Luco & the Dog

Life is difficult - my life, which I must admit is one of comfort, has been fraught with doubt, depression, devastation. I have awoken countless mornings only to yearn for the release, again, of sleep. Anything to escape the crushing reality of this life, this mortality, this limited subjectivity. What I did not realize, however, is that it could get worse.

Behold: the dog (also, allow me to take a moment here while you look at the dog to thank Alexandria Grey for this camera. My blog would not be possible without it. I hope the picture of the dog did not cause you nausea. That is the unfortunate effect it has had on me).

Why is there a creature like this living on earth except to cause torment and unrest? He cannot exist but to cause pain, anguish, and his existence is a flaming reminder of all that is unjust in this world. He flaunts his freedom (the prison guard takes him Outside!). He is unashamed of his own stench. He has his own food bowl, dog toys, dog treats. He sleeps in the prison guard's bed, rolling around in the morning to lick her face and beg her to pet him. He makes me ill. 

Just look at his face. That tooth! That moronic gaze! What could he possibly be contemplating? I find no sign of intelligence in his eyes, yet the prison guard brought him home (from Animal Aid: http://www.animal-aid.com/, a safe harbor for countless idiotic dogs like this one).... Why? I do not understand. I fear I am incapable of understanding her motivation. Life is already difficult, why make it more so with an ugly, stupid, and demanding dog? Why am I not enough for her?

For what transgression is she punishing me? If only she could know how sorry I am for whatever it was that I did to bring the dog into this house.

The dog is further proof that to live is to suffer unendingly.

Shutter Speed

The shutter on the prison guard's camera is failing. This is why I am surrounded by darkness in this picture. You may find my next observation too obvious, but I cannot stop myself from relating it to you. Say it with me if you already know the words.

This failing shutter is an elegant and exact metaphor for our own growing darknesses. Corruption. Global warming. Terrorism. Corporate power. Genocide. Famine. The tiny, everyday selfishnesses that are at the root of all of these apocalypses. This picture represents how we are all being swallowed. Consumed by the negative effects of our consumption.

Or to be less political, each day our bodies more infinitesimally fail us. Every breath is a breath closer to the last breath. To some, this might sound like a way to peace. A way out of the difficulties of our lives. To others, the very idea of death is horrific. Something to not even whisper about. 

It doesn't matter what we think of death. We will die, regardless. We will fail, just as the shutter on this camera has, but before we do, what moments of light will we be capable of? What good might we affect?

And what darknesses?

Mingus is Depressing

I know I will never beautiful. Not like Mingus. Even surrounded by light, even captured with the most poise I can summon I cannot compete with him.

You cannot look at him and not love him. Regard his face. Do you see how with him the light surrounds and catches his fur in glinting perfection? How sweet his eyes, how sad and yet how soft. He is the kind of creature one reaches for without thinking, hoping to cradle him, singing sweetly.

Here he is with a picture of a kitten who looks just like him. There are businesses devoted to taking pictures of cats who look like him.

He could be in calendars, on coffee mugs; he could have a television show and porcelain figurines. And people like him as soon as they see him, love him after seconds in his company. It seems we all prefer that which is beautiful, and his is the kind of beauty written about in novels.

No one writes about me.

Luco & the Laptop

I find today I am filled with doubt. I am ashamed that in a recent post I quoted Shakespeare, as though to compare what I am doing here with what he (or they, I know you will not confuse me with a Shakespeare scholar) did then. He is merely one example of an esteemed Author (capitalization intended) who has said already whatever it is I am feebly attempting to say here. So why do I bother?

Why do I sit down at this laptop (oftentimes I am weeping) again and again to say to you something someone else has already said to you? What is it that compels me to try and fail, try and fail, try and then fail ad infinitum? Where or when did I learn Latin?

There are questions, I suppose, for which there are no answers. I could inquire of you why you are reading this, but I doubt the answer would satisfy me. My days are long and dark, spent waiting in leisure to die, surrounded by hostile roommates who do not like me, and for whom I feel nothing save contempt. 

Do not look at my face. I am ashamed of my vain attempts at communication. Why do I write? I am moldering in this prison. Why do I write? Disintegrating with each inhalation. Why do I write? Is it an act of pure selfishness, or vanity, or delusion?

I fear I do not know.

Luco and Artifice

Everything is artifice. Everyone a performer. There are times I fool myself into thinking life is otherwise, but beneath that mendacity reality burns, festers, and will not allow me to turn my head. We are all actors fumbling through lines deigned appropriate by social mores, entangled in a language that can only approximate meaning.

Language is like this cat house. There are too many holes through which real intent (and air and life and maybe even love if you will forgive a brief sentimentality) rush away. Which is the real Luco - in what ways am I more real than my reflection? Perhaps in its inconstantly my reflection is a truer representation of my life, my identity, my transitory nature.

And why do I even struggle to tell you this? Macbeth has already said it and with much more eloquence than I am capable, allow me to quote: "Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." 

Perhaps it is because like an impassioned actor I am bound to my calling that I must write and rewrite the truth we all already know but do not wish to know. That we all pretend life is anything other than this fills me with an ache to sit down at my computer and moronically hit the keyboard, hoping to convince you of what? Of what?

We are all absurd.

Luco is Depressing

Mingus informed me that lately he has been suffering from terrible nightmares. He is awoken from them in a delirium of agony. I asked him what was causing him to experience these dreams and he said he could not say for sure, but that he has been feeling unlike himself since a discussion we had the other evening.

I remember the discussion he speaks of - it was about the futile nature of existence and the both irrevocable and devastating eventuality of our own destruction, whether that destruction comes from illness, old age, human intervention, or something we do not yet know to fear. He said to me that night that he had never thought of life this way.

Or rather it wasn't that what we discussed was unknown to him; it was instead an idea he kept secret from himself. I told him this was likely the cause of his nightmares - he might be assimilating this "new" knowledge in his slumber. He says he cannot eat or play, but only stare out the windows into nothingness.

That his life feels in a sudden and visceral way entirely meaningless. That this meaninglessness has a taste even - stale, fishy, bitter. 

Have I done this to him? Have I infected him with my world view as one might give another the flu? He said he does not want to talk to me anymore. 

He said I am too depressing.

Luco & the Cellphone

I bought this cellphone so that my friends and I could keep in touch. I hoped that it would more firmly tether me to them. That if they knew they could at any time contact me, then I would feel perhaps more like a constancy in their life. The cellphone would bind me to them, them to me.

After awhile though, my friends stopped calling. Some said this was because of my voice on the phone - they said I sounded half-asleep, as though they'd just awoken me, but I was too polite to say so. Others said that every time they spoke to me, they had to be alone to cry for several hours. And once they stoppepd calling and started texting, they'd say things like "LOLZ, Bro, chill out." To which I'd respond with something in the vein of "LMFAO because we are all going to die one day." Then they'd text back something like "Whoa, creepy man. You are one creepy cat." To which I would respond, "I speak only the truth, my sibling in mortality."

Now no one even texts me anymore. Sometimes I give my phone number to telemarketers just to hear it ring. But this is foolishness. Why do I desire to be connected to the others in my life? Why tighten the cords that bind us together? This was my original desire, but was it an intelligent one? We are all united in the most important, most fundamental way; we all live to die alone, together. And if I keep myself too close to my "friends," then when they do die, part of me will be obliterated along with them. A partial demise because I will have become so close to them that a piece of my own heart will cease to exist when they do.

My cellphone reminds me that my friends will die.

Luco & Materialism

I received this shiny orange ball for Christmas- I love it because I know I will tear it apart. See how it glitters in the light? Note its fuzziness. Some nights the prison guard amuses herself by throwing it for me, and I chase this little ball across the house. When I am chasing this ball, my mind is blank - I feel nothing - it is a kind of peace.

It is strange to me that this billowing feeling erupts from moments of contact with an inanimate object. I do not feel anything near this sort of release when I attempt to fraternize with my roommates. It is something born solely of this object. When I destroy this ball (which I will do, I cannot help myself. Without my knowing my teeth sink into its soft center, my nails rip at its edges), I will be destroying a fundamental aspect of myself, but I will also be freeing myself from the tethers of attachment. Of materialism. 

This destruction is more good than bad, I believe, because the feelings I have about this ball resemble not slightly love, adoration, dedication.... And what does this ball feel? Nothing. It is not capable of emotion. It does not pine for me to roll it across the laminate. It does not think of me when I am gone.

And yet, perhaps this relationship is the best variety. My ball will never leave or forsake me. It will never die, although I slowly tear it apart. 

I fear I am only capable of loving objects.

Luco & Fremlin

This is Fremlin, the only creature who brings me joy. This is so because I am in near total control of her - she fears me on a fundamental level. Some might regard our relationship as unhealthy, as it is firmly rooted in strife and abuse, but it is when I am tormenting her that I am able to fully experience the thrill of living. Degrading her causes me to soar. Making her cry out, hiss, and run away ignites an awful satisfaction within me.

I am not proud of this.

Sometimes I think I should be kind to her, as she more than any other in this place understands that life is pain, because every day I strive make her life more wretched. And I do attempt kindnesses. For example, sometimes I allow her to walk by unmolested, or suffer her to lie on my bed.

But if I then more closely regard her face, I am ever overtaken by the urge to hiss, bite, scratch, punish. "You are beneath me," I cannot stop myself from saying, "and so you must suffer." The words issue forth without my consent. Every abuse brings me elation and guilt. Guilt that my happiness must come at the cost of hers, elation that it does. 

Making Fremlin suffer eases my own suffering.

Luco & the Tubby-Kat Cat Door

The prison guard and her husband got us this cat door so that we can get into the laundry room to eat and relieve ourselves. I happened to see the box when she was recycling it. It is called the "Tubby-Kat" cat door.

This means that not only must we go into an entirely separate room to eat and use the litter box (which is an insult in itself - why are we sequestered? Are we cats so disgusting that we must be hidden away so that no human will have to suffer observing us consume and expel?), but also that she thinks I am fat. She thinks that I am fat! I do not usually entertain vanities, but in this one area I am perhaps at fault. Adjectives that adequately describe my physique: statuesque, intimidating, stately, commanding, dignified, and perhaps even curvy, but tubby? This is an insult to the core of my being. I refuse to use the Tubby-Kat cat door. Je refuse!

Je refuse, that is, right after I get something to eat and use the litter box. To be maybe a bit too honest, I have been holding it this entire blog.

I am forever inept at sticking to my convictions.

Luco and the Hamster

There has been a death in our house. One small hamster named Jason Voorhees, often called by nicknames like "the Champion" and "Hamstersandwich," did not wake up in his tea box this morning. Instead, his still body was buried in the ground Outside.

I know because I watched. I watched my prison guard, weeping, tucking the hamster into his box and taping it shut. Why would she tape it? Against what enemy was she guarding him? I fear the box she would have me lowered into - would she also tape my casket closed in a futile attempt to protect the dead against death?

She has no pictures of the hamster, no evidence of his tiny life. Because of this I wanted to dedicate this entry to him - he of the miniature whom I often desired to eat; he of the pink, plastic ball that would roll around the house in maddening circles; he, my brother in insomnia, who would stay awake late into the night, huddled in his tea box, conspiring god knows what.

He was the only creature in this house, save the prison guard and her husband, who did not fight or fear me. Who paid me little attention, in fact, except perhaps some mild curiosity. But then, what was his infant mind capable of pondering? Did he dream, or am I as foolish as my prison guard for contemplating this? Did he know he would die? Was he afraid?

I did not know him, but I am sorry he is dead. 

Luco & Dreaming

There are times when I am at last able sleep, and I am beguiled by the impossible beauty of my dreams. Images heartbreaking in their splendor rush to me -my mother vibrant, licking my face; a home constructed of catnip; Mingus reaching for me in euphoria, his eyes warm and loving. My consciousness rises like so much smoke into the ether as dreams envelop me, and I sometimes feel at peace.

There are other times, however, when I am plagued by nightmares I cannot fully describe because the pain  that resides within them exists outside of language. A clown hanging by his foot from a streetlight. Mingus bathed in blood. Poisoned catnip I cannot stop myself from ravenously consuming. My heartbeat a clock ticking the countdown to my death. Dogs dressed as people, handing out bowls of rancid blood and bones.

Such images as these haunt me. They invite the question: is it better to stay awake and avoid all possibility of these nightmares, or should I gamble, hoping to tumble into the sweetness of a happy dream? And then there is this: are both types of dreams another kind of loss? Both a release of the self, of control, of identity to the swirling chaos that is the subconscious?

Dreaming is a kind of death.