Art and Poetry

Susan and Bruce are sleeping. It is raining. And I hear rain will fall from the sky all day tomorrow, Saturday. I guess I will not be going outside. But I will have the house all to myself. Susan and Bruce are going to see the Georgia O'Keeffe and Arthur Dove exhibition, "Circles of Influence," at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute and then the Edward Steichen and Maurice Prendergast exhibitions at Williams College. Sometimes I think I am a work of art. Look at this photograph of me:

I get kind of choked up just looking at it; forgetting it's me, Nadine the cat! I am reminded of what Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote:

He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.

Speaking of which, here is a pretty photograph from Bruce:


May Peace and Love be with you.

What Can I Give?

I was helping Susan bake a cake and assisting Bruce with his office work for Kolo this morning. "Whew," I said. "I need a break!"

Now I am reading Eknath Easwaran, Thought for the Day. WOW! It reminds me of me. He writes:

Beauty is all very well at first sight; but who ever looks at it when it has been in the house three days?
– George Bernard Shaw

"Often we try to build relationships on what is pleasing to us, particularly on physical attraction. But if there is anything sure about physical attraction, it is that it has to change. We cannot build on it; its very nature is to come and go.

"Physical attraction is a sensation – here one minute and gone the next. Love is a relationship. It is pleasant to be with someone who is physically attractive, but how long can you enjoy an aquiline nose? How long can you thrill to the timbre of a voice when it doesn’t say what you like? It’s very much like eating: no matter how much you are attracted to chocolate pie, there is a limit to how much of it you can enjoy. Beyond that limit, if somebody merely mentions chocolate, your stomach stages a revolt.

"If you want to build a relationship, build it on what endures. To build on a firm foundation, we have to stop asking, “What do I like?” and ask only, “What can I give?” Then there is joy in everything, because there is joy in the relationship itself – in ups and downs, through the pleasant and the unpleasant, in sickness and in health."

I think I give. Giving love--and help--to Susan and Bruce (And others!) all the time. That's why I'm a cat; the cat Nadine.

Photo of Me protecting my Noci

The Noci is made by Kolo. Bruce is a Sales Manager at Kolo.