When Cat Worlds Collide

Sometimes I feel like there are as many incarnations of "me" as there are people I know (or at least know well). It's not that I'm creating fake personas or acquiescing to the expectations and desires of whoever I'm around, or at least not entirely. Actually, I feel like each "me" is as real and fully me as the next one.

 And really, when you think about it, it makes sense that it's this way. The prominence and influence of a certain friend or family member in your life ebbs and flows with time, and so does your personality. I am different than how I was two years ago, but I was no less fully me two years ago. If I spent a lot of time with someone back then, but rarely see her now, she knows that particular past me (Two Years Ago Me, we'll call her) but not so much Present Me.

So when I visit this particular friend again, she will likely interact with PM as though I were TYAM. And I, in return, am likely to respond as though I am still TYAM, not because I'm interested in perpetuating an elaborate farce, but because, in my old friend's presence, I start feeling like TWAM again.

Sometimes I, and I'm guessing a lot of other people as well, seamlessly and subconsciously slip into a past or alternative self when the appropriate situation arises. But other times I notice it, and noticing it might as well be reaching through a tear in the space-time continuum. A lot of times, I don't even realize that TWAM (or whoever) and PM have diverged until I notice myself becoming TWAM again. It's always uncanny. And it always makes me desperately miss all the things TWAM saw and did and ate and felt and thought if I can remember them. And if I can't remember them clearly, well, then I mourn my lost memories.

When I came home to Beckley for Christmas this year I definitely, definitely "noticed it" a lot. Normally, when I go back home, I slip pretty easily into Daughter Me, who is also kind of Teenage Me. Occasionally, I'll "notice it" a little, especially as I try to flatten out some of my multi-dimensionality for the sake of my parents, to smooth down a few of the most foreign facets that have developed since I moved out and went to college. It's not that I become this simpler person because my parents are simple. I become her because I still have to be someone that they can fully know, someone who has not yet been separated from them forever by the barrage of realizations that is young adulthood.

But this time I brought some things home with me that threatened to prevent the transition, to make the gulf between DM and PM impossible to jump. Those things were my cats, Nona and Bear.

I got Nona and Bear last June, right after I graduated and moved into the first pet friendly place I've ever rented. My mom basically discouraged it, perhaps because the me with whom she’s best acquainted is somewhat more irresponsible, immature, and self-absorbed than I'd like to think that PM is. And I, admittedly, was somewhat wary myself. I'd been wanting to adopt a cat for a while, but I kept having these nightmares in which I'd suddenly realize that I'd left several puppies/kittens/etc. unattended and neglected in a closet or something for weeks. I was concerned that this was my subconscious trying to tell me that I just wasn't ready.

  

But my need for feline companionship outweighed my fears, so when my roommate came across a lady in Cheat Lake trying to find homes for a litter via Craigslist, I was on board.

And good news! I never once left the kittens unattended in the closet for weeks. In fact, I turned out to be a much better pet owner (resisting the urge to use the term "cat mom" here) than I ever could have guessed. I fed the cats twice every day! And scooped out their litter boxes! And took them to the vet! And administered their antibiotics when the vet said they had worms!

My point is: Nona and Bear, in all their robust, well-cared-for glory, are a symbol of my burgeoning adulthood. And I'm pretty in to them. They are the best damn cats ever.

My mom loves cats, and our family cat, Ralphie, is an important part of her life. I thought that if I brought Nona and Bear home for Christmas she and I could bond while enjoying the company of all three cats.

But as soon as I hauled Nona and Bear's very luxurious cat carrier over the threshold of my childhood house, everything just felt wrong. Firstly, it was clear that my mom was just not as in to my cats as I am, but I do appreciate her effort to muster enthusiasm. I don't know. I guess I just wanted us, as a mother and daughter, to revel in Nona and Bear's otherworldly amazingness. But she didn't know N and B like I did, and really, Ralphie is her one true cat love. Her inability to understand that N and B are The Best Cats created a chasm between us, which may have actually been a chasm between PM and DM.

  

And I know this is going to sound weird, but another thing that contributed to the chasm was the fact that I was responsible for the health and well-being of these creatures. My role as a responsible pet owning adult was alienating PM from DM, because DM is neither an adult nor responsible, and she definitely isn't a pet owner. I can only imagine that this phenomenon plays out on a grander scale when you have actual children.

  

My inability to reconcile PM and DM was accompanied by an acute awareness of my current life situation and of how much I have changed in recent years. It was all very conflict-y. And then, when N and B finally emerged from the cat carrier, my emotions manifested themselves metaphorically in a hissing match between Nona and Ralphie.

  

By the end of my visit, however, the three cats were coexisting, not entirely peacefully, but with minimal conflict.  So I guess that the conclusion that can be reached, if one cares to extend this metaphor (and I'm sure that one does), is: My days of fully becoming DM may be over, but that doesn't mean that DM won't occasionally surface and for a time exist, not entirely peacefully but with minimal conflict, alongside PM.

Stuff that Happened in Europe: The Night Train

The following is the first installment in a series of posts in which I explain what I was doing in Europe instead of getting drunk.

One reason that I didn’t go crazy in Europe is that I never go crazy. Another reason is that I went to Europe with my brother, and it’s just sort of weird to party with your brother and only your brother. Our sibling backpacking duo was confusing to everyone we met. First, they were like, “Are you engaged?” And then, when we explained that we were brother/sister, they were like, “That’s really weird. Don’t all normal, well-adjusted people go to Europe with their friends?” And then they judged me. And they asked me if I was a senior in high school.

But going to Europe with Morgan had many advantages. First, he’s a good navigator. Second, he’s responsible and plan-oriented. Third, he writes everything down in this tiny bound notebook, so if, for example, we were trying to buy train tickets and having trouble communicating, he would just flash the ticket person the train info that he’d written down, and he or she would suddenly understand what we needed. And fourth and finally, he was willing to loan me large sums of money all the time.

His responsibility and planning and money lending and commitment to tiny notebook documentation were all invaluable, and I can’t help but guess that if I had attempted the same trip with my friends, we would STILL be lost somewhere in the Dusseldorf airport (No offense, friends!)

However, I cannot overlook the disadvantages of going to Europe with Morgan (and only Morgan), as they were very present and very real. First, we are both self-conscious, shy, and easily embarrassed.* This made trying to communicate in foreign languages that we didn’t even sort of know extremely difficult. Almost everyone** could speak English, but the fact that we were always feeling apologetic for wearing synthetic, brightly colored clothing, and taking pictures of everything, and being American, and existing made us desperately want to use the native language. Most people detected our bullshit immediately. A typical exchange went like this:

Morgan: Ich wants einen Kaffee? : /

Barista: Was???

Morgan: Einen Kaffee…bitte? : (

Barista: Oh. You want a coffee. Asshole.

Second, train seats are usually grouped in fours, so when you’re traveling with only one other person, you are at the mercy of fate regarding who fills those two extra seats. 

The exception to this is the night train compartments, which are exactly like the ones on the Hogwarts Express, sort of. You’ve got two little compartments on either side of an aisle. Each compartment has two rows of four seats that face each other and a sliding door that closes it off from the rest of the carriage.

The only time we took the night train was when we traveled from Vienna to Trento, Italy. We arrived at the station around 9 p.m. and waited eagerly on the platform. Soon, we were approached by an attractive and stylish young Viennese guy. He explained that he was taking a break from his year of mandatory civil service to meet some friends in Italy, and did we want to drink in his cabin with him? “Yes. Absolutely. We’ll meet up with you there soon,” I told him. I definitely did not join him for drinks in his cabin. He was cute and interesting, but then, so was Joran Vandersloot.***

So we finally boardered the train and were so excited to locate our very own, totally empty, murderer-free compartment. Seriously, we were giddy. We had a bag full of cookies and some wine and all this space to ourselves and were ready to ride into the Alps. We felt like intrepid, savvy, murder-avoiding globetrotters. Life was amazing.

Oh how naïve we were, very Americanly forgetting that Eurorail is not Amtrack and that people actually use trains over here. And soon enough, this older man joined us. Which was whatever. It sort of ruined our private cookie party, but at least the cabin was still empty enough that nobody had to sit directly beside each other. 

But then, at the first stop, this extremely thin, rough-looking guy staggered into our cabin and sat down beside Morgan. For some inexplicable reason, this guy reeked of not booze but vinegar. He immediately fell asleep.

Well damn. Now we felt all weird and it smelled too bad in our compartment to want to eat cookies. But it was getting really late, so we decided to try to sleep.

But at each stop, more and more men (invariably men, never any young guys, never any friendly-looking Eurogirls) trickled into our compartment, at one point filling all eight seats. It was extremely tight in there, and it smelled horrible. The middle-aged vagrant that was sitting beside me kept asking me questions in German, so I pretended to sleep. I desperately wanted to actually sleep, but I was worried that I would accidentally drop my head onto his shoulder. Also, the temperature was dropping rapidly. So I fitfully dozed and shivered beside the vagrant until we reached our 4 a.m. transfer station, silently wishing all the while that I had gone ahead and allowed the Viennese guy to murder me.

Next time, The Hostile Hostel: Naked People, Prostitutes, Russian Orphans, Towel Thieves, and Nine Euro Loads of Laundry

*Parents, I’m blaming this on your belief that children “should entertain themselves.” This directly resulted in hours of early social isolation in which Morgan drew Dungeons and Dragons style monsters on the inside covers of his textbooks and I searched for the portal to Wonderland that I was convinced was somewhere in my backyard. Damaging, obviously.

**Exception: In Trento, a waitress who could speak absolutely no English got so (rightfully) frustrated by our shitty attempts at Italian that she just abandoned our table.

***Just Google Image Searched Joran. Not that cute, actually.

On Being Boring and Liking Shitty Things

I’m always being profoundly affected by television. In the episode of Gossip Girl* I was watching the other day, Dan was having trouble writing a story impressive enough for his college application. The esteemed writer with whom he has an internship (this doesn’t even sort of make sense) suggests that all his stories are boring because…his life is boring! Apparently, Dan keeps rehashing the same scenarios over and over in his stories (sounds familiar, writers of Gossip Girl). Dan’s stories are always about a sheltered, introverted, scholarly young man who pursues a super-hot rich girl. SO BORING! (Writers of Gossip Girl, do you even realize what you’re saying?) So anyway, the esteemed tweedy writer suggests that Dan can improve his stories by doing something dangerous in real life. Dan decides that his dangerous activity will be hanging out with a teenage alcoholic. I don’t really understand how this is supposed to broaden someone’s perspective a whole lot, but that’s neither here nor there.

Okay guys, this show is really stupid. It might actually the worst show that I like (excepting Cats 101).  But still, Dan’s problem kind of resonates with me. I am sort of a boring person. I don’t like to take risks, and I enjoy routine. I’ve had profoundly few interesting life experiences, mostly because I actively decline them in favor of watching Cats 101. I mean, I don’t aspire to write the next great American novel or anything, but I do want to write, and I even want to write some fiction, if at all possible. But, could it be that I am too boring to be a writer? 

Let’s further explore this issue by examining the lives of a few great writers of the past** and giving each an excitement rating based on a ten point scale. For clarity, let’s say that a one is the equivalent of watching Cats 101 all day every day, only stopping to eat plain toast made out of white bread, and a ten is the equivalent of sailing around the world on a yacht, steadily gathering a motley crew of zany characters and then finally dying when your Amazonian cave diving expedition goes horribly awry. 

        1. Virginia Woolf

-        Educated at home by wealthy literary parents.

-         Experienced a series of nervous breakdowns thanks to the premature death of her mother.

-         Institutionalized after the death of her father.

-        Became associated with the Bloomsbury group, an assemblage of artists who embraced “a liberal approach to sexuality.”

Excitement Rating: 6

             2.  Ernest Hemingway

-         Drove ambulances on the Italian front during World War I.

-         Worked as a foreign correspondent in Paris.

-         Worked as a war correspondent during the Spanish Civil War.

-         “Was present” during the World War II’s Normandy landing and the liberation of France.

-         Almost died in a plane crash while on safari in Africa.

-         Committed suicide in Idaho.

Excitement Rating: 9.5

             3.  Emily Dickinson

-         Went to school.

-         Stopped leaving her house.

-         Exclusively wore white clothes.

-         Refused to answer the door.

-         Enjoyed baking.

Excitement Rating: 2

Special Note: I kind of hate Emily Dickinson.

Findings: Of the three writers examined, only those that I hate scored below 6 on the Excitement Scale.

Now, for the sake of comparison, let’s look at my life.

             Lea Bridi

-        Went to elementary school. Was bad at everything.

-         Went to junior high and high school. Became an obnoxious perfectionist.

-         Went to college. Mostly watched TV.

-         Went to Europe. Didn’t even get drunk.

-         Worked in an office.

-         Had cats.

Excitement rating: 2-ish

Well, if my excitement rating is a strong indicator, it looks like my writing might end up being pretty terrible. But I know what you’re thinking: “Emily Dickinson may have really sucked, but she is considered a masterful poet. The way she perceived the world made her interesting!”

It seems like this means that as long as I have a unique enough perspective, I can write shitty poetry that will be anthologized in infrequently read American literature books until the end of time, regardless whether or not I choose to enter a hermitage. But the thing is, this is the 21^st century. People no longer tolerate poems about yellow stars and snow and birds. People want to read non-fiction accounts of climbing Mt. Everest. And Bret Easton Ellis.*** Moreover, I’m not even convinced that I have any kind of unique perspective.

Forget it. Someone hand me the remote. I want to see what’s on Animal Planet.

*I know, I know. I should stop watching this show since evidence suggests that it is actually lowering my IQ. But it’s the perfect thing to watch while I’m on the elliptical. I’m now on the second season, and the plot is getting so inane that it’s almost maddening. I definitely need to dedicate an entire post to an analysis of what makes the second season so much worse than the first. But then over 20% of my posts would be about Gossip Girl. How could I sleep at night?

**All information provided by Wikipedia, obviously.

*** Okay, now I understand why Dan thought that drinking with an entitled alcoholic might help him produce popular literature.