hell cat and limited literacy

there is a homeless cat in my neighborhood, a completely unironically black and mangy one, that stalks the streets at nights looking for my community's contraband roosters to duel with and then dine on. while i am already itchy and reclusive near cats, this one makes me even more likely to scour my skin after our paths cross, due in no small part- i am sure- to the fact that we have met twice while walking under ladders. i cannot imagine what a double-whammy of superstitious meetings does for the witchy world but i cannot imagine it would be good for my karma-if karmas and superstitions can ever intersect in some sort of netherworld.

all of this though is a precursor to the gutural reaction i have when hell cat cries at night. this is the first cat cry i have ever heard that sounds like it has centuries of pain behind it and rings clearly up to my fourth floor windows. it scares the shit out of me and then makes me fear for the things i might lose. and that one possibility closest to my heart right now is reading. it is reading for the sake of reading and picking up a beautiful book on a rainy day and settling into it and letting it settle into me. and i fear right now that the masses of work i have brought upon myself for the sake of a degree that is still so far from being a light at the end of the tunnel that i have not even gotten to the point where i can see the %*(&)*)! tunnel will never subside. the point at which i can pick up a book, press it against me, and read it in a day or so seem so far gone right now, that sometimes, late at night, i think i understand hell cat's call.

grappling with the me of me

i am grappling with the me of me, wondering why i do not feel like myself lately when myself is always myself, is it not? it must be. and yet i think often of being lost and finding my way back to me and yet i wonder what does that mean i am now? who do i think i am? how do you go on a search for the self when the self is here for all intents and purposes? nobody really knows i am gone so i am i still me if i still have all outward signs of me? or am i just really good at performing myself?