When I opened my eyes after my meditation yesterday morning, I saw Ninja curled up on the sofa, gazing intently at the smoke rising from the incense stick. Well, he is a Zen master, after all. Many cats are, though not all – not Miko for instance, she’s just a Crazy Cat, a furry bundle of manic energy, in constant motion (except when she isn’t). They all seem to fall into one category or the other. Maybe it’s an age thing.
I’m late this morning, and tired. Slept badly, I was awake at 3:20 but didn’t get up, I lay in bed and played my fall-asleep tape – right the way through, which must be 45 minutes, and still no effect. I must have fallen back to sleep some time after that though, I dreamt disturbing, unsettling dreams until the alarm went off.
Good news is that yesterday I found my Cross pen. I’m hopelessly careless with pens, as I am with most things, and I had this one for Christmas (in a boxed set with a ‘Swiss army grooming set’, about 2 inches long with scissors, nail file, tweezers and tooth pick, just what you need when you’re living out in the back woods). Anyway, it’s not exactly Mont Blanc, but it’s a nice pen, and when I unwrapped it, I thought, ‘this is a bad idea, I’m bound to lose it!’ It disappeared a couple of months ago – before I went to Paris, because I couldn’t find it to take with me, and I thought ‘I knew it, it’s gone’ and I was quite upset. My daughter kept telling me it would turn up, but I was convinced I’d left it somewhere.
Then yesterday morning, there it was, on the desk. I think it must have been under/behind the monitor stand, but I don’t know why it suddenly surfaced again. But it’s here now, and I have to think about how I’m going to look after it in future. I put it in the cracked mug I use to hold my pens and assorted other stuff, but it came out covered with orange gel from a leaking gel pen, so maybe not such a good plan (though I have now cleaned it up.) Should have bought that marble pen stand from the antiques market in Brussels that Saturday morning – though it would have been a bit heavy to carry home on the train, and where would I put it among all the detritus of my study, anyway?
The next thing I want is a Moleskine notebook. Never even heard about them till 6 months ago, when the Folio Society were offering one as a ‘free’ gift if you bought some outrageously expensive collection of books. Since then, they keep popping up all over the place. One of my Czech friends got one and thought it was sufficiently exciting to put a post on Facebook about it. The young intellectual types I was hanging out with on my last night in Oxford were raving about them. The notebook of Hemingway, eh? Yes, I definitely must get one. When I’ve filled my spiral bound A5 Pukka Pad.