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An Ideal Day in France’s Secret South
Once you’re done scooping poop, there’s plenty to enjoy
“Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.” — Anonymous Zen saying
“Big news!”
The cats watch me. They always do. Two sets of golden eyes, pupils fat in the darkness of the windowless hallway where I keep the litterbox. Leonard’s lordly composure watching me tip clumps of rancid piss into a garbage bag; his sister Georgina, as always, more timid.
Et in Arcadia ego, but the thought of death in paradise doesn’t bother me in the slightest. What kind of paradise would it be otherwise?
What bothers me is the chores, the thousand dreary tasks that chip away daily at the experience of being alive. And I know that this is life. I know about the Zen monks raking sand and washing bowls of rice, and agree with them that there is nothing more than this, and that this is enough. But no one dreams of emptying cat litter boxes.
The big news, my wife tells me when my task is done, is that one of her closest friends is thinking of moving. Canada is becoming increasingly unlivable, the house prices spiraling ever upward, the economy tottering under endless threats of tariffs from a suddenly and inexplicably hostile southern…
