I been reading a lot of Murakami, and I keep thinking about certain themes, ideas, characters and images that recur in his books. Ears, for example. In his book, A Wild Sheep Chase, he has the main character fall in love with an particular ear model. It begins with a photograph and progresses to a relationship with a call girl-ear model. First he sees photos of his ears . . .
"The real reason I didn't take the photos down was that these ears had me in their thrall. They were the dream image of an ear. The quintessence of ears. Never had any enlarged part of the human body (genitals included, of course) held such strong attraction for me. They were some great whirlpool of fate sucking me in."
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Oy, Nin, the ear thing.
Confession time, proceed at your own risk.
While I had been aware that certain anatomical features have in certain historical epochs been, as it's said, "objectified," this information had remained for me securely locked-off in the "objective" realms (observation, information, theory).
For no part of my own humble anatomy had ever, to my knowledge, been "objectified" by anyone or anything.
Then into our little Coprosperity Sphere there wandered the latest in a long line of stray and/or feral cat arrivistes.
This one, a huge, handsome, intelligent and amazingly hyperactive male Siamese, greeted me by heading straight for... you guessed it.
It was then I became, to my astonishment, an "earholder". (Or perhaps I should say, I may have been one all along, but it was only then I became conscious of it.)
Having your ears suckled upon by a large, drooling, deliriously purring warm-blooded animal, while its claws are sunk into your neck for a secure grip, is a curious experience indeed.
This cat does not perform this -- er, would it be called a "behaviour"? -- with the other human who dwells here. As far as he is concerned, she is merely neutral, a form of furniture.
Why is this? I enquired, early on.
"Because you have such large ears," I was told.
"That, and because he thinks you are his mother."
Life will never again be the same.
(By the by, for this cat, either ear will do. Well, they're the same size.)
Cats, yes. They have their opinions. I had some kittens once that would bat my eyes when I was dreaming, always with soft paws. I swear they thought it was funny. I would try my best to keep them out of the bedroom, but they would slip in and wait . . . purring loudly a warning when the dreams began.
I think that was when I first became aware of my dream sequences, which forever after have included cats.
Highly enviable.
How relatively superior life would be were all our dreams fur-lined.
There is another cat here who is fixated upon my partner. (Far more sensible choice.) He spends his nights under her covers, and when he decides it is time for her to awaken, gently pats her face with a paw. And then again. And again...
And he is no kitten, in fact nearly one-and-twenty. But for cats, of course, there is no such thing as "old enough to know better".
As you say, they will do what they will do.
(I've wondered but never asked if she dreams of cats. But if I did, I think she'd say, "Why do you want to know?")
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