The cat went here and there
And the moon spun round like a top,
And the nearest kin of the moon,
The creeping cat looked up.
W.B. YEATS, ‘The Cat and the Moon’
When I was so young that like a cat I was oblivious to mirrors, I sang and danced for myself.
I was the second of four children and grew up in the city, and so much of life was movement and noise. If I sang or danced, something of life took shape.
Was I a noisy child? I made noise as a way of bringing people towards me but also to see them off. How were they supposed to tell which I intended? How was I? Was this a war cry or a love song? A display of grace or a show of strength? Ugly or beautiful? We four kept up our noise as a form of vigilance. It was the sound of rocks banged together, shields drummed by swords, boots stamping, jet-planes swooping. How much song and dance have come out of just this?
My family held me. It was complicated but strong, a machine which made life happen so that I didn’t have to. It protected me, too. Until I was eleven or so, I was not made to take on substance.
I had as much capacity for delight as for fear and did not experience any unusual trauma. It was a matter of impact. All experience was trauma.
I liked our noise yet came to find the volume of life too high and as I couldn’t turn it down, turned myself down instead. Before then, I felt like a cloud struck by lightning. This was how someone once described being in love to me, and it could be said that in terms of how the world acted upon me, I was in love.