Maybe I’m owned
Ownership is a weird concept. How can we own something when we’re all just floating in space? I guess we can own our emotions or own our behaviours. That use of the word is sort of colloquial. Capitalism allows for inanimate object ownership and so we buy things that pile up. We acquire gifts and knickknacks, and somewhere along the way we shed some items or they sit idly to collect dust or are forgotten in a cupboard somewhere. The inanimate objects remind us that we own memories.
One might argue about the ability to own plants or land. Can you really own a garden? The garden does what gardens do and you are, at best, a guardian for a few seasons of life. It’s the same with a house, you take care of it for a while but it probably outlasts you in the end. We don’t own our friends or family members, indeed owning humans is to all good conscience completely heinous. And pet ownership is also particularly ridiculous, as anyone with a cat will know. We do not own our pets, if anything, they own us. “If you love something set it free, if it comes back it’s yours forever”, a statement about love or about ownership?
The Buddhist believe that inner peace is antithetical to materialism. Physical reality doesn’t matter so much, it is the spiritual journey or intellectual pursuit that make life worth living. Which feels like a tough perspective to defend if you are talking to someone who doesn’t have basic material needs met. Materialism, though, can also be argued from a philosophical perspective. It is a theory about the fabric of reality, but we mostly use it as a word to describe one’s concern with material things.
It’s hard, though, to escape the clutches of material ownership. We are by nature protective of the things we think we own. We grapple with what other people own, and we forget that we are all merely renters.
We rent our lives and then at some point the river man comes to collect us.
“I do not say these things for a dollar or to fill up the time while I wait for a boat. It is you talking just as much as myself, I act as the tongue of you, Tied in your mouth, in mine it begins to be loosened.” Walt Whitman, Song of Myself
- The Right’s Arguments Against “Free Stuff” Don’t Make Sense > https://jacobin.com/2025/08/mamdani-socialism-capitalism-free-stuff
- Amnesty International posters – in pictures > https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2011/apr/03/amnesty-international-posters-in-pictures
- Quote Origin: If You Love Someone, Set Them Free. If They Come Back They’re Yours > https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/08/love-set-free/
Maybe I’m opaque
Stained glass artist Shelyhina Kateryna
On Monday, there was a cat pill on the counter next to the toaster. Ollie is a little butt and he is old. He has an overactive thyroid and like any good cat mom, I am trying to have him live forever because he’s my cat. I’ve always had cats. My mom’s cat, Buff, was a big orange tabby. Once he found a nest of baby rabbits and brought one home as a gift. The little guy was still alive (barely) and I learned about the circle of life as we spent the next days chasing the cat away from the rabbit nest. I can’t remember who lived and died, but I remember my mom telling my little four or five year old brain that the mama rabbit just needed a little help.
We had a black cat with white dots called Domino and then there was Dinger, who was black and brown and fluffy and a weirdo. When I was a teenager, my first serious boyfriend gifted me a baby calico I named Circe. Later, we forced my mom to adopt Calypso, Bo and Beneé after rescuing them from beneath a laundry basket in the front yard of a trailer. Beneé was developmentally disabled, Calypso was crazy as a bat on acid and Bo was a good natured guy who liked to be spun around on the floor. At least that’s what we told ourselves. There was Simon (died on Friday the 13th) and Athena (likely passed, but lived a happy life in California), Morris (hit by a car) and Bettina (kitty-napped and likely living with a little old lady just around the corner). Marlow died as a kitten, a fuckwad of a human was poisoning neighbourhood cats. My friend’s cat Lelo died around the same time. She hadn’t had a cat since, so poignant was the heartache.
Once my aunt in Colorado told me that the owls picked up the cats if they stayed out too late at night. She also said that if she didn’t like a cat… Nevermind that’s a family secret.
So my cat needs a daily pill. The pill on the counter had surely just fallen out of the bottle. It was fresh and clean and returned to its home amongst the others, so sure was I that Ollie had received a pill buried in his third lunch. On Tuesday, there was a pill on the counter. This pill was not fresh and clean. It was swollen with the goop from Ollie’s second dinner. But there it was, on the counter.
Now I don’t know much, but if my cat is returning his pill to the countertop instead of eating it, it certainly makes me question everything.
- On Not Surrendering in Advance (Or At Any Point Thereafter) > https://www.meditationsinanemergency.com/on-not-surrendering-in-advance-or-during-or-at-any-point-thereafter
- How To Argue With An AI Booster > https://www.wheresyoured.at/how-to-argue-with-an-ai-booster/
- Mr. Incredible finds out about Oversimplified Logos > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAaxVuz0uKk
Maybe I need help
What ever happened to rubber glue? Does it still exist? Of course I could search for such a thing, but it’s so much better to realise that the smell you are smelling reminds you of something far away and long ago. It’s nice to leave the mystery as it is. I’ve been trying to remember what grade we graduated from Elmer’s glue to rubber glue, and I haven’t the slightest idea.