Cyrus

Have you ever had an English teacher who forces you to delve into every little bit of symbolism in a piece of work? How the solitary tree in the middle of a field stands for 'the character's sense of alone-ness and need to stand guard over his family...' or something to that extent. Have you also ever just wondered if the tree was just supposed to be there for shade?

My thoughts upon completing this story ran along the lines of, "Ha! Let's see them figure out the symbolism in that!"

...Mostly because I haven't a clue what it's supposed to mean myself. 

Make of it what you will.

Cyrus always wore his backpack. Aside from that, there was never anything unusual about him. He was a tallish blonde boy, with gray-blue eyes, a cheerful face, and a sense of style that was somewhere between a Victorian gentleman and an English professor. The backpack was an old, ratty, black nylon thing with a golden star sewn crookedly on the front pouch, with a zippered pocket on either side, a small pouch for books in front, and one main pouch that fastened with a buckle. He never went anywhere without it, and there was something alive (or very close to being alive) inside it.

No one had ever seen the thing in Cyrus' bag. Not properly, anyway. People heard it from time to time--vague growling, squeaking, and shrieking noises that echoed in a way they shouldn't have--but no one had ever seen what the thing actually looked like. When asked, Cyrus always replied that it appeared exactly the way you would think it would and left it at that. Whether that meant what one would think it meant (or not) is unclear. 

Cyrus brought his backpack and the thing inside it to school on the first day he arrived in my hometown. One of the teachers asked him to put it in his locker, and he refused. The thing itself then demanded, in whatever gargling, roaring, squeaking language that it spoke, to be allowed to stay. The teacher said no more on the matter, and rumor has it that an e-mail was sent around warning all teachers to leave the backpack alone.

I sat with Cyrus at the lunch table and we talked about video games. From time to time Cyrus threw and apple core or one of the less identifiable chunks from the school meatloaf into the bag, and they would disappear with a satisfied smacking sound. I asked him if I could try, and he said I could. I threw in the top bun off my hamburger, and I snuck a quick peek into the mouth of the bag when Cyrus opened it for me. All I could see were two golden pinpoints of light with dark slits down their middles. I asked Cyrus if they were eyes, and he told me they were exactly what I thought they were. I didn't know if that meant yes or no, but I do know that, if they were indeed eyes, the rest of the animal that belonged to them would be far too big to fit inside that bag. 

Cyrus never took off the bag. He would have worn it to his dying day, if he'd ever died, but for whatever reason, he's gone on living for two hundred years now since I met him. I'm long-dead now, of course, but I still see him from time to time, walking down the street in his Victorian/English professor outfit and with the even rattier black backpack with the golden star hung over his shoulder. There is still but one person in the universe who knows what's actually in that bag, and he will never tell anyone for as long as he fails to die (which, I suspect, is forever). 

THE END

Yeah, studyhall. 

Happy Reading!

S.R. Koch

Things from the Shelf--Cats

No, I do not have a stuffed cat on my shelf of natural history. However, I catch the little twerps up there often enough that I think cats are fair game as subjects for a Things from the Shelf post.

Cats are the ultimate enigmas. Even by the time we've explored and cataloged the deepest depths of the ocean, I doubt we'll have completely figured out cats. We've tried, of course, but cats are a species that will always defy understanding for the sheer spite of it.
Of the things we have managed to figure out, the physics of the aerial righting reflex are probably the most studied. We've all seen it at some point or other--some cat will slip and fall headfirst off a roof, only to miraculously twist in midair and land perfectly on its feet. From the standpoint of Newton's first law of physics (an object at rest will stay at rest unless acted on by an external force), it doesn't seem possible from the outset that a cat could do this. There's nothing for them to push against in midair, and there is no apparent external force to cause them to spin. Physicists like Destin from the Youtube channel Smarter Every Day, however, have employed the powers of physics and high-speed cameras to figure that one out.

I cite Destin's video on flipping cats here, because physics are beyond me.

The external force that we see acting on a flipping cat's momentum comes from a combination of inertial momentum and abdominal muscles. A falling cat will divide itself into two axis, centered around the stomach area:

When it begins to fall, it will pull in its front legs and extend its back legs, which decreases its inertia in the front (think of spinning on a swing--pull your legs in, and you spin faster) and increases the inertia in the back, thus giving its abdominal muscles something to push against and causing the front half to spin faster.  Once its front paws are underneath it, it reverses the process; extending the front legs and pulling in the back legs so that it can get its rear paws underneath it:

A common myth is that it's the tail that they use to twist around, but one has only to look at a bobtailed cat to realize that's not true; bobtails pull off the aerial righting reflex as well as any other cat. As a general statement, cats are very well-adapted for making this move. They're very flexible--particularly along the vertebrate--and thus they can make those death-defying twists in midair more easily and absorb more shock upon impact without injury. In fact, cats who fall greater (though still reasonable) distances tend to land in better condition than those who fall only short distances because they have more time to right themselves.

Now, there's more to the enigma of cats than flipping physics. Researching strange qualities of cats, I ran across a widespread theory as to why cats purr that struck me as extremely odd and (from the outset) rather improbable. Most people believe that cats purr to express contentment. From an evolutionary standpoint, that seems a rather useless trait to develop, but some scientists have theorized that the purr is actually employed as a healing mechanism. Seem far-fetched? It kind of is, but let me explain; Everything has a resonant frequency--a pitch at which a system oscillates at maximum amplitude--including bones and muscle tissue. When the resonance of a system is in disharmony, it's called "disease", and scientists have figured out how to restore harmony in a system by matching the natural frequency (a process called "entrainment"). The theory on cat purring is that they utilize a similar process to restore the natural frequencies of their bodies.
The frequency of a cat's purr is somewhere between 27 and 44 hertz, and scientists studying the effects of resonance on bone density have discovered a positive effect of this general frequency range on human bones. Similar studies have been done using ultrasound technology, which uses sound to generate heat to improve circulation and bone density in a human system. Cats may be capable of utilizing the properties of this frequency to stimulate bloodflow and improve circulation in their bodies, thus aiding the healing process and adding to the long-lived myth of the nine-lived cat.
No one knows for sure if this is how cats do it, but it would explain their quick healing capabilities and the veterinary myth that a cat, if left in a room with all its bones, can reassemble itself. Certainly, it piques a good deal of theorizing from curious minds, and maybe one day it will lead to discoveries and technology that could help with ailments such as osteoporosis.

In the meantime, I will leave you to ponder the enigma of cats, and to enjoy the mud and flowers.

Happy reading!

S.R. Koch



Resources:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtWbpyjJqrU (Smarter Every Day)

http://www.alleycat.org/CatBiology

http://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/mysteries/catspurr.html

http://indianapublicmedia.org/amomentofscience/purring-cats/

http://www.svpvril.com/svpnotes/P/PURR,_138874.html

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/TreatingPain/story?id=4047863

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-do-cats-purr/

http://www.newmindrecords.com/scienceharmonics.htm

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/24/why-cats-always-land-on-their-feet-_n_1828748.html

Winter Boredom

Winter breeds boredom. Boredom, for me, tends to breed drawings.

I love action drawings, especially when there appears to be a story behind them. These two are Diddle and Reel, and you'll probably remember them if you read the Centaur Ranch series I put up a while back. For those who didn't, the basic story behind the two of them is this:
The two of them met when Diddle (the human) was sucked into a plot led by his uncle Avon to call a greater demon into the human world. Reel (the centaur), along with four other centaurs, were caught up in the plot as well. In the end, the demon was sent back to where it belonged and Avon sent on a permanent hermitage somewhere off in the mountains, and Diddle and Reel ended up as apprentices under an older centaur by the name of Eric. The book ended there, but my intention is to go further.

These two are going to grow up as apprenticed journeyers. Their profession will be some sort of mix between peacekeepers and explorers, and they'll travel their world bringing news from city to city while exploring and mapping the regions in between. They'll end up getting pulled into political situations all across their world, and have to think or fight their way through each time. Eric, their teacher, is schooling them in everything from cross-country running to cooking to debate to hand-to-hand combat. Their trade was of his invention to begin with, so they're basically the first of their kind.

Of this drawing specifically, I'd say there's something going on, but I don't quite know what. Considering Diddle's personality (mischievous and bold), not to mention his expression and the fact that he appears to be standing guard, I'd say the two of them are doing something they're not supposed to. Reel is a much more nervous character than Diddle, so it wouldn't be overly dangerous. The rope suggests they're setting something up, which smacks of a prank, and their being journeyers out in the middle of nowhere would suggest that the only person they could be playing said prank on is Eric. Where it goes from here, though, is yet to be seen.

So there--my duty as blogger done for the week. My plan is to have another post ready for next Saturday as a makeup for my skipped week last Saturday, and I dearly hope nothing will crop up in between.

To my readers--hang in there, we're almost out of the winter snows, and as always, happy reading!

S.R. Koch