You were taught to colour inside the lines, and then punished for not imagining beyond them. A cat, a therapist’s chair, and the quiet violence of civilisation’s oldest trick — the colonisation of your own mind.
It’s appropriately windy outside & I’ve had my two breakfasts, along with four baths & one torn amazon box… all in all, it’s a good day to take matters into my own paws and spew some facts straight.
For starters, my name is not Anar, it’s Anar Dana- I’m not a tedious fruit, I’m a flavour, a metamorphosis, a memory. BOW.
Yes, my human is conspicuously twisted to name me, only to rename me, and then they wonder why my kin doesn’t respond to these uncharacteristic pseudonyms given to us.
Our kitty party includes angoor, chamak, elaichi, laung, kishmish, adrak & damru. I mean, come on humans… & you’re surprised about you making ‘bad choices’.
So, I’m not a therapist.
But I’ve sat in the therapist’s chair long, wide & forcefully enough to examine the irony of being human.
And while I don’t have a collarbone (go do your research, human), I do have a lazy bone in me so let me get to the point.
— You’re taught to colour between the lines, whilst you could’ve just moved the lines.
— Your silence is dissociative, not contemplative.
— You eat trash… None of my business though, your dogs can deal with it.
Point 1.
There are very few things that bring the human clan together beyond their racial & geographical differences. Ironically, those few things are often their misplaced priorities… I mean what is this mass obsession with coloring inside the lines?
You teach your tiny humans to master control, behold urges, follow rules, only to turn around & expect them to be playful, creative & free. Is it just me who can see through the BS that you want your clan to think ‘out of the box’, but stay ‘inside the lines’?
Yes, I’m told that discipline is a form of love too, but this sounds like some twisted version of colonizing the mind, where the rules might vary, but the experience of them continues to be threatening to the developing ego.
The hyperawareness of the lines, more than the colours, crystalises for the mind the essentiality of self-obstruction– that one can only restrict the fantasies & be enticed by the other (possibilities, people, life). This self-obstruction is the neurotic gift of civilisation that dooms any attempts at change. “We spend most of our lives anxiously hoping we will change… and doing everything we can to stop this happening” (Phillips, 2023).
No wonder you’re all fascinated & doom scrolling my kin uninhibitedly knocking things off the table.
Point 2.
Let me enlighten you, human. Cats don’t meow at each other, they only meow to communicate with humans, because we’ve learnt of your discrediting relationship with silence.
Your silence, laden with strings of withdrawal, withholding & wishfulness, is a communicative tool rather than a contemplative space. Salman Akhtar, in his description of 8 types of silences talks about how silence is as demonstrative as talking, and yet humans cannot be farther away from it.
Silence is viscerally experienced as an absence, an empty space or an anxious position, demanding the psyche to dissociate into fragments of self-soothing. I seldom wonder where my human is when she’s silent in a session- is she waiting in a void, or is she thinking about her thinking?
If Maroda is right, the analyst is often too comfortable not engaging relationally with the silence. It becomes a moment of respite from the collusion with the analysand’s unconscious, a return to the state of nothingness, a complete collapse of the relational dialogue.
I can vouch for that, for I take the pains of rescuing my human from her silence by chewing off her books mid sessions, but her thanklessness speaks of an unexamined interpersonal exchange.
| So, dearest human, I often gaze into many antidotes to these orchestrated communal living that humans have internalised, and normalised in an attempt at staying integrated. But here are a few purrls of wisdom.Use a litter box. (read again*)If it fits, it sits. Reclaim.It’s okay to draw boundaries, but please don’t start colouring in them for cat’s sake!You will not be liked by everyone. You’re not a dog.Someone somewhere is joyed because of you.I’ve done my part for the day, or year. I must now surrender myself to my zoomies & sprint around the house for no reason… something many would wish to do too if not for compromising their model of sanity. |
| P.S. Adult relationships find an undeniable mirror when you get a cat, or become one. P.P.S. pspspsppsps. |
