"O Cato, consider this war; it is truly fortunate for you. Perhaps it reveals the calling of your entire life. Should it be called a battle? Or has heaven become manifest in this form, revealed by your valor? Or has fame herself, attracted by your qualities and filled with passion, come to choose you as her lord? A warrior who has acquired great merit, and who has such an opportunity for battle, is alike a cat who has found a wish-fulfilling gem in his path.You are confronted with this battle, like a yawning cat into whose mouth nectar unexpectedly drops."
Reinterpretation of Jnaneshwar's Gita
On the eve of the Feline Party of God convention in Cartegena, I have been meditating on my sacred mission as a presidential candidate. In doing so, I recalled the first time I met the Great Cat (GC), I was standing by the side of the road facing an enormous tomcat come to claim my territory. Bow in hand, I stood there sure that with my superior intelligence and lightening fast reflexes, I could kill him straight away (there would be no compromise with this one), when before me appeared "GC."
He was a small unneutered male. You know the kind. With a cloud-like complexion and the color of lightening; he wore a turban with a peacock feather and around his neck was a wreath of wild catnip. He carried a staff, cow-horn and flute. The air was filled with the smell of ripening mice as he walked closer to me. For a moment I was over come with a strange passion.
I turned away, dizzy and looked at the big bully coming toward me. Suddenly I could clearly see that the tom's life on earth was going to come to an end by my own hand. The smell of his blood caught in the back of my throat. I recognized my father and I wept.
"You cannot shirk your duty," the GC said. "What is the matter with you? What prevents you from acting? Why this grief! You are the incarnation of heroism, a prince among warriors. The fame of your might echoes throughout the three worlds. In spite of this, today you weep, your head droops, and you abandon all your courage.
"Consider this, O Cato, you are weakened by pity. Tell me, is the sun ever swallowed up by darkness? Does the wind stand in terror of a cloud? Can nectar ever die? It the fire ever consumer by fuel?"
I said: "I will not fight. Do not try to persuade me."
He registered some frustration with me, tut-tutting with his lips pursed.
"You are allowing confusion to enter your mind when you think that you are the one who destroys and that this big old tom will be the one that perishes," said the GC angrily.
"All this has existed from beginningless time. Tell me then why you grieve. O Cato, the idea that things can be born or die is only an illusion. In reality, matter is indestructible. Considering the real and the unreal, you will see that the unreal is illusory while the real is eternal.
"That which has manifested the three worlds has neither name, color, form, nor sign. It is eternal, all-pervasive and beyond the reach of birth and death. No one can ever destroy It, no matter how much he may try.These bodies inhabited by the eternal, the indestructible, the immeasurable embodied Self, are said to come to an end. All bodies are destructible by nature. Therefore, fight, O Cato."
I remember telling my friend, John Self, the noted British author and walker, this story. "You've got to be kidding," he said. "The immeasurable embodied Self with a capital "S"? I am impressed that he has even read my work." I didn't laugh.
"But let me ask," Self went on, "did you actually kill your father?" I knew he couldn't resist that final dig as he had met my father years after this event took place. Years after my father and I had reconciled his abandonment of my family and my subsequent upbringing, sleeping in the bread bowl, ad nauseum. John had heard the whole story. Fortunately, at that moment Christy (Turlington), my companion, joined us for our meal and he shut up cowed by her effulgence.
Afterwards I remember telling her this story as well. She was quiet for a while. "Did the "GC" show you his cosmic form?" she asked me. I hesitated to reply.
In the future, watch this space for my speech to the delegates attending the Feline Party of God convention in Columbia. My apologies to Krishna.
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