There are no NPCs, only Others>, yes, Zarephath and Naaman>.

No, there are no NPCs, only those whom I never knew well.

Most of the animals that I had as a kid were cats. It wasn’t a large number, but I’m just saying that cats were most of what I ever had. When my mom and I lived in the room she rented in her friend’s home in California, we had a cat named Amanda. I don’t remember much about Amanda except that she was calico and I loved her a lot. Amanda was certainly part of our home. I’m pretty sure Amanda moved with us in that Chevy Vega when we moved back east.

And then we had Jake. I don’t know whether his life overlapped with Amanda’s. I also don’t know whether his life overlapped with Teela or Kitty Boy’s lives. I am pretty sure that he was black and white, and I am pretty sure that his death by car was the preceding event to us getting either Teela or Kitty Boy (I forget which one was first, but I am pretty sure it was Teela). I have this foggy mix of cats in my head but there is definitely an order: Amanda Jake Teela ⇄ Kitty Boy.

I don’t have anyone to ask about these things. This is not a sob story, but it is a framing story, occasioning what I want to say. And what I want to say is that there are no extras in the drama of your life — not any more than you, with all of your passion and tragedy, your work and your play, your family and friends, your fantasies and forts, the things which keep you awake at night and those which get you out of bed in the morning — not any more than you are a mere extra in the drama of their lives. So,

I don’t have anyone to ask about these things. My full family at home growing up was my mother. My two siblings — one before and one behind — never came into our world all of the way. And there aren’t any people who journeyed with us across time and space from Mayberry to Woodward to Mingo. No one to have kept track of the ebbs and flows of cats except for my mother, and she is gone. No aunts or uncles or cousins or nieces or nephews who have survived the story. There are indeed some who are alive still; I’m not that old. But none who can speak with knowledge about Amanda and Jake and Teela ⇄ Kitty Boy.

All of the cancer and shooting and chemistry and fleeing and suicide and overdosing and withering away from this drama has removed, not just people, but the structure of the family. There is little to be discovered or exhumed about my history save investigation, not tales, and the Lampad of investigation is certainly not bothered with cats.

That was the story.

A dear friend once told me that she felt a burden for so many background characters in movies who were nothing more than fodder for the action. They were expendable pawns in a game of telling a narrower story. Focus creates periphery.

I tried to understand — Did she mean she felt bad for those actors and actresses who were complete people with whole lives, and yet all they received in the film was a tiny speck of exposure? Nuh-uh. She was working in the realm of imagination. It was that if you took the fictional world of the movie seriously, if you considered all figures as people, then while the super heroic smash-punchers or justice-bringers were exciting our lusts, there were scores of people being squashed like microbes as the giants walked among them. They were worms and spiders and midges.

Well, in that sense, yes, that is pretty heavy. And I think it’s similar to something I experienced, long ago — the realization that no matter how someone turned out or who they become or who they were for a bit, they were at some point someone’s baby. I know there are some babies who are never wanted in the least by those who have them, but it seems like most babies, at least for a little bit, are welcomed into the world. In fact, I am comfortable asserting a guess that over the course of human history, babies have been welcomed far more often than they have not. And I guess those many other cases (and also those cases of othering) will be something to return to for another purpose. But for now, those welcomed babies — nearly all people always, I am asserting — were born with so little eyesight as to only be able to see the shadows in the cave or the face of the one whose breast feeds them.*

In the beginning was the baby, and being itself was nearly all that it could do. At one point it could roll a smidge, but not over. A little side to side until it had strength many times over what it was born with, but far from enough to even stand. Then it could hold up its head. Think of your favorite superstar anyone — an athlete, a performer, a politician, an author, your Mother. At one point, grown, capable adults noticed, “Look! She can hold up her head!” The march of progress> from sit, scoot, crawl, stand, toddle, walk, run, jump and climb and, amazingly, to crack a joke is astounding. If you’ve never experienced it as the observer who exclaims about her holding her head up, I encourage you to do so. Whether having your own child, being nearby and attentive to one in your family or neighborhood, or observant when you are out and about, see the everyday wonder that is everywhere.**

And what of those who are feral? That will have to be for somewhere else.>

Evolving from laying to speaking is a march indeed but the destination contains so much more. Every day can be thought of as a relentless march of moments from which we extract experiences — experiences that make up our stories. Of wonderings and prayers and wishes, of fantasies, projects, and road trips, of crushes and secrets and Saturday sports, or holidays, birthdays, and dreams. We have and skip chores, take and leave work; we study subjects and are subject to exams; we memorize poems and make macaroni art; we go to festivals, funerals, and weddings; we watch shows and performances, dreaming of being them; now we judge and get judged online; we interpret, explain, and observe.

I don’t know how to approach the list because that which makes up our lives is too many things to count. Things of many different kinds. Things that fit in other things and things for things to fit inside of. And while our lives might not be who we are, we are nothing without our lives.

Dead, we are more naked than the day we were born. We are not any sort of such-and-such. We

aren’t.

Insert favorite villain or icon, but be reminded that everyone started out the (same). This troubled me as a kid. How was I supposed to REALLY believe in someone as being all bad?*** ‡Bad in the sense here as unworthy of life, here or in any beyond it. For that, I have to be willing to say that someone is less worthy of existence than even the snout of a tardigrade (and damn I thought that those were exceptional, being indestructible and all). I would have to be greater than the Divine to make this pronouncement.