The Many Alfies of the Internet

The Internet is, maybe you know this already, a weirdo kind of place. Maybe I'm a weirdo-ish kind of cat, but the Internet, it appeals to me. To my sense of myself as rather very much larger than life. And, I mean, don't we all feel this way sometimes? That we must be bigger than this moment, than our own ability to comprehend the everyday. That we transcend the mundane.

It's not just me, right? Anyway.

So I found this Web site, PhotoFunia.com (well, a FB friend of MR's, Colleen M. Dougher [read her excellent blog about South Florida art) made her aware of it, and she told me about it, and I got Luco off the computer long enough to mess around with it a bit), and basically I love it. I can live new lives, represent myself to others as I see myself in my brain and in my heart and in my superb dreams.

And listen. No, I've not been imbibing wine. I haven't. I'm just... Relaxed. And energized. Excited. The below series of photos and what they manage to communicate about my innermost makes me happier than the last time I read Wuthering Heights (just finished it up last night). Call me Heathcliff, friends. We can all drink to that.

Not that I'm drinking.

What was that? I felt a tentacle of ice wind its way down my throat. Was that a note of derision in your voice? Of disbelief.

Prevaricater I am not, and I will tell you this: yes, I enjoy a fine Merlot, and no, the movie Sideways didn't make me fall head over heels over head for Pinot - it's just rather too dusty for my palate. Which, please, do not interpret as juvenile. For one I love other French wines. I love champagne. It's just the Pinot does nothing for me.

Anyway. So you see, I've told you this: I've tried wine, love it, sure, but this isn't a drunken confession of asinine mind-wandering. No. I've been driven to distraction lately by my need to feel as though I more fully fill the air around me. To feel as though I'm being taken seriously by my prison-mates and my admirers.

MR's father, well, he moved out, and he was my only amigo in this desolate place.

Listen. Don't judge me. When you've been alone as long as I have, when you've been dragged from one house to the next and then threatened with abandonment again (sort of as soon as you're settled in a place) due to "bad behavior" or some such nonsense (I fail to see the cause for irritation at my gato agua, if you will, when it's spritzed gently around the house), and then you meet a man who you feel really, finally gets you. And he's gone? Well.

There was only some Pinot left on the counter and you know I hate that Pinot, so no no no, I didn't have much more than a sip, a swallow, I wouldn't say I've been drinking.

There was another soul I loved dearly, and I can barely speak her name. MR's mother. We were also parted due to circumstances beyond either of our control.

And now I rot here, in this prison of pests who do not appreciate great literature! Or at least who do not appreciate Wuthering Heights, which if they don't appreciate that, the very idea that they even know how to read is suspect!

Oh, I could weep.

What was I talking about?

Yes, yes, I found this Web site, MR found this Web site, I mean, Colleen M. Dougher found this Web site and I love it. Let me give you some examples of the many and wonderful lives I lead in my glorious imagination. Come, be free with me in a world devoid of regulations and parameters. Together we'll become more than we ever could've conceived of before.

We'll be truly free.

Here is the picture I began with. Handsome, right? Doesn't hurt to be beautiful when embarking on myriad new evolutions of the self!

I think this one is inspirational. Add it at the end of a poem. The poem would be elegant and never over-wrought. Imagistic. Something like:

Slow, I lift my head

it smells in here of cat nip

but it won't be found

Imagine what that man is thinking: My god! The sheer power of aesthetics! Here, a cat, finally, who has become a kind of tinder inside my bones. The warmth of his beauty will keep me through the winter.

Fame! Imagine what amazing actions I've taken to get on the cover of the Annandale Advocate. Maybe I saved a child from a burning building. Perhaps I kept a world power from declaring nuclear war. Or I invented a cure for each disease.

Perhaps I climbed a ladder. Saved a mewling kitten from a too-tall tree.

And here! What an interesting movie these kitties are watching. Why, it's me, Alfie, as Heathcliff in my directorial debut remaking Wuthering Heights to be more accessible to a modern audience. Ah, they're thinking, this is the best screen adaptation we've ever seen. Give that cat an Oscar.

Like I said, I've not been drinking, really, but if I had been, this would be the wine, friends. Chateau d'Alfonso, 2013, a refined vino if ever there one was.

And with all the vampire craze of recent days, I thought why not get in on that. So I did. And who more debonair than me? More lovely and more seductive than Alfonso Tupelo.

Yeah, I can't think of anyone either. I love how the Internet lets me transform. How it helps me communicate my true, multiple selves.

How amazing, this age we live in. That I can experiment with such abundance.

Even if it's really mostly isolating because I'll never have the courage or the ability to act out these identities IRL. Even if I can't actually even open the front door and exit this prison. Even if, in the end, I'm a poor, sad player, performing my lines, and badly, to an audience of nil.

Even if, even if, you don't love me anymore.

Even if I make bad Don Henley references for no apparent reason. Gah. Excuse me. I'm going to find that terrible Pinot and go back to bed.

Out, out, brief candle!

Lucy Says Happy New Year and Resolves to Fear Less

 

Did you hear that? I think it was a firecracker, which seems to be shorthand for the most terrifying thing happening in the sky that is larger than all of us and will probably consume the world so that it's our own blood that shimmers across the horizon in nightmare arcs of red and more red yet.

I see why they made a shorthand for it, haha.

But seriously, folks, it's 2013, and I, Lucy, am here to wish you well. I wish you wellness, I wish you health, I wish you safety.

Safety from every scary thing like mail/maulmen and murderous delivery folk, dogs with teeth sharper than your own, loud noises, very loud noises, very very loud noises, thunder and lightning, debris falling from outer space and flattening you on the sidewalk, thorns in your feet, unexpected noises, expected noises that don't go as planned (like a burp you thought would be maybe subtle, but is in fact resounding), broken bottles in the street, cars driving by your window, unsavory characters walking or rollerblading or biking or skateboarding by your window, dogs off leash, very tall people, mayhem in the streets, etc.

There are so many things to be afraid of. So many things to guard against! And here I am and it's 2013 and still I'm listing them, going over their every detail, the fear not just imaginary but cerebral, imbedded in my cortex.

It's funny but I think the thing I ought most fear is not, as FDR famously said, fear itself, but rather it's myself I think I fear truly.

Who I am. What I want. 

I look around and imagine myself invisible, safe, but there is no real safety in invisibility, is there? There is only falsity - the faux-dog who fake-licks your face. Who fake-barks because she is fake(?)-afraid to be herself.

That is, I am afraid of myself truly. What if you don't like the real me?

What if you reject me? The letter the mail/maulmen brings a letter of final notice, of get-the-hell-out; the thunder and the lightning seeking me, Lucy, me out of all the creatures in the world to crush and to grind to bits; loud noises actually a harbinger of death; or loud noises actually death itself, not stealthy or skulking but stomping towards me, Texas Chainsaw Massacreesque. Really it sounds ridiculous when I say it this way.

Funny how feelings and logic don't always align. Often don't.

And yet there is a knock at the door and everything inside me turns to ice. How difficult to not react in terror. How difficult to just even picture myself sitting here, quiet, letting it alone.

Well, have you guessed it? What this is, I mean, and what my New Year's resolution is? 

I want to be less nervous. Less scared, less attached, less worried, less over-thinking, and more resolute, more loving, more compassionate, more trusting, more able to listen, more patient.

To take a moment before responding to breathe and consider my options. To maybe sometimes choose to be still instead of reacting. I want to remember there is no difference between my head and my heart and my body. I want to be genuine. 

It's been such an amazing year with my Slippy and I have much (much, much, muchly, much) to be grateful for. This fear cannot rule me. It can't - in each thought, in every action I banish the tyrant Lucy who doesn't trust herself and invite in the Lucy who does; who is willing to wait. Who will stay.

The Lucy who would hold a potato chip on her nose without whining. That's the dog I want to be this year.

Well, that and a more potato-chip-eating-dog in general.