ORIENTATION OF CATS
The first-person
narrator compares what it means to be seen by his cat and seen by his
wife, Alana; a comparison made to honor, even worship, a woman’s affinity
with the mysterious feline, yet being a woman (good thinking, mate), her
vision expands beyond the feline in multiple dimensions, each dimension
like cards in a deck, forever shuffled, forever a surprise as to which
card winds up on top. Ah, women. As Julio writes: “Behind those blue
eyes there’s more, in the depths of the words and moans and the silences
another realm is born, another Alana is breathing.”
In his
apartment with his cat and his wife is one thing, quite another to add
the visual arts to the perceptual equation. We read, “The day came when
facing a Rembrandt print I saw her change even more, as if a set of
clouds in the sky had suddenly altered the lights and shadows of a
landscape. I felt that the painting was carrying her beyond herself.”
And then the world of perception is expands even further when he and
Alana take a trip to the museum. “I was watching her give herself over
the each painting, my eyes were multiplying the lightning bolt of a
triangle that went from her to the picture and from the picture to me,
returning to her and catching the change, the different halo that
encircled her for a moment to give way later to a new aura, a tonality
that exposed her to a true one, to the ultimate nakedness.”
Triangulation
of seeing and being seen, a series of calculations on ever-changing
perception, where the three tips of the triangle are
husband/narrator/observer, Alana as she views the paintings, and the
painting themselves. Alana moves through the museum from painting to
painting, contemplating each one and the triangle and subsequent
calculation shifts with each viewing; and with each shift, the narrator
is given a glimpse of a new Alana, Alana made new encounter after
painterly encounter.
But that’s not all; there’s yet another
magical triangulation. The narrator sees Alana’s gaze rest on a painting
of a cat facing left, looking out a window. The narrator imagines Alana
enter the painting and stand beside the cat, so they both look out the
window.
And what are they looking at? The window is at the painting’s left edge, thus the object of their gaze is beyond the borders of the painting’s frame. Again, what are those two, Alana and the cat, looking at? Why, the narrator imagines those two are looking at him himself. Cortázar-style triangulation!
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