She is six weeks old in the first photograph; nineteen years old in the last. There are many photographs in between; many memories. Across the years that span her long* and rich life, there is one constant: her eyes. In each photograph, they project her raw power, every bit as much as her delicate prettiness. She knew she had me, my precious little cat, my beautiful girl.
Opposite her now hangs a new picture; a dormouse, all the way from Chillicothe, Ohio, USA. It has been stunningly rendered in needled felt, by a very talented friend of mine, and I can feel it watching me tremulously from its wispy dandelion bed, as I type. Again, the eyes have it. The fragile little soul of that dormouse is in those eyes.
Ah, the eyes. They are so insubstantial, but they capture and project a universe of substance. And yet, they barely change. See for yourself: look at photographs of a person in childhood and adulthood – the eyes are always the same. It doesn’t matter if the body is young or old, the skin firm or wrinkled: aged seven or seventy, that person’s eyes will be unmistakable, even in photographs. It is only when life departs** that the eyes change. Suddenly, photographs and pictures are all you have left. To me, it’s unfathomable that pictures of eyes can project more meaning in that moment, than the eyes of the actual, real, physical person. Even though you can still touch that person and see them, they are gone, gone, gone.
Time now for something more light-hearted: I am glad to say that I can now correctly pronounce Chillicothe†. If, as I used to, you read the name above with three syllables, then allow me to correct you: it has four. So: the ‘-cothe’ is pronounced with two syllables, and it sounds a bit like ‘coffee’††. As opposed to sounding like ‘coat’, which is how my inner voice has been mangling it for ages. Hence, the whole word does not sound, as I had thought, like ‘Chilly Coat’ (as in; it’s chilly, so put on your coat’); but like ‘Chilly Cothee’ (which is more like; it’s chilly, so let’s have a coffee’).
I really like the sound of four-syllable pronunciation; it’s got a musicality to it, somehow. And it’s not at all strange that I now need to listen to Kim Carnes on repeat, for the rest of the day. At least; not in my eyes.
* for a cat!
** as I recently learned, when I watched my beloved mother die.
† thanks to my friend’s lovely parents (whose eyes have not changed a bit!).
†† OK, at a stretch. If you pronounced ‘coffee’ with the wrong consonants, and a lisp.
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