(If you’d like to listen to me read this essay to you, you can click on the Article Voiceover above.)
As soon as my eyes open, my neurons step onto their track— sprinting, sprinting, sprinting. I stay beneath the comfort of the comforter for as long as I can. Funny how comfort begins to feel like a cage. I am dying to know the time. I’ve been alternating which shoulder I’m resting on for an hour at least. The birds are already screeching even though the trees outside my window are barely illuminated, and I’m strangely comforted by this, because my brain too is screeching.
Today, like every day, it doesn’t take long for the morning to move from drowsy to machine. The first machine I encounter is my cat’s auto-feeder. This is how I know it’s 6:00 a.m.— her dry food snack drops into a metal bowl and her meaty little paws pummel down the pine steps to her robotic breakfast. First breakfast. She gets anxious about mealtime (as do I) which is why I allow her this mechanized first round to hold her over until I fill her little ceramic plate with real food from a can. Usually chicken or tuna or salmon. I call these wet food meals her meats.
Because daily tasks such as scooping 30 grams of shredded chicken (don’t worry, she gets an additional 30 grams for dinner and the dry food snacks I mentioned earlier) can be dull and much of our personal lives trend toward monotony, I insist on serving her meats on a beautiful little plate made by a potter in my hometown. Like pillow placement while making the bed in the morning, my cat’s breakfast pottery serves as a creative prompt, a whisper of poetry in a world screaming with machines.
I then start the tea kettle on the stove. Although I’m well aware that a stove is most definitely a machine, this act always feel romantic, old timey and cute. Something about a kettle on the stove that feels more ritual that task. Then I start the milk frother. Multiple settings with multiple buttons. Modern as hell. A true piece of machinery. Not necessary, but again, foam is poetry.
Anyone who has had coffee or tea at my house becomes a foam worshipper alongside me. A lot of my friends say I am the easiest person in the world to shop for because when I’m into something, I’m really into something, and then I like to tell the whole world about it. I try not to be too preachy about the things I’m into, but I do slip up sometimes.
All winter long I sipped on chai and since spring has come (for real) I’ve switched to London Fogs. (I wrote a poem about London Fogs once here.) The bergamot is like sun peeking through clouds. Very springy. Also, the phrase earl grey just sounds pretty. I like how it sounds. I want to get another cat and name him Bergamot or Earl Grey. Berg and Earl. But I won’t, because my cat is unequivocally perfect (one of my friends called her clone-able and I’ll never forget that and have yet to meet someone who’s contested that claim.)
All that to say, Unlike Taylor, I’m saying hello London and so long to spicy chai.
My boyfriend—I feel odd using this word. It still makes me a little squirmy. But one of my friends told me I really need to get over that because she has to say the word husband. I mean, yikes. As I was saying, my boyfriend recently made vanilla syrup with some pods we had leftover after making semolina pudding. (The pudding is basically like adult cream of wheat and I’m obsessed with it. Probably the next thing I’ll be pushy about. What do you mean you don’t eat breakfast?!) The vanilla syrup really takes the house made London Fog to the next level. And now the drink’s preparation that requires two machines is well underway as the frother spins into its luxurious whir.
Meanwhile, my cat is sprinting around getting herself tangled on her own limbs in the laundry closet just around the corner from the kitchen. I don’t know what drives her into this entanglement, but it always startles me as the broom comes crashing down, which then startles her into a panic, so much so, that she attempts sprinting again, this time barely eeking her furry body through the door. Her own tailspin nearly locks herself in.
This recurring act of the self-induced laundry closet drama always makes me jump and then laugh. This is why people share their homes with cats. Her frenzied morning journey into that corner followed by her rapidly bursting back into the rest of the world reflects my busy and obsessively urgent mind. Her little spinouts and burnouts comfort me. I’m not alone.
It’s also a wonderful reminder that I need to clean her little box. I make my way past the tailspin laundry closet and go to complete a task that I do not love but love what it means. Caring for a creature from another species in the animal kingdom has often helped me take better care of myself. She loves when I tidy her box, and any corner of the house for that matter. Cats love a fresh made bed, a stack of fresh towels, a rearranging of furniture and closet purging come spring. (Contrary to cat skeptics who assume they’re dirty, cats are deities who clean themselves till kingdom come. All day long.) Her purrs soothe my nervous system’s hum.
While I do not have an automatic litter box cleaning machine, I do have another machine that lives next to the litter box, a Roomba. I adore the Roomba. I haven’t used a regular vacuum in years. Before I had a cat, my sister and I used to joke that the Roomba was my pet. I fire that puppy up and let it cruise around the room.
By this point, the morning is humming in machinery and I haven’t even opened my laptop or glanced at my phone yet. I am tempted, my am I tempted, to clack clack clack, and keep this modern efficiency churning. I think about posting a poem on Instagram. No, maybe I’ll work on that Substack I have been chipping away at because that seems to produce less cortisol in my body over time, and honestly, I simply do not have the psychological or emotional fortitude to cope with a bottomless scroll today.
The tea kettle is now beyond steaming, spilling onto the stove. The milk frother gives its little “milk is foamy” jingle. At the exact moment it is time to assemble the tea, another electronic completion cycle jingle goes off from the countertop composter. Though my life is quiet compared to my friends who live in big cities, this house in the trees is feeling rather gadgetized at the moment. As for the gadgets I just named, I do love every one. I’ve been slow and contemplative over the years as to which ones I choose to live under my roof with me.
So far, the cat’s auto feeder has dropped the snack, the milk frother has produced its milky cloud, the Roomba continues gathering little tufts of fur and litter, and the composter just turned dinner scraps into something sprinkle-able for the plants I will soon plant. I know the choice I must make. I know it will be easier and quicker for me to sit down and type this straight onto the computer so I can more quickly edit it later and then send it to you. I instead, resist.
I decide to initiate this task without wifi presenting me even more possibilities. I sit down to write it, instead, in a little notebook, an adorable notebook I got while on a trip to Seoul, South Korea last autumn. As I sit down to write, I spill a little bit of my London Fog because I greedily topped the cup with lotsa foam. More of a foam mountain than a little cloud. As soon as the pen touches the notebook page my neurons — sprinting, sprinting, sprinting —begin to slow down. We’re now strolling.
A few months ago I saw a lot of writers circulating a post on Instagram that said something about writing not being therapy. I suppose maybe some of those writers were coming from a place of not using writing as a substitute for working with a licensed therapist. I’ve also read that some of the places in the world with the oldest living populations live long happy lives do so largely to not only nutrition and exercise, but due to a great sense of community and a strong sense of purpose. I think maybe the pen can help with some of that, maybe not for all of us, but maybe for at least some of us?
I write my last line of the morning inside the notebook around the exact same time the Roomba gives its completion jingle. The cat has gotten bored of the living room/kitchen machinery and heads upstairs to find my boyfriend who’s still beneath the bed comforter. In search of body heat, for some contact, real contact. I hear him talking to her, asking her how her morning is going. I laugh thinking about how she would explain her tailspin, broom crashing, nearly locking herself in the laundry closet situation.
I am hit with steeped vanilla, black tea, bergamot gladness. And in this moment, I am hit with a sliver of understanding as to where machines end and where animals begin. How lucky we are to know true electricity. Heartbeats and breath beyond the world’s beeps.
I was inspired to write the first draft of this piece in my notebook after reading Ross Gay’s essay “Written by Hand” in his book “The Book of Delights”. If you haven’t gotten your hands on that little wonder of a book yet, I cannot recommend it enough. I think the highest compliment one can pay to a writer is by saying “your words made me wanna write” and that’s exactly how I’ve been feeling while reading “The Book of Delights”.
"How lucky we are to know true electricity. Heartbeats and breath beyond the world’s beeps." Beautiful!