Rumpelteazer's Musings
Jerrie and I were out of there so fast when Grizabella entered the junkyard again. It's almost like a reflex now. I guess when a group of cats like ours knows each other so well, a past face feels like nothing more than an outsider.
Still, it looks like she's gone: the clearing is empty save for Old Deuteronomy sittin' on the old tyre. A few cats are creepin' out, so I guess we should too. I look at Jerrie, and he knows how subdued the air is. After all the midnight dancing we did as the highlight of the Jellicle Ball, I'm not surprised!
Etcetera's cuddling up to Plato, yawnin' her fluffy head off. Cassandra's twitchin' a bit, and I suppose we're all just crawling around, in the mood for a nap.
Only Jellylorum's bothered enough to actually walk around. She's helpin' Old Gus, the theatre cat. Good on him that he's joinin' us for our celebrations: I hope I'm as spirited a cat as he is when I'm on my ninth life.
As the light, airy sound of a passing Night Rail whooshes away out of earshot, I can hear Old Deut speakin' up. No one else even makes a whisper. Whatever he has to say, it's always very important.
The moments of happiness
We had the experience but missed the meaning
Wow…that's a bit philosophical for two in the mornin'. Still, maybe the deepest thinking is best done at the most bewitchin' hour.
He's right: no cat can expect to be happy all the time. If we were, then how would we ever appreciate it? It's the little moments that count, like my pearl necklace catchin' beams of moonlight, so they look like perfect little stars around me. Or like whenever I have a dream about Jerrie (and sometimes about Tugger!).
I guess it's true that we get so caught up in the feeling of happiness, we sort of skim over what it's really all about…what is it all about?
Well, I know me an' Jerrie get great big grins on our faces when we've just got away from a raid, arms full of treasure. But then a lot of cats would say it's wrong to feel happy about that. I don't understand that, not really. I mean, how can you label happiness as something that's right or wrong? Where do you draw the line at what you can feel happy about, and what you can't?
And approach to the meaning restores the experience in a different form
Again, very true. I'm lucky being me: a lot of the Jellicles say I'm a happy queen, and I'd have to agree. I've got a "career" you might say, a wonderful mate, a place to live, and a whole community of cats that feel like family. But for someone like Grizabella, well…I can't imagine she feels the same way. Thinkin' about it like that makes me feel bad for shuttin' her out. So I suppose perception, lookin' at things from different angles, can make something like an action, or a feeling of happiness, seem completely new and changed.
Beyond any meaning, we can assign to happiness
He can be a bit ambiguous, he can, Old Deut. But my take on it is that happiness is the feeling that's one of the hardest to describe. It's beyond anything we can understand. So any feeling we don't really understand, we can see it as a new kind of happiness. A different angle…
The past experience revived in the meaning is not the experience of one life only, but of many generations
That's really deep, that is. Of course Old Deut would know the most about this kind of thing; he's one of the oldest cats in the whole wide world. He's seen families, generations of Jellicles, come and go in this junkyard. He's seen the moments of happiness come and go with 'em, changin' paws like money, only much more valuable…hang on, did I just say money wasn't that valuable? First time for everything, then.
But is that even what he's sayin'? Maybe he means happiness follows you throughout all your nine lives, like it's the only thing that never leaves you. Maybe all these little moments of happiness make up your soul, and if you're happy enough when you come to the end, you can go to the Heaviside Layer. Makes sense: that's where all the happiness that ever existed is.
I wonder what moments of happiness have followed me into this life? I'm only on my second one, but the first seems like a shadow of a memory. I can feel it, but not remember it…
Not forgetting something that is probably quite ineffable…
Ineffable. There's a happy-soundin' word for you. But I can never for the life of me remember what it means. Wait…Gus told me when I first came here…oh yeah! It means "indescribable". Then that "something" must be happiness, if anything beyond meaning is happiness.
I turn my head a fraction. I see Jemima taking Tantomile's paw, and she's holdin' Coricopat's. They're like one chain, reachin' up to the moon and the stars.
Moonlight, turn your face to the moonlight
Let your memory lead you
Jemima has such a crystal-like voice. It's the perfect melody for a night like this. She gets it from Demeter, I'm sure.
The moon. A lot of human tales pair Pollicles and werewolves with the moon, but they forget how much of a connection we Jellicle cats have with it. It's the midnight moon that strikes the chord in us every year at the Jellicle Ball, the one that sends us into a trance of movement and song. It's magical.
I guess the past is just as important for happiness as what you do in the present. A happy memory can be twice as wonderful if you let yourself be led by it. Like that moment when Jerrie asked me to be his mate. I knew it would be one of the happiest moments of my lives so I concentrated really hard on remembering everythin' I could about it. Now that I have, I can feel happy, as though it was happenin' all over again.
Open up, enter in
If you find there, the meaning of what happiness is
Then a new life will begin
It's important to open up. Jerrie taught me that, so I can pour out everythin' on my mind, in my heart, to him. It's like I can open a door for him, and he can step right through. I like to think the same goes for him with me.
Jemima's speakin' with the wisdom of her granddad. How can she be the youngest, but know that only after you've lived a full nine lives, and collected all those little moments of happiness in experience, that you can finally figure out what the meaning of it is. Live now, reflect at the end. Sounds like I'm on the right track.
Without needin' a sign, the rest of us quietly join in with her, all of us singin' about the little moments of happiness, to create one communal blanket of it.
I can feel the night air lose its muted feeling, and take on a more awakenin', dreamy atmosphere. I slowly lift my head from Jerrie's back to the navy skies above. The whisper of a cool breeze fully awakes me. I stand up with the other Jellicles. I can feel it. We're all immersed in a silent, but rapt, contemplation. A contemplation of what it means to be happy. What it means to be a Jellicle cat. There's more to it than bein' black and white, havin' terpsichorean powers, and havin' moonlit eyes. I see that now.
And then we notice Gus slowly, but steadily, makin' his way forward. The clouds clear away, and a warmer glow lights up the junkyard, just like his warm personality.
One by one, we sit down as he tells us his well-known story that we never get tired of hearin'. Jerrie slips his arms around me, and I pat his paws.
The moment of happiness came, and now it's over, making way for a new one to arrive.