Malgré Tout

He is black. The name is from fog, not fur. 2015 was the year it became unclear whether I would come out on the other side of what was happening in my head, and the kitten — who was afraid of everyone, who had no history with me either — was named for the uncertainty rather than for his coat. We walk through the fog not knowing if we will come out on the other side. I wrote that somewhere around then. It was a line about me. The kitten inherited it.

He is still afraid of people. He is not afraid of me. For eleven years this has been true. He goes out at night because the night is empty of most of what he does not want to meet, and he comes back. He is a brave cat, which is a different thing from a fearless one.

He sits on my chest. I have said this before. It has not changed.

The desk is where the writing happens. On it, generally: the computer, a notebook, sometimes a mug that has not been washed, cat hair, papers I have not filed, a pen I have stopped using but have not put away. The cat is on it as often as not. The desk is not tidy. The desk has never been tidy. Tidiness would be an argument and I do not make arguments at the desk. I only work there.

There is a chair. There is a window. The window has a view of nothing in particular.

I have written every page of this book at this desk. I will not describe the desk more than this. The desk is a thing, and the describing is a separate thing, and the describing is not the desk.

I have never left for long. I was placed in the desert. I stayed. The staying is a fact older than any decision about it. The saguaros do not need me to notice them. They have been here longer than my family, and they will be here after. This is comforting in a way I do not trust the comfort of. A landscape that survives without the people in it is, from most angles, a rebuke; from one angle it is a permission; the permission is the one I take.

The light is the thing most strangers underestimate. Particular at dusk. The distance between ranges is sharp enough that time reads differently against it — a thing on the far ridge is half an hour’s thought away at least, and that half hour, performed by the eye as it crosses the distance, is a pace the mind is grateful for.

I do not love the desert. I am held by it. These are different relations.