About a week ago, I did a writing exercise that went like this:
Writing Exercise #3
You meet a man in a bar in a strange town. He has a cat on his lap, and he orders a cup of coffee, slowly spoons sugar into it. He strokes the cat's black fur and says, "This contact is illusory. The cat and I are separated as though by a pane of glass, because man lives in time, in successiveness, while the magical animal lives in the present, in the eternity of the instant." What do you say back to him? And he to you? What does the cat do? What happened to this man before he came into the bar?
I promised not to research anything about it until I was finished, and I knew I was dying to know what it was all about already. When I was done, I surfed the internet and found out that this event was from the short story "The South" by Jorge Luis Borges. It turns out that this particular part of the story has metaphysics—and other aspects that I hope to fully understand someday—involved in it. Reading other writers' answers, I could not help but feel ashamed of what I came up with. In order to further understand Borges' Magical Cat, I have provided links that I think have the best explanations.
That said, mine is not incorrect or inaccurate in some way; for me, it is just that my interpretation is too basic. It goes to show that I still have a looooooooong way to go...
...or perhaps it is just my old friend Depth Ration talking.
Try to read it, and try to compare it to other people's answers. Maybe you will see what I mean.
--
After six months of love-hate relationship with my novel, I had finally published it in Kindle. How would readers react to it? How successful would it be in terms of sales? Most importantly, did I screw up a bunch of sentences and overlook it unconsciously?
Gosh, I was worried. So worried that I had decided to go to a bar late at night when I could have had been drunk at home alone.
Unfortunately (or fortunately?), a strange man perished my anxiety as I could not help but notice that he was carrying a black cat. I cocked my head, confused as to how he had either managed to slip in the feline unnoticed or convinced the bouncers to let his friend in.
It was not farfetched to conclude that he was an uncommon head-turner. A tall man probably in his fifties, he wore a luxurious-looking black tuxedo which seemed to complement with his cat’s natural clothing. They both had charming blue eyes, but what the cat could not accomplish to match was the man’s white stubble.
To be honest, he looked interesting.
He must have had noticed me staring at him as he started walking towards me. I swallowed. Did I perhaps offend him? Sitting on my left, he put the cat on his lap and started stroking her black fur.
“This contact is illusory.” He raised his eyebrow as he pointed his lips at his busy hand. “The cat and I are separated as though by a pane of glass, because man lives in time, in successiveness, while the magical animal lives in the present, in the eternity of the instant.”
I snickered subconsciously. “Yeah, right.”
He smiled apologetically. “I am sorry, son. I just thought that there is something scorching within those hungry, wise eyes.”
I was a writer, so of course, I knew what his fancy words meant. It was just that he had expressed it so vaguely. Entirely against a user-unfriendly sort of speaking and writing, I had decided to dismiss him.
However, I could not ignore him now. “Humans heavily rely on memory to experience subjectively, while animals simply live their life not one second later nor earlier, but right now.” I used “deep” sentences in purpose. “As a result, they are not bothered by the past painful events or, conversely, the nostalgic longing that has no effect but to make us want what has already passed.
“On the other hand, they also do not worry about what they will eat tomorrow, where to sleep, or whose butts to shine with their lips. Such futuristic thinking that only makes men anxious is a completely foreign concept to that cat, wouldn’t you say?” I asked rhetorically, mostly to myself and to my worries. “Your companion has mastered the art of living just by not being a human.”
He shook his head, his face wrinkled as if disgusted. “Slow down, son. I just read it somewhere. This… this black cat isn’t even mine! I… I don’t know whether you’re right or wrong; I don’t understand a damned thing you just said!”
All my life, I had been searching for a philosophical partner; one I could talk to about the meaning of life and ask in vain the why’s of the universe.
I seriously thought that this middle-aged man would be it. But then, I thought that I did not need to look far behind.
“Who owns the cat, mister?” I asked.
“It’s a stray cat,” he answered, obviously losing interest.
The black cat looked at me knowingly, and as if it was not enough to express his interest in me, he pounced from the man’s lap to mine like a majestic horse jumping over an obstacle.
I caressed her head while she closed her eyes. “You know, I want to be like you.”
--
A snobbish writer, if you ask me.
Sources/Suggestions:
http://meredithsuewillis.com/writingexercises1-20.html
http://www.52weeksofwordage.com/2010/09/exercise-174-man-his-cat.html
https://www.fivesightresearch.com/borges-magical-cat/
https://literature.stackexchange.com/questions/6875/in-the-south-by-jorge-luis-borges-what-is-the-significance-of-the-cat
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