fall to your knees

from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard

Chapter One: Heaven and Earth in Jest

I used to have a cat, an old fighting tom, who would jump through
the open window by my bed in the middle of the night and land on my chest.
I'd half-awaken. He'd stick his skull under my nose and purr, stinking
of urine and blood. Some nights he kneaded my bare chest with his
front paws, powerfully, arching his back, as if sharpening his claws,
or pummeling a mother for milk. And some mornings I'd wake in daylight
to find my body covered with paw prints in blood; I looked as though I'd been painted with roses.

It was hot, so hot the mirror felt warm. I washed before the
mirror in a daze, my twisted summer sleep still hung about me like sea kelp.
What blood was this, and what roses? It could have been the rose of union, the blood of murder, or the rose of beauty bare and the blood of some unspeakable sacrifice or birth. The sign on my body could have been an emblem or a stain, the keys to the kingdom or the mark of Cain. I never knew. I never knew as I washed,
and the blood streaked, faded, and finally disappeared, whether I'd purified myself or ruined the blood sign of the passover. We wake, if we ever wake at all, to
mystery, rumors of death, beauty, violence. . . . 'Seem like we're
just set down here,' a woman said to me recently, 'and don't nobody
know why.'

These are morning matters, pictures you dream as the final wave heaves
you up on the sand to the bright light and drying air. You remember
pressure, and a curved sleep you rested against, soft, like a scallop in its shell. But the air hardens your skin; you stand; you leave the lighted shore to explore somedim headland, and soon you're lost in the leafy interior, intent, remembering nothing."