It was a moment where you leaned in and I pet your head gently, the way that you like -- not the rough play (roughness I keep at appropriate level for your 8.5 pound frame) which I sometimes desire and you had early on learned to accept. Oh, hell, maybe you like both, each in there own time. Perhaps I should not forever reproach myself.
. . . I had pet your head gently, the way you like -- with all the qualifications above noted -- and I asked you out loud, putting well-practiced lilt into my voice, "where does the grace and beauty inside of you come from?"
And immediately I understood your beauty and grace is not inside of you --that I had been over this again and again thinking about the Timeless Way, but clearly not applied it here, and had not made it fully a habit of thought. Rather, it is how you interact with the materiality around you, in you, through you -- whatever fabric of reality with which you have to play (when you are rested and in a good mood; I have seen you with bags under your eyes, jaded to all this damn materiality, self-consequence and noise. Oh George the cat, you and I get each other).
A reminder that what is good is nothing permanent, but an inter-play, and NOT strictly speaking inner-play, as I now see, on a deeper level.
