The Myth of the Black Cat
Where does grief go?
This image, from the frontispiece of A BEAUTIFUL QUESTION by Frank Wilczek, is part of an essay, The Myth of the Black Cat, by Gail Bentley Walsh
A sleek black cat strutted into view late one summer afternoon.
I looked out the bedroom window next morning and there it was again, reclining on the picnic table and staring up at me.
The same ink-black cat snagged a chipmunk while we watched, benumbed, and carried it, still wriggling, across the yard and into the bushes.
That same week I did what I often do when in doubt, I tossed the I CHING and drew the oracle K’an, the Abysmal.
Two closed yang lines between open yin lines. The hexagram represented the soul (water) trapped in the intellect (reason). Six in the top place indicated struggle and misfortune.
I’m a freethinker, not inclined to put any credence in portentous omens. But the feline’s repeated appearance was uncanny. It appeared out of nowhere. I’d never seen it before. It kept its gaze fixed on me.
The Book of Changes reading likewise perturbed me. I’d recently come across my notes from Carl G. Jung’s introduction to the Wilhelm/Baynes translation, and I believed him when he said paying close attention to the numinous allows spiritual forces to become active. Here is the exact quote:
“The I CHING provides spiritual nourishment for the unconscious elements or forces {spiritual agencies) that have been projected as gods — in other words, to give these forces the attention they need in order to play their part in the life of the individual.
“Indeed, this is the original meaning of the word religio — ” Jung continues, “a careful observation and taking account of (from relegere) the numinous.”
When I googled “numinous,” I kept Jung’s definition of religion in mind. I was giving no credence to an awesome-God-on-high; I could believe in spiritual forces in the unconscious and remain a freethinker. But these forces, according to K’an, pointed to a plunging down of the heart locked in reason. And that made it feel like another bad omen.
My unease turned to grief when, not long afterward, I went to the doctor. The CAT Scan loomed large up on the screen before us as he told me that I have a Pancoast tumor, cancer, in my upper left lung.
“I’m sorry to tell you,” the Pulmonologist said. “I know it’s hard to hear.” It was true, I had been a smoker when I was young; the guilt was damming and overwhelming.
Could I say something to somebody to move the grief out? Would I have it find someone else’s body to inhabit?
I wouldn’t.
Could I use words and have the reality disassemble with the sounds? The words not being so relevant as the abstract somebody that hears me speak them?
“I am sad today, now, more than sad, I am smitten with grief.”
You being the somebody that hears my faint sobs. You listening intently, as if attending closely will change the diagnosis. Me becoming mute. Knowing how sour the repetition of my complaint sounds — that all is dismal, that the illusion of happiness sinks in the consciousness. My childhood friend, Tricia, is dead many years; Ellen a few; Nina less than a month; my father, my mother, my two brothers — the pain Bill experienced.
“Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?”
— a well-known line of the poet, Mary Oliver.
I think of her waking up in the morning and smoking her first cigarette of the day, how awful that must taste. She had lung cancer, got treatment, was given a clean bill of health, as I was, and kept on smoking, while her attentiveness to the world increased.
Did mine?
Did being reminded of my mortality move me to appreciate life more? I hadn’t smoked in many years. I’d begun practicing yoga and even become a yoga teacher to break the habit in the first place.
The Salutation to the Rain
Back in 2004, when I realized how much emotional pain many of us hold in our bodies, I made up a vinyasa, The Salutation to the Rain — a rhythmic, swinging series of spiraling movements to integrate joy and sorrow.
Mary Oliver lived another seven years. One of the many poems she wrote during that time was, DO STONES FEEL? in which she asked, “Are the clouds glad to unburden their bundles of rain?”
Surgery
I had surgery for lung cancer on December 9, 2020 at Colombia Presbyterian Hospital in New York City. The surgery went well, so I’m told, the surgeon couldn’t say enough positive things about it, “All the cancer was eliminated” he said. “You are cancer-free.”
But the aftermath was disastrous, and I spent weeks in the hospital on a feeding tube in my upper underarm, waiting for the lymph to start draining back through my lymph system rather than building up in my lungs. As I lay in the hospital bed, I struggled to activate my mirror neurons by going through the Rain Vinyasa in imagination and unburdening myself of sadness.
It hardly worked.
I came home and within days began talking nonsense. Too much carbon dioxide in my bloodstream was making me delirious. An epic fantasy of a Broadway musical I called Vedic Lore obsessed me. I saw myself dancing solo in black leotard and tights, commanding the attention of thousands of spectators. My students joined me two by two on stage as the music swelled.
My husband urged me to tell him what I was thinking when I went off smugly babbling with my eyes closed. It’s too grandiose, I said to myself; he’ll think I’m nuts if I tell him my plans.
One of my sons sent me a link to Steve Martin playing his banjo — I watched him repeatedly on my iPhone. One day in an interview, he listed books he admired from 2020. One of these books, A BEAUTIFUL QUESTION by Frank Wilczek, became key to my recovery. It stretched my mind and kicked me out of my frailty. It was a science book, far beyond my comprehension in many ways, but its frontispiece got me laughing. It was the same ancient yin/yang symbol I knew so well from reading I CHING and studying yoga, but with each side rambunctiously scrambling to get ahead and uproot the other side.
Wilczek describes the action as two carp playing. His book educates the reader in how virtual particles (inevitably) become material.
If I could train my focus on the inevitability of movement. If I could keep “play” in mind,— the pushing, pulling, see-saw motion between heart and reason, between intuitive and analytical — perhaps I’d no longer be locked in.
“We may identify ourselves with the carp,” Wilczek says. “and their strivings with our quest for understanding.”
Jung explained how the oracles facilitate self-knowledge. That doesn’t sound unreasonable to me, I thought, in my new frame of mind. That sounds like it’s based on the uncertainty of chance, much the same as the quantum universe. I can believe in that and still be a freethinker, can’t I? It’s valid because it brings up honest questions and provokes interaction with hidden forces.
I threw the I CHING again, April 20th, 2021, and drew six unbroken yang lines:
This hexagram is assigned to the fourth month, May-June, when the light-giving power is at its zenith.
THE JUDGEMENT:
“When an individual draws this oracle, it means that success will come to him from the primal depths of the universe and that everything depends upon him seeking his happiness and that of others in one way only, that is, by perseverance in what is right.”
Could “what is right” be a myth, I wondered, like the black cat’s reputation?