Happiness is a Balancing Act

We've gotten too serious, haven't we?  Two Grasshoppers was a lighter turn on a dark road, but nonetheless, this must be diffused.  Balance is essential to everything.  Too much or too little and failure is inevitable.  With this in mind, there are two key elements to any artwork: the message and the medium.  Frequently, the message is serious and the medium is playful.  This is, at least, what I strive to accomplish when I write.  The message, to me, almost has to be serious.  If what you are saying has no weight, then why are you even saying it?  But likewise, the medium has to be playful.  If what you are doing is not fun, then why are you doing it at all?  The key is to find the middle ground, to say something with gravitas but to do it on the Moon.  Kurt Vonnegut, my biggest literary influence, was a master of this moderation.  The Coen Brothers, arguably my favorite filmmakers, also achieve this time and time again.  Wordplay is one of the essential techniques I use to balance the scales.  Unusual subjects, as well, help me achieve this moderation.  That's why I like this poem so much.  Early in the summer, our old black cat Simon would sit next to me frequently and, of course, sleep.  Hours upon hours he would sleep, like all cats.  And it got me wondering...

"Cat’s Eye, Nebulous (Ode to Simon’s Sleeping Life)"

Perhaps we are the gods

that populate feline dreams.

This black animal sleeps more than he wakes,

so which life is he living

and which life is he simply moving through?

Are we the superstition of an old black cat

in the pitch black cavern of his mind?

Are his midnight cries for milk obscured

calls to a god that left him insignificant?

This apparition of existence, the hallucination we live

inside the feline mind is a mystery

of inexact sensations and far off thoughts imbibed

by a cat’s eye, born

in the nebulous stretches of thought.