Wednesday 15 June 2016

I could not live with

any of my siblings. They would drive me crazy very quickly. I am not in the least bit like any of them. 
Brother Cat (next in line) and I are the closest but his taste in music and his love of motorbikes and the like are not my "cup of tea". His reading tastes are different too - but at least he does read when he gets time.  I suspect, if he lived close enough, he would hand over the grandfatherly baby sitting duties. He loves his grandchildren but day long, night long duties are more than he cares for when there are other things to be done - such as household maintenance (not his own - but theirs.) 
Youngest Cat also lives in another state. This is a fortunate state of affairs. I like dogs but I have no desire to live with three. Her interests and mine are so far apart that I don't feel we communicate at all. She doesn't read...the only one of us who doesn't. I suspect that's the problem.
And Middle Cat? Well Middle Cat lives not far from here. She reads but not as much as Brother Cat or me. Her tastes in reading are also entirely different. She occasionally, very occasionally, tries to recommend a book to me. I have tried - and discarded. Life is too short to read things I do not need to read or wish to read. 
The Senior Cat reads  prodigiously. Even when he was in  hospital with that bang on the head he wanted something to read. He has a pile by his chair. Another pile by his bead. There is a third pile on the dressing table. Some of it is  serious non-fiction - philosophy, theology, psychology. There's an autobiography there and a gardening book. 
I am not particularly interested in what the Senior Cat reads. Some of it - yes, we discuss it. I rarely read it all but I will glance at it, read a chapter here and there. I don't have the time to read it all. I am reading other things. He glances at them. He loves language but not linguistics. He never studied a modern language and now remembers little of his Latin - although he probably remembers more than most people have forgotten.
I showed him something I was working on the other day. There was Arabic and Turkish in there - languages I know almost nothing about. He shook his head.
But we could still talk about it. Where was it going? Who was going to  use it? Why? How had the vocabulary been chosen?
I can't do that with any of my siblings. I can't do it with anyone else I know. There are people I might do it with but the one here who might take an intelligent interest would not have time and the others live too far away. 
Sometimes, just sometimes, I wish I had a sibling I could talk to!

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