of threatening. Actually, why deny the internet. He, like most of the hawkish neocons really is even weedier than I) I would throw him repeatedly against the wall. Call it socratic dialogue mofo. No really Messrs Ledeen and Goldberg, I really, really, would throw you repeatedly against a wall if I met you. It's odious. But perhaps you might realise what dreadful little people you were and how you were giving succour to dreadful little people with violent little minds.) which is really unusual. I don't really go for violent dreams. Actually, I don't remember them largely as they are so dull they send me into deep sleep. A friend and I used to, about a dozen years ago, email each other in the morning with our dreams. Pretty soon I had to make them up: my conscious imagination is less hide-bound, conventional and dull (maybe) than my dreams. It's a bit like kids really - they're supposed to be these imaginative 'don't they say the durndest things' kind of people when in fact, in my rather limited experience, they tend to crave repetition and conformity. Once they have a concept they judge everything by it if at all possible.
