Catt Scratches

It’s another one of those days when everybody I see reminds me of someone else and usually that someone else is unidentifiable, or elusively undefinable,  or on the tip of my tongue.  When I get this feeling, I usually think: well, I live in a relatively small community  (Big Surprise: I am talking about Chicago, but really, my world within Chicago is not that vast) and perhaps, I have seen the person in question at the Dominick’s or on the train or in the courthouse before. Or I think, I have just been around so long, I have already seen everybody once and this is the second or third time I am seeing them.

But today, I thought. Maybe everybody is the same. That’s why they seem so familiar.  We are all playing equivalent roles in other peoples’ lives.  In someone else’s life, a woman named Angela is playing the Jill Role. I am playing Angela’s part in my friend Mary’s story. I may be playing multiple roles in many people’s story. My own story may well be the least interesting one of the all the stories I’m in.

I’m dating a guy named Ross.  I saw this couple at lunch and thought, well, I’m probably playing the chick in that couple but Ross wouldn’t be cast as that guy.  The guy in the couple would have been played by someone else, someone more expressive than Ross yet there were clear similarities.  As a couple, we were not substantially different.

And as people we aren’t substantially different. Just substitute one thing for another and we’re the same. Someone’s chocolate is my nicotine. Someone’s passion for laying out on the beach is my love of hiking in the woods.  I love Dave Letterman and can’t watch Jay. Someone else can’t stay up for late night but watches all the morning shows. Or goes for a walk before bed instead.

We really are a set of exchangeable functions and tastes.  The differences among us are not fundamental, except in the truly dysfunctional. And even for them, the crazy just represents replacement of the norm.

This may sound banal and it certainly sounds naive,  but  why don’t we have more respect for each other? When we look at someone else, we are really looking in a mirror.

First, yesterday was good Friday.  I always work on Good Friday. I feel that if Jesus worked, the least I can do is suffer with him.   I had a boss for many years, a Jewish man from Ocean Parkway, who always said when his employees asked if the office was closed on Good Friday, “What? I should shut down my business because some nice Jewish boy was put to death?” He is the same guy who, when you left the back door  and the heat or the air conditioner was on, he would say: ” What? I should maybe just write a check to the Arabs?”

I also still can’t eat meat on Good Friday. I tried to have a turkey and bacon sandwich but I couldn’t. I haven’t been a Catholic for 31 years and I am only nominally still a Christian but the old indoctrination still holds. It makes me think that we should be doing better with our schools. Why aren’t good citizenship, good health habits, good hygiene and especially good manners more firmly rooted in people when the educational system takes control of our minds at such an early age. The things that the good sisters of St. Joseph burned into my brain still control me.

I’m a lawyer; maybe you knew that already. When I think of Easter,l I think of Jesus Christ at the defense table at his trial sitting passively while his public defender sits by helplessly wanting to object when Peter lies on the stand but not having a a legal basis. Every once in a while the PD whispers to Jesus, who shrugs his shoulders, not offering much to help Himself.

I don’t blame the Jews for what happened to Christ. It was clearly the fault of the Italians. Pilate could have saved Him if he wanted but Jesus was a trouble maker and a wise Guy. Pilate  wanted Him dead and he wanted His Corpse to be attributable to another perpetrator.  Typical Mafia maneuvering.

Another thought for the day: The struggle for perfection is less than satisfying without the occasional lapse.

Tonight was another night when I realized that I have great friends. Who could be more fortunate than someone who has a good friend or too? I had organized a little outing to Alejandro Escovedo at the Old Town School of Folk Music and told my friend Ed, who was going to have dinner with me first and my friends Tina and Fred, who were meeting us there, that the tickets were for the 7:00 show. Ed and I had a great dinner, we met up with Fred first, I gave him the tickets, he came back.  I think he went to check out the seats. He said. “Jill these tickets are for the 10:00 show.” 20 years of schooling and I can’t read! So no one complained and we started talking what to do for a few hours and Ed and Fred went to check to see if they would swap out tickets for the 7:00 show and they did.

But no one called me an idiot or made comments or said a single sharp word. Great friends.

I am struggling mightily not to sound trite or naive or silly. Those happen to be things that I am very good at being so avoidance of all three is difficult. I have always thought that I had a lot to say; I have frequently thought that I said one thing or another rather brilliantly and I should write it down. And now,  not only do I have a central repository for those thoughts, I can use that repository to inflict those same thoughts upon others.

It’s a great life. I love it. I believe in sucking the life out of life .

I chose the title of this blog because I admire the behavior of cats. They scratch offensively, defensively, when playing, when stretching, and when covering up the products of digestion. The Scratch is the Signature of the Cat.

That’s it for now.