Friday, 5th March

5 Things is starting to seem ambitious. I barely left the house today, in an attempt to get serious work done and meet Monday's looming deadline, and not moving from in front of the computer makes it quite difficult to 'allow' 5 good things to happen. It tends to have the obverse effect, in creating quite quickly 5 bad things: writer's block, neck strain, fuzzy eyeballs, self-doubt and on occasion small fires when I leave a cigarette burning in the ashtray in front of the window by my desk. I could spend a few minutes googling, seeking out news stories or charming factoids or just typing 'surprised kitty' into youtube's search engine, thus providing myself with, at a stretch, 5 bits of stuff that improved my day. But I decided that would be cheating. The aim of the exercise is to find 5 things from the day that has passed, not rearrange my life in order to complete a checklist. It is meant to be a retrospective task, and I'm determined not to cheat. That means no lying either, and keeping elaborations to a respectful minimum. Better to have the list look a bit sparse, a bit desperate (Wow! What a fabulous coffee! That's going on the list), than betray the project's intent. So if I list charming factoids or amusing news stories it is because they came into my life in an organic fashion; they were forwarded to me, or appeared in the papers I usually read, not through a nefarious keyword search.

1. There is a massive tree that looms over and above my first floor balcony. In the summer months it encases the whole balcony in lush greeness, pressing itself against the apartment building, branches reaching onto the balcony and whipping against windows on windier nights. It has grown above and beyond the height of the whole building in the 4 years we have lived here, and now it feels like the building itself is being hugged by this ambitious arbor. If it were cut down, it feels like the building would topple backwards. The tree, aside from providing shade, green-filtered light, privacy and the vision of nature hugging architecture which always pleases, has also provided us with a mini-ecosystem of fauna. The birds I have mentioned before, but the last few weeks have seen Panda and I glued to the windows or squished together on the tiny balcony every night, as a flock of fruit bats come to visit. We've seen up to 10 or 12 of them at a time, screeching and clicking at each other, fighting over the berries that cover every branch, and I can only assume, in the spirit of the Mardi Gras festival they have arrived in time for, having lots of fruity sex. I love their ginger ruffs, and their pointy noses and the way they stare, eyes perfectly round and unblinking, when they see or hear us moving about. The best part of their visitations, of course, is Panda. He is a much more avid bat-watcher than I, and will spend inordinate amounts of time sitting perfectly still on the balcony or on the couch in the living room, window flung open and only the top of his head peeking above the frame. He also, to my never ending delight, has spent a considerable amount of time perfecting his 'bat-call' and will click and screech back at them, watching with joyous fascination as their heads turn towards him and their little triangle ears flick back and forth like antenna or tiny satellite dishes. Then, sometimes without warning, they will leap out of the branches, spread their wings and fly into the night. One bat with a particularly well-honed sense of the dramatic, delighted us by flying directly across the gibbous moon before disappearing. Ooooo. Aaaaaah.

That is usually my favourite part. I love that up close, when their leathery wings are tucked around their bodies, you can see why they are compared to foxes, or in Panda's case, 'flying puppies'. There is something almost painfully familiar about them, and when they are caught in our torch light, close enough to touch, the desire to have one for a pet, to reach out and scritch the back of their fuzzy necks or stroke their velveteen ears is overwhelming. Though Panda and I are currently (sadly) petless, it is as if that intense maternal instinct for my lost fur-children returns; muscle memory commands me to hug the nearest mammal. And then they leap, extending a massive wing-span at odds with the tiny little bodies I had decided would fit perfectly into a makeshift bed in my sock drawer. The tree heaves with their leaving, and sometimes you can feel the wind created by the beat of their wings. And then they are completely alien, untouchable, wild. They wouldn't want to sleep in my sock drawer, or eat the fruit platter I would make for them and put in their row of little bowls in the kitchen, embossed with the names I had already begun doling out (Morris, Lady Jane, Bea Arthur, Captain Jack...). In the moment of flight they are beautifully distant, and I love their dual nature, their duplicity. They are hybrids and I have always loved hybridity. And, as Panda pointed out, laughing gently when I voiced my desire to keep them and hug them and love for ever and ever, 'You don't need to own everything. It's enough that they've visited.'

2. I made a stranger laugh.

3. I was reading a collection of essays by David Sedaris that mentioned that in New Jersey it is illegal to give a monkey a cigarette. This of course brings to mind a series of excellent and time-consuming legal questions: If it's illegal to give a monkey a cigarette, are you legally obliged to take the cigarette off a monkey who has obtained it legally? I assume it is completely legal if the monkey manages to procure its own cigarettes, as no-one wants to arrest a smoking monkey (turns out I am sorely mistaken in this point). Apart from the truly satisfying tangent this fact sent me on (how did the law come into effect? What was the case that pushed this into legislation?), it also led me to try and find out if this was actually true. And, whilst I could not at first glance find any supporting evidence for this law, I did learn that in New Jersey it is prohibited to give zoo animals cigars or whisky. Excellent.

It is in fact, illegal in South Bend, Indiana to make a monkey smoke a cigarette. The case that propelled this specific law into legislation occurred in 1924, when a monkey was found guilty of smoking and fined $25.

Like any good researcher, I am driven, not just to accept the facts as they are given, but to seek out their origins and ramifications, the context of their conception and their continued effects in the world. And now I have a whole host of new questions that beg answering: Why is it illegal in Zion, Illinois to give a lit cigar to a domesticated animal? Why cigars specifically? And why not, while we're at it, extend the law to protect wild animals from the dangers of mouth cancer at the same time? Also in Illinois, the town of Champaign has forbidden people from urinating in their neighbour's mouth. Why only your neighbour's mouth? Why don't forbid mouth urination in its entirety? Does this law take into consideration consent, or does it merely reflect the town council's abiding interest in stamping out piss-play where ever they find it?

Arkansas outlaws both oral sex and keeping alligators in bathtubs.
You will be fined up to $500 in Kentucky if you try to sell a duckling or baby rabbit that has been dyed or coloured. In Kansas City, if your taste in decor runs to bathtubs with clawed feet it's time to relocate, as bathtubs with feet resembling animal paws are prohibited. In Mole, Missouri it's illegal to frighten a baby. In Montana, it is illegal for unmarried women to fish without a chaperone. Professional boxers in Louisiana may be tough physically, clearly a well-timed insult will send them bawling back to their corners, as it is illegal for spectators to mock them. In Florida, if you're a male wearing a strapless gown and you leave your elephant parked at a meter without paying as you would for a vehicle, expect some jail time. Legislation exists all over the place to outlaw such dangerous and offensive behaviour as gargling, shaving and humming in public.

It is always a good thing to expand your knowledge. Especially bite-sized bits of knowledge, which I intend to use instead of greetings from now on. Each email, text message, and letter I write, will now begin with the citation of one of these laws, skipping straight over the boring and often disingenuous 'Dear Blah, How are you?'

4. Yep, that really was a fabulous coffee.

5. When I'm suffering paralyzing writer's block but don't want to leave my desk because then I feel like I'm letting it win, I valiantly stay at the computer to try and fool the writer's block into thinking I'm still working (bad news, by the way, when you start to treat something that is inside your brain as an external force with a consciousness). So I do things that can be considered, at glance, as work. Like electronic filing, moving documents to other areas, creating new folders and labelling them with a complex coded system of organization which I will of course forget immediately. I also spend time painstakingly moving things to my external hard drive, and whilst engaging in this rather pointless busy-work, I found this very old photo of Morgan, my beloved ginger tom, who died 5 or 6 years ago now. It is maybe not a good thing to ponder death and loss when you're trying to simultaneously unblock your productivity gland and hide your lack of productivity from your writer's block, but I found his image, after all this time, very comforting. It so completely captured his personality, perched on a space too small for his gigantic fat ginger body, perfectly content, fast asleep. A lover of velour and colour schemes which would best show his ample shedding. I remembered with perfect clarity how his fur felt after he'd been asleep in the sun, how he'd wake, blinking and completely put-out when I'd snap a picture of him, and then, with an expression of affectionate forbearance, tuck his head under his paws and fall back asleep. I'd forgotten that he snored, and that he once fell in 'love' with a teddy bear, and that he'd pull the garbage bin over if you didn't get up to feed him at 6am. And that if my bedroom door was shut at night, he'd fling his mighty frame at it, again and again, until he was granted access. How he'd wake me by whacking me in the face with his paws, or by leaning his face so close to mine I'd wake with a start to the sight of enormous green eyes in a chubby ginger face and a petulant 'Mrroah?'.

All of this rushed back in a condensed little ball of emotion and memory, and in the face of an otherwise pretty empty and frustrating day, it wasn't such a bad thing.