Teacher

     "I want to tell you about my cat, my Buddhist cat."

    I nodded, and tried not to smile, or, rather only smile and look receptive. She was old, quirky old, and Mother had told me--ordered me--to be patient with her which, in those days, I interpreted as "Keep your mouth shut."

    "He practices walking meditation," Nanny was saying. "First thing in the morning, he rises, stretches, walks the perimeter of the bed, then the room, slowly now because he's old, like me, but he is mindful."

    "Mindful?" I had to ask--mindful must mean full of mind, or something like that.

    "Yes," Nanny said. "That old cat is mindful--first thing I noticed about him when he showed up at my door. He was slow, took everything in, step by step. He smelled, he touched, he stopped for a second before moving on, the most Buddhist feline I've ever known."

    I remember now that I almost laughed at that. Buddhist feline!? Luckily, I held it in, and said just the right thing. "Tell me more."

    So she did, this grandmother of mine, my oldest relative, a woman with an occasional crack in her voice but, in my memory, a gift for eloquence, patience, and love.

    The cat, her cat, the cat she named Teacher, knew himself, she said, accepted himself, accepted himself as a cat with the power of smell and consciousness. "I know Teacher would like to be outside, in the fresh air, but I can't let him out because of the birds. His feline instinct would take over."

    "Feline instinct?"

    "The hunter in him. Birds are food, so he sits at the window . . ." she pointed to the window next to her chair, "and watches, is mindful of his ancient instincts. He watches, and I watch. We are mindful together.

    "That's it?" I said, I hope without showing my incredulity at her romantic account of an old cat.

    "Yes," she said. "It's enough."

~

    That was more than 60 years ago, but the memory still soothes me, slows me down, calms me every morning, and makes me grateful for two of the best teachers in my life, Nanny and her cat.

    

House of Cards

    The new guy fired everybody. He swirled in, looked around, and fired them all because he thought, no he knew that he was smarter than everybody, especially the people entrenched, (one of his favorite words, entrench), the people entrenched in their bureaucratic cubicles, doing what they did the way they had always done it, following the law, without . . . without . . . without what? Without considering how the smartest man in the world would do it?

    "I'm smart," he explained, more than once. "I'm smart and, from now on, we will be the greatest . . . " The predicate of the statement never mattered. It was the seductive assurance, the outrageous proclamations, statements that sounded like promises, guarantees if you didn't look too closely, statements that encouraged, even reassured, many of us.

    Oh, there was muttering at the water cooler, even a bit of laughter, muffled laughter--what's going to happen if he does what he says, takes over every business on the block, in the neighborhood, on the other side of town, in the next state? Then what?

    Well, the new people weren't worried. They put on their jackets, their matching outfits, sat at the desks, shuffled the papers, turned up the sound, and proceeded to do whatever could catch his attention. It was a blitz he bragged, a purge. Singlehandedly, he was making the company powerful again, great again, the greatest.

    Yes, it was a seductive swirl of action. The company rose and fell, rose and fell, until the last bold assault, aided, he had bragged by AI, AI who was never hampered by stale protocols, practices, guidelines, or laws.

    "It's the wild, wild west," one complainer said, a complainer who was quickly eliminated and, thus missed the satisfaction of watching it from the inside, the whole tower of cards slide, fold, crumple, then collapse--a collapse, well, yes, a collapse, but, as he pointed out, it was the greatest collapse ever.

Much Ado

    The car wouldn't start.

    Nothing turned over. No sound Silence. Profound silence.

    Well, that's not exactly true. There was a low grunt, a kind of gasping, a last effort sort of gasp and, yes, a grind from somewhere deep inside the car.

    "Grind is never good."

    "Yes, I know. Neither is silence."

    It was easier to talk about it as they were deciding, no, contemplating, considering what to do. The battery? Or . . . .

    "Could be, but I don't think so."

    "But that sound, that grinding sound . . ."

    

    "Leading to nothing, so . . . "

    "Much ado abut nothing," she said.

    He laughed. Muttered something about glory, overcoming obstacles, then got out of the car, slammed the door, and raised the hood.

    She watched him scowl at the still and silent car innards as she rifled through her purse for the AAA card she thought they had . . . or once had . . . or meant to get . . . couldn't remember.

    It was a dance, a minuet, a prelude to the waltz, the giving over to a problem that might be solved if you just figured it out (1) by staring at the inner workings of the beast long enough--which he excelled at--or (2) dragging out the owner's manual--the researcher, her strength, both on the way to find a solution together, maybe even simultaneously.

    "I think . . . " he was saying.

    "It says here . . ." she said.

    "That we should call Triple A," uttered. . . or was it muttered . . . simultaneously, and so they did.