Purrrleasure

I was lying in bed this morning reading and Diego my tabby cat jumped up beside me, rolled over and was in exctacy as I rubbed his tummy. 99% of Diego's life consists of pleasure, napping, climbing trees, sniffing plants, eating, being cuddled (the other 1% is when neighbourhood cats invade his house and he has to tell them to piss off).

Last week I was trying to explain to someone how much pleasure I get from talking photos. Much of the pleasure is from how uncontrolled it is. The camera I use is famed for basically being quite crap. They might come out or not, it might be delicious deep colours or look like a faded Monet, it might superimpose 3 different images onto the same frame or the entire roll might be blank. I carry my camera in my bag or the pocket of my coat in winter and whenever I see something of interest, the light in the sky, a piece of graffiti I can take out the camera and attempt to capture it. Somehow because I have my camera I look more closely at the world and enjoy it more. Getting a roll processed is like a Christmas present. It activates my inner purr. But I've been deprived of my camera for over 3 months. It got broken in NY (on the ferry to Ellis Island) and I was afraid to try and get it fixed because I thought I'd be told the bad news that it couldn't be fixed and I couldn't afford a new one.

There deprived of pleasure for months and months for no good reason at all except fear. We just don't have enough pleasure in life! We deprive ourselves of ice creams, a quick walk in a park instead of hurrying directly to do errands, we don't slow down to smell the roses blooming near the bus stop, we don't sit in our gardens if we have them instead we do more housework, we fail to cook our favourite meals, we get cheap supermarket soap instead of splashing out an outrageous £1.45 for Australian Organics soap, we have lovely rose sented body lotian but do we use it? Like heck! Pleasure is not expensive normally it costs in time not money. So sit in that patch of sun, buy something which will give you pleasure, use what you have but have been saving for best.*

Resources

Madam Gena
Watch a cat

* One of my mother's friend's once said to me 'I don't have anything for best because I don't want my husband's next wife to enjoy it!'.

Her mother had died young and everything she'd kept for best was used by her step mother.