Cats for scale. It’s a thing!

The “Cats For Scale” meme is a humorous way to show the size of an object by placing a cat next to it. Cats, being a familiar and roughly standard-sized animal, act as a relatable reference point, highlighting just how big (or small) something really is. It’s often used in photos of undersized or oversized items, like giant vegetables or miniature furniture, to give viewers a playful sense of scale.

When I came across the meme recently, it reminded me of that awful cover of The Joker by Fat Boy Slim somewhere in the early millenium. You know, the one with the best video ever, made for a competition by Jan Lochider from Milbury, Ohio.

But it also resonated in an opposite way, because of world events. That’s the thought that sparked this poem. So, I ended up writing about feeling sad as child and how my cat was a great source of comfort to me.

Extra: I literally got lost in MSK (art museum) in Gent yesterday, but two friendly English tourists navigated me towards the exit. I almost panicked very badly. Where are the guards when you need them? Anyway, I posted a few photos in my notes feed if you’re interested. There’s one with a cat and a very big fish.

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Earlier this year I watched an interview with Yuval Noah Harari at Davos, where he suggested that the purpose of life is to reduce suffering, a philosophy that aligns with his interest in meditation and mindfulness. I wondered whether he meant this as a personal belief or a universal truth.

He also spoke about control: the only thing we can truly control, he said, is the present moment and our thoughts. This resonated with me. If I can exercise control over anything, it’s my creative output—my poetry. For example, if I wrote a poem years ago that balanced darkness and pain with hope, I might now choose to edit it, removing the painful lines because their imagery no longer serves me. I’d keep only what feels beautiful and flowing.

I’m not sentimental about my work. Just as I regularly clear out my apartment—discarding books, objects, anything that no longer feels necessary—I approach my poetry the same way. I’ve kept all my poems from the past eight to ten years, but I don’t cling to them. If a line or image still speaks to me, I’ll reuse it in something new. Alternatively, I’ll gut the poem, keeping only what remains meaningful.

I’ve come to see this process as a way of reducing my suffering and transforming it into something else. That’s what I did to the following poem. So, you may remember a different version from before.

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We so often rush through places without really knowing them. They are familiar only from a distance. I don’t feel connected to the flat fields of Flanders that lie between the coast, where I lived as child, and the city that in live in now. And yet these fields hold a lot of history, regular and natural.

I mentioned before that birds are an accessible form of wildlife for me in the city, and that noticing them has made me start to feel more connected to the web of life. So, whenever I’m travelling on the train, I start to look out for birds during the journey. It’s hard to see them really. They’re too small and I’m moving too fast. But occasionally I’m rewarded with a white or grey heron! A few weeks ago I decided to look up some information about this pocket of polder, and I learned the names of the area and of some of the birds that can be found there.

I’d like to give a warm thank you to Juliette Mansour for letting me use one of her beautiful photographs. Juliette is an American photographer and writer. Please pay her a visit at THE ADDITIONAL F-STOP.

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Another poem and another colour scheme change. If you’re viewing this post on the website that is. I think this is the one, people. This feels warm and inviting to me, as opposed to the cool tones of the previous scheme.

I’ve been using the nighttime filter on my laptop screen during the day as well, because it’s much less tiring for my eyes, but it made the grey-blue tone look kind of … bleh… an indescribable colour.

I do try so hard to make my pages appealing. Despite what this poem below says… I just want to feel like what I do and give to the world matters somehow. But I guess that’s only human.

This poem is about the quiet struggle to find meaning in the everyday, the tension between solitude and connection, and the attempt to assemble a sense of self from fleeting moments. It’s a snapshot of someone sitting still in a rushing world, noticing the small things, and wondering if boredom is just a sign of not quite belonging—or if it’s the space where meaning is made.

Things to think about while turning over an hour

Boredom is like wadding through jelly. Is it dark there?

I’m trying to find a use for the word light-lusty while reading Vuong.

Something has obscured the petallic song of the great tit that usually accompanies me to the bus stop. 

That the rain has started to fall in small dots on the grey pavement.

That the hybrid plane looks gallant in the wind, waving slightly.

A bench. A paper coffee cup. A new chenille coat. While everyone rushes off somewhere.

Because I have grown besotted with the chuckle of the magpie, I feel older.

Because Juan Ramón Jiménez wrote: “I was thinking of the greatness of what was human, and found myself in the divine.”

I stay seated when the bus comes, so I won’t have to feel the press of other bodies.

That it is the press of other voices that I prefer.

Perhaps I am trying to sketch a soul out of all these details.

A silver pearl-button eye watches me from fine black feathers, so I know that I am part of this scene.

Perhaps boredom is just missing a sense of belonging in the liminal.

It was still dark when I woke up this morning, but I understood that I was not supposed to care.

I’m re-posting this poem, after deleting my account and blog a couple of months ago. I’m so glad that some of you have already found your way back to my new publication. Thank you so much for joining me again! And welcome to a few new faces! I’m so grateful you’re here.

I just wanted to let you all know that I regularly share various inspirations in my notes feed. These could be poems that I love, artworks that give me all the right feels, insight on poems I’m working on, and things I watched or read that sparked something. You can find all my notes in the notes tab on my homepage.

One of my favourite things to do while walking to work or to the shops in the urban environment I live in is to start looking for birds. When I’m ruminating, lost in the stressful scenarios laying siege to my mind, all it takes is the sharp call of the common crow, its loud and harsh tone breaking the spell of self-importance. I have come to view these ‘interruptions’ as cues to mindfulness, birds being to most readily available wildlife in the city.

Listen

How many days I have spent, groundless, with the anonymous
hum of commuter-life always in the background.
The few birds have the air of being thrown by the wind.

This morning I hear the familiar language of carrion crows,
the low and raw bellows, summoning to prayer.
This is how I seek comfort.

Forgetting and returning is the practice. 
Each return strengthens your attention.
Everything is in that moment.

I had a rough draft of this poem that was waiting for a little extra love, and after watching a workshop with Marjorie Lotfi earlier this month, where she discussed Lisel Mueller’s poem In Passing, I felt ready to make the necessary edits. This was originally a three stanza poem with longer, wordier lines. But I feel that shorter, condensed lines really work to create a mindful style. The title of the poem is also a nod to Mueller’s poem.

In suspense

This early in the year
the days are still
shorter than the nights.

A bare black tree
capillaries against the blank sky
a lace doily of snowdrops at its foot.

There will be another frost
and I want to hold
my breath and start counting.

It will be more than a spell
before sound and colour
steal back into the world.

A love poem of sorts

after Mei-mei Berssenbrugge and Rupert Sheldrake


Our conversation is a wing causing vibrations, like tiny roots searching the soil, water striders dancing on the surface, a pearl growing around pain.

Making music that corresponds in character or kind, we enter each other’s mental life.

The gap between our bodies is fertile with imagination, as if our bodies are knowledge and the space between is mystery.

The resonance of a brain with its own past states creates a chasm; I’m pulled towards it through the laws of nature, which are habits, and embrace you to protect you with my warmth.

Each individual both draws upon and contributes to the collective memory of the species.

Over my shoulder, your eyes are butterflies of disbelief, or is it wonder, as the past becomes present through a kind of resonance with those who have performed the same rituals before.

My hands seem diaphanous and I wonder about the laws of humans versus the habits of organisms. How much do I want to be seen by you.

When we break apart, the pellucid gap is filled with patterns of  rhythmic activity.

Even at long distances, when I reach out to you with intention, I can envelop you in my morphic field.

On the beach in winter

So much is happening when nothing is happening; it's mad.
Like Pluto and Charon, we gaze from a distance at each other.

Footprints in the sand tell me someone was just here,
but the writing is asemic; perhaps all writing is.

Here the sea pours in evenly, like sand-casted lead,
tarpaulin for cover. It is cold under the wide sky,

but then light comes slanting to make this plane more interesting.
It chases the shadow the heel made and made and made,

and reflects off the puddle of seawater that is starting to fill it.
I trace an outline with the tip of my shoe but it dissolves under the weight.

You stood here, I think, where the light bends. I follow
the shadow of your heel, but it only leads to another shadow, and another.

Is this how the universe speaks? In the space between footprints,
in the way the light slants just before it fades?

Standstill

In winter, bare branches
are there to teach: the light
is always flanked by shade
and shade outlined by light

as the whole topography of cloud
and nothingness shifts behind them.

Right now, the sky is torn
a gentle breach, the highlighted parts of the tree
rise up to meet me, with the tactile satisfaction of impasto

and moments later the shadows gain weight 
and their solidity draws closer.

I can only stand still
and watch and wait as light and dark works on me
as it changes my consistency
while I try to anneal myself
to hold myself together

while something like echo grief
rushes through my body.