Grendel and Me June '06

Grendel

And

Me

I was talking to Grendel the other day and telling him how pleasant it was to be working at the computer, corresponding with friends, while the breezes outside swirled the scent of lilacs into our study. The slider was wide open and the sky was blue with crystalline clouds lazily drifting. He wasn’t very impressed. Not with the weather, not with my self proclaimed communication skills, or the scents of summer.

“Why you humans spend so much time signaling back and forth amazes me, he stared, “When all the essential information can be sprayed on a bush.”

I wish you weren’t so olfactorily impaired,” he continued. “You have no idea how all that is essential can be conveyed in a good spraying. I can mull over a good scent for four or five minutes and still find something I missed the first time around. To me it’s like a perfumed love letter.”

“Where’s the perfume in that stupid monitor?” he blinked, licking his chops like he’d just made an impressive point.

“I talk to my friends about diving under the sea,” I said a little defensively.

He smirked. The little bugger actually smirked out, “And you call yourselves intelligent? You should take a lesson from cats. Stay out of the water. If you stayed out of the sea you wouldn’t have to learn thousands of words to describe everything that is down there, though I must confess I do like the tuna you bring home in those little cans.”

“Well we humans like to multiply our experiences by exchanging them with others. It makes us feel closer to others. Don’t you ever want to feel closer to others?” I asked, sure I had scored a big point.

“Puhleeze, I’m a cat,” he sighed. So much for my big point.

I was about to get into the need to need others when I noticed that his eyes were getting heavy and his head sagging. Within seconds he was fast asleep and oblivious to everything around us. Cats do not like long Chautauquas.

Here upon I began thinking of our newsletter and how much it would benefit if more of us would contribute a little copy. Short pieces from different perspectives would do much in helping define who we are and the commononalities that bind us together. It doesn’t have to be long or profound, just an opinion on a piece of dive gear, a resort, a diveboat to avoid, a divemaster that made your day. Perhaps a discovery of a new lager! Share the info.

If you have jitters about writing send me your piece and I would be happy to edit it or even patch it up a bit before sending it off to the news letter. It would be nice for more of us to spray the bushes.