Secret Meena (aka Fremlin)

I feel sometimes like a secret.

A cat can be a secret, can't she? And what am I if not that, loitering in doorways, scratching at windows I'd be too afraid to leap out of. I prowl the hallways at night, unable to keep myself from wailing I am lost, I am lost.

What compels this? What clockwork in my heart grinds to life?

A secret, abandoned. Like four and twenty blackbirds I exist just below the surface of surveillance. I coast, I hum, I caterwaul (and damn my feral lungs for their clamor); and am unnoticed.
 

So I might say I love you, Christmas tree, I love you and by this mean nothing, for who hears but the glitter approximating snowflakes dusted across my forehead? Who notices besides the artificial village?

I'm the maid in the garden, aren't I? And the blackbirds bear down on me.

But why should I seek to quiet this swelling feeling? This expansiveness barely contained by, let's say, pie crust (if you don't mind my fascination with a nursery rhyme - it's just so gruesome, so cruel - an apt, if brutal, metaphor for injustice eternal).

It seems to me I ought to feel hopelessly alone. And I do, but I don't. Perhaps just not hopelessly so. I do sometimes feel abandoned, yes, and I began this post by informing you a cat can be  a secret.

But here I am also an apex. Of what I'm uncertain, but of something. It bubbles within me. A potential. And in streaks the hope, out the lessness.

 

I am small or I am large and yet it persists regardless. Happy Christmas, happy Hanukkah, happy Kwanza. Happy happy happy happy. A word maybe stranger than we understand. Originally it meant something more like lucky.

Am I lucky? Am I abandoned or am I found or am I both or neither? Does it matter what I call myself when I stalk the darkness? Who is this moaning creature who has become unmoored within herself? 

Let the wildness roam. Let the feral speak. Let it pour from my lips like breath.

I will find solace here in this fake village. I'll move in, make do.

And you can visit. Ask me why I've changed my name, my home town.

You can bring tea. You can sit with me here. Do something with this pocket full of rye. And find the king and find the queen and save the poor maid - me? - who, like you, toils under the falsehood she is anything other than as artificial as this newly painted snow.

And yet we are something far more than lucky; the fact that we even in this moment exist is extraordinary. How rare we are, and how infinite. How alone and how interconnected. We thrash ourselves to insomniac frenzies and feel desolate, but these tantrums are fractals of experience - my grasping is your pulling is my scaling is your falling is my attenuating body is your breadth is my love is your love is my love is your love is existence repeated in winding strands alike to glinting tinsel on a tree.

And whether my nose is snatched off in the beak of a blackbird, I know you and I are both flecks of gold and silver. Transient. Illogical. Wild.

We are each a kind of crescendo.

 

Luco d'Hiver

There are some who scoff at the holidays, but please, count me no longer among their number. Oh, not that I have become tinsel-brained, but it seems to me there is a certain potential existent within holiday traditions.

Thanksgiving. Exuberantly dead turkey. Cranberry sauce and stuffing and more cranberry sauce; green bean casserole the dogs ogle with eyes big as tea cups. Pies and pudding and homemade whipped cream. And no prison guard this year - she traveled for the holiday to some other dimension of time called South Carolina.

I jest. South Carolina is a place, I am sure, that actually exists within this dimension. It is merely a truism that I have difficult imagining any place save this prison. I might read of faraway locales but to me they are dreams. Vast ephemeral kingdoms; entire Carolinas of bejeweled mountains, oceans, forests shadowed by a haze of disbelief.

I digress.

There are some who scoff, etcetera, etcetera, and I who is made rageful no lenger by les fêtes d'hiver. Please do not become fussy; we are moving from Middle English to French and back to English - such is the quivering sort of joy that takes hold my heart.

We are a culture of excess, a world, even, of excess. Where one has not "made it" until certain measures are met, but then, how lovely these brief weeks where we might think of other things. It is the moral of every holiday story that we should care for each other, not material objects, and yes, I see you rolling those beautiful eyes of yours, most everyone knows this, and knowing it does nothing change; however!

There is in that seedling inchoate transformation.

And what better metaphor, reader, than a seedling shooting its green-self past and through dark soil, past and through doubt and fear, even past and through my personification of a seedling; ridiculous, miraculous.

The prison guard many Carolinas away, dogs' mouths saliva thick, glowing incandescent lights in green, blue, red, yellow. Lines of people, of course, in malls and big box stores, and the sadness of that truth; its smallness, the meanness in their eyes.

I saw a video of shoppers at a Wal-Mart fighting each other for new phones of some sort. What is it about a steep discount (or even semi-deep, subtle-deep, pseudo-deep) that whirls brains to frenzy? That quickens ferocity? 

And why did this video not send me to bed for days? Why did it not compel me to despair?

I cannot say except to say this: the seedling growing green, wild, shooting roots like spider webbing; dreams I have of fragmenting vision; blacknesses and whitenesses that fill and fill and fill me to bursting; a shade of purple so pale as to be nearly white; the spinning of my own treacherous heart at the hope for connection; the way I am moved to tears that you, reader, persist in reading this, my ranting, my idiocy.

The feeling I have that although I cannot push a pin into that which makes my life meaningful; despite the fact that there is no logical fact I can name; there is not biological evidence I can display; I am regardless a kind of cup and the cup that I am is one that is full to the brim and over-filling, running over, gathering speed and charging through the dark into the greater darkness inside of which we are all cradled.

I need see only the barest echo of starlight and I am transported. This, reader, is where we are, and what an unspeakable joy that fills me.

What abiding sadness. To know you and not. Hold you and not. Communicate and not. And yet, the fact that we have the ability to try and to fail and to try and to fail; the potential to meet, finally, that-which-is-of-us; that this potential hums in our quiescent bodies; this gratifies me.

It lets me look up into vast skies of every color. Allows me to feel love.

And, okay, to try to stay on track here, reader, I feel these things in les fêtes d'hiver. It is true. In all of them. Even in our distressingly consumerist culture there is, at the very heart of everything, a single drop of the immensity of life. Of joy. 

Of every whirring thing springing to life. Germination. That which is itself and also its opposite. Burgeoning. Time lapse videos of flowers unfurling. The infinity of stars that crowd the sky. Our own bodies: fractals. 

And you reading this. Sipping coffee. Checking your phone. The infinite within you.

Everything else: artifice.

Guest Blog: Banjo really, really likes Magic Shell Ice Cream Topping

Hello! I'm a dog that's a visitor by the name of Banjo and I visit to see Mr. Pawsley Slipperson who has gotten his advanced degrees already like a PhD which he had a 2.0 - not a very good GPA - but still a dog with a PhD he inspires me!

And Scarecrow Lucy Lu who is so bold and confident wages war on every stupid thing that tries to wrest from her stuff like her house and her food bowl. I'm impressed, yanno, and hope to be like her some day even if she doesn't have a PhD like Slippy does but if she did I bet if she applied herself she'd get a good GPA like at least a 3.0 or a 4.0!

For my life what I like to do is say hi to dogs and touch noses and be a really nice guy with puppies and older dogs too. I want all the dogs to break from their shells like their shells were made of that delicious Magic Shell which I can only have the nonchocolate flavors like cupcake and  Dr. Pepper and Cherry because chocolate makes dogs die I think from bursting inside from all the too good tastes of intensity and extreme satisfaction.

I also like small trees!

Sometimes Slippy and Lucy ask me if I'm lonely living alone unless I'm on my way to see them and then I barf in the car and I tell them the same thing which is this thing that I'll tell you too, okay?

Maybe sometimes I'm lonely, but I feel this sibilation filling my belly and it makes me know know know know know know there's something going on inside me something maybe holy? Like I've got a corner of the universe here in my gut and it stirs me, moves me, effervesces me to sleep when I fall asleep each night in the darkened room of my greatest jubilance. Which is to say if I recall what I was saying before I got something inside me joyful like Orange Crush Magic Shell. It fizzes!

And it burns and makes me move faster and faster through the back door to the porch and back inside and through the back door to the porch and back inside and through the back door because life to me is a jumbled whirlwind of desire: yes please pet me I want that rawhide it's lunch time I need you closer to me where are my people look a butterfly to eat and here I am now sudden with Slip and Luce and we together make something even more shining than me alone but that doesn't make me alone and my solitary whirring any less intense.

When we're together it's like getting all the flavors of the Magic Shell even the chocolate ones and eating it doesn't kill us instead it bursts our hearts in distinct fragments of organ and tissue but smelling sweet like caramel soft tasting in our mouths rowing us closer to the center of the sun rocket propulsion and I'm there and I'm there and so are they it's great to be holding hands with them because look how wonderful life can be!

It can be so wonderful.

The Dogs' Vacation or Les Chiens des Vacances

It's the summer and we want to travel. We want to see the world and we want to see it now in a car that could take us places without flying because probably planes would be very scary oh hello this is Slippy talking if you didn't realize that!

And I'm Lucy, the Scarecrow, Hater-of-all-Delivery-People. Where did we get these incredible chairs you ask? And where, exactly, do we think we're going?

I want to go to to Iceland and also fishing in Maine I would like to drive to India and also to Berlin I want to see people who are happy doing things they do in life and I want to learn other languages like French maybe and I want Luco to not come because he would be in the parlance of our times a wet blanket yes that is a Big Lebowski reference I just watched it and I love that movie like my golden heart shining in the afternoon sun.

Really we aren't going anywhere, however. I imagine you've already gathered this, reader, from the fundamental fact that these car seats (they are actually van seats if you'll excuse my being technical) are at present located in the living room.

But I think that doesn't mean we can't imagine we're going someplace like I'd go to Georgia and New York and eat barbeque and street food like falafal and roasted pecans and you and I Lucy Lucy could have a wonderful time of a vacation and think beautiful things about each other like I'd say you are a great driver, Lucy! So steady on the road and never getting us into accidents! You're really good driving lulls me into a sleep where our bodies entwine in persimmon fireworks of salted meatiness and we shimmer on horizons of hotdogs and juiceboxes for an eternity together which is to say I love you love you!

These seats are comfortable, I'll grant you that, Monsieur Pawsley. And my dreams are rather alike to yours. Although mine also involve us chasing mailmen down sweltering interstates and shooting their mail trucks up with high density explosives. Would we snack on a mailbag or two? Probably.

And in my dreams, Slipper, you are there with me, which is to say (resignedly?) I probably love you too.

I know that word resignedly and I need you need you need you to take it back and rephrase please or I won't let you come with my on the way to Colorado and skiing in the Rocky Mountains is most likely if we also inter-tube down a whitewater river and then I'm off to California to savor the flavor of the finest of the dogs' wines and if you are resigned then you can't come with me I want your heart smoldering like those dynamites how you said with the mailman!

Also how can it be resignedly when I see your eyes burning behind my eyelids as I slip and fall into the sweetest deepest slumber of my life cuddling next to you always near you tasting your breath that's how close you are and in my dreams we're already on our way to the tree-lined streets of Boston and we're already on our way to Paris and Mexico City and we're down in Torres del Paine National Park hiking and finding lovely flowers tasting their petals together drinking tamarind soda and laughing at each other in sudden and ferocious joy.

And also take back probably and say definitely without a doubt for surely sure with zero hesitation.

I need time to be sure I feel the same way, Pawsley. I'm not blowing you off. It's just. I've been too often hurt, you know? Why do you think I'm so paranoid about everything? I had a rough puppyhood, to put it mildly, and I'm not trying to be a victim here, but you need to understand that these things take time.

Basically what I'm saying is that at this point, I'm really only ready for a pretend vacation with you. I'm not about to dump all my dog treats and food bowl and dogs' clothing into a bag and jump into the van with you to travel god-knows-where. I'm just not, okay? Try to respect my trepidation. My feelings.

Think about it from my perspective. I can't tolerate further demolition to my heart. Interstellar blasts of pain and rejection. Let's take our time, okay?

How about we make believe we're on our way to Miami, eh? For a day trip?

I can't have only half of you I already gave you my whole heart I'll wait until you're ready but I don't like it I don't like it I don't like it I would never hurt you like biting into the soft flesh of a lizard's belly I would never could never oh not to you my Lucy Lu.

You sing in my heart you sing me to sleep with your lullabies of rage sure but also with your lullabies of compassion which I know is a well inside you bubbling over I know this and I can't not love you and your face your sharp pointed nose.

Let's just take it one day at a time, okay?

Okay but only because I want your all-the-days regardless.

This is going to be one of those long, awkward vacations, isn't it?

Please Meet Cousin Baby Jamie

I'm a doggy and I have a name and that name for me is Jamie. I'm a visiting dog of MR's family. These other dogs here, they call me Baby Jamie, but I'm either their age or older, so it's not really fair that they call me that; like they think I'm a baby, but I'm not. Have you ever had someone say something to you which is a thing that you're not, but they say you are anyway? That's what it's like for me, Baby Jamie, I mean: Jamie.

I would like to change my name to The Stud Jamie, but when I suggested that, they all (everyone!) laughed and chortled and basically broke my heart with their derision and my own misery which erupted like a disgusting boil.

Which isn't to say I cried. As I said earlier, I am not baby. I mean, I'm not. Look at my adult face. Look at these grownup, dewy eyes. I'm cousin Jamie. I'm a force of nature.

This is me Slipper saying hellooo because here you are meeting Baby Jamie the babyiest of all babies in babyville who sleeps with a blankie and a teddy bear and who snuggles and cuddles and coos his baby baby good mornings every morning afternoon night and in between times when his face scrunches up into a baby smile and a baby scowl he loves all hugs! Because he's a baby!

And like a baby here he is letting me eat all the snacks because I'm bigger and faster and more grown up in the way an adult is grown and can get to more food maybe I should've given it to him so he can get bigger and stronger but I was hungry when I was here in this moment in time and I couldn't imagine not chomping down on those little bison bits the meat pellets of deliciousness that I chew.

I'll let you talk to Jamie for the rest of this Internet post but remember I said hello to you and that I love you!

He calls me a baby?

You read that paragraph, right? I mean, the whole thing?

Okay.

Back to what I was saying. I'm Jamie, the Stud, a Force of Nature (it looks better capitalized, doesn't it?). Maybe I need more titles too: Jamie the Beautiful, Jamie the Interesting, Jamie the Wise, Jamie the Adorable, Captain Jamie of the Shining Seas, Jamie the Strongest Tiny Dog of All Time.

But I'm not so tiny. I'm bigger than many of the things like flowers, grass, leaves, sticks, Slipper's eyeballs, a frisbee, butterflies, and other things like that that aren't so big you can't fit them in your mouth.

My mouth is a cave I put things inside for later when I want to look at them again.

Also: I like beautiful things. I think people say weeds are weeds and not flowers because they are close minded. I think people say many things like that when they aren't thinking well.

If everyone was as good a thinker as me they would look at plants like this and think: ah, the beauty! Or in Slip's case maybe: I want to eat that!

But I've worked on not being close minded. I am Jamie the Wise, you remember? And I'm five years old or so. Ages and eons older than Slippy and Lucy. But not the cats - we don't discuss them - they have foolish cat-tendencies like not eating their own vomit and pooping all in the same place. Weird.

Call me Jamie of the Flowers.

I want to be surrounded by beauty. There is already so much pain and suffering in this world. I chase prettiness like some dogs chase tennis balls.

And I like to help people. To look in their faces and say to them, "hey, it's okay. You'll be all right." Because when I was little there wasn't someone there to say that to me, and I really want to be the one to say that to someone else who is sad or bummed out or who just feels so lonely they slouch and slink and hide behind their hair.

Slippy is right. I do love hugs. I am Jamie the Hug Machine. Jamie the Kisses You Can't Get Enough Of. Jamie Sunshine. Jamie the Doggy. The Doggy, Jamie.

And I'm your cousin too.

The Dog Loves Rap Music

This is my new t-shirt can you read it it says RUN DMC which is a group like a rap fellowship of fellows who rap! Mary's friends got this shirt for me because when they look at me they want to give me things because I think they love me.

That's right, isn't it if you look at someone and then love them then you want to give them everything like a t-shirt or like pastry cream?

Pastry cream is so wonderful it is the same wonderful as a new shirt of a rap fellowship which is a word I learned today so that's why I'm using it I hope you can understand my vernacular which is another word I learned that I think is great especially because it starts with a v like very and v words are probably the best words for everyone to say and to think about.

V words I know: vernacular vest very vermilion (not what it means but the spelling of it) vermicelli (which is a delicious thing if you put some butter on it maybe) valley version vunderful...

Okay vunderful isn't really a v word it's a w word in disguise but I put it in there because I'm realizing I don't know that many v words which means maybe I don't know that many words which then how can I communicate?

How can I tell you how much I want pastry cream if I didn't have a word like very but is there a word like very that means more than that like more urgent but I can't think of one so I only get very and then maybe you don't really understand me oh no I'm pulling a Luco aren't I?

That's what Mingus and Fremlin and I call falling into a hole where everything seems so stupid and it seems like nothing will work out at all and it seems like there's no reason to continue whatever it was you were just doing that's pulling a Luco.

But the thing is Luco is usually wrong so I just have to remember that like Mingus and Fremlin said and not let myself get down they said to pull myself up by my bootstraps but maybe that was about something else like they want me to get a job I think but probably the idea applies.

At least I have my supercool t-shirt of the RUN DMC but hey wait Mary she put it on me wrong no one will be able to see the name of the fellowship on my t-shirt so is there a reason to wear it why oh why would she do this to me?

Wait. It's a Luco again, isn't it? I'm pulling one I can tell. I just need to focus. I need to say something like I remember now Mary's friends got me this shirt because they looked at me and then they loved me and they thought of me later so that's a really nice thing even if Mary is trying to spoil everything for me!

Mary, Mary, why ya buggin?

The Trench of Luco's Despair

Hello, dear friend. I apologize for my absence, but you see, and as I informed you a couple weeks ago (how long ago now! How swift time!), the prison guard decided to have major plumbing work done. The other cats and myself were confined to a cramped spare bedroom for something akin to three weeks (I am no careful scientist, no objective observer, plus she did not leave me with any way of keeping track of time, perhaps in just one more cruel bid to disorient and discomfit me). The above picture is the last you will see of this flooring.

It is also the last you will see of that picture on the floor there. Do you spy it? A self portrait by non other than the prison guard. They say she painted it as a child, but I harbor serious doubts on the veracity of that assertion.

Regardless, welcome back, etcetera. Make yourself comfortable while I take you on a journey of despair - plumbing despair.

The first trench. This started just outside the bathroom door. Do you see the little bridge across? Safe. The prison guard and her husband eventually just stayed in a motel from what I have been able to put together. Please note the sand and dust. I had dreams - nightmares - every night. Terror overtook that sand fleas rained a torrent over me. Constantly awaking itchy. Uncomfortable.

Mingus was able to escape one night and he ran along the trench. I could hear the prison guard yelling "Help me! He's going to get outside" or some such nonsense. What did she think - was he going to tunnel his way through the trench?

Perhaps that is what she thought. Perhaps she believes him a mole in her house. Better than the way I am convinced she sees me - a poison, an infection, infestation - someone to be waved away and ignored. Please excuse me a moment. No, I am not weeping.

Here is a final shot of some of the destruction. A pretty significant trench, no? Here you can also see the second bridge - the one the prison guard crossed when she visited us every day to feed us and clean the litter box. Once. A. Day. No more, no less.

I suppose her dedication to the dog is to be excused as he is a simple creature, unable to care for himself - is this what I am supposed to think?

Did she supply us with dust masks? No. Would I have worn them if she had? No, but still, it would have been a nice gesture.

Living for weeks in the closed up room I got to know the other cats better. A shame. I used to be able to tolerate them. There is nothing like enforced, close proximity to one's roommates to make one really appreciate solitude. And I must say any good feelings I had for the dog seem to have pretty much evaporated.

Look at him. The monster. His face so grotesque. His deer legs. Floppy little ears.

Well, he is a sort of adorable, I guess. I am not saying I missed him, but after the company of the cats, it is rather a pleasure to get a break. To speak to someone who would not say, as Mingus did, "I'm like so totally over you, dude. You never shut up."

The dog doesn't say things like that, even if only because he does not know the words and/or he does not understand the phrase.

Life is back to normal. Mostly. Although now there is a river of poured cement running through the house where the trench was. And now I am feeling old, sentimental. Rather free.

How long does contentment last?

How brief a respite this?

Mingus, Mr. Pawsley, and Halcyon Dreams

Luco said I could write on this thing. Something about feeling too morose to get out from under the bed. Whatever, right? Some of us have real problems.

I have a habit of chasing what the people here call "bed mice." I know there are not real mice in the bed. I understand that it's just their fingers wiggling under the sheets. But I can't help myself.

When I see that jerky movement, I know the bed mice must be mine.

Guess who also loves bed mice. Just guess.

I'm on here too because this is where I live in this place and if Mingus does a thing I get to do it too! Like the bed mice which I think if I could catch them they'd taste like salt probably and something else maybe I never had before. So when Mingus looks for bed mice then so do I. I call it riding on his wave of fortune.

No I don't! Ha! Did I fool you? That's what Luco says I do which I don't know what a wave is but I bet it's delicious. This picture is me getting ready to chomp chomp into some bed mice invaders that would love it in my mouth!

Yeah, the dog is the animal who also loves bed mice. Are you surprised? Sigh. I've worked my whole life to catch these things - fingers.  I've spent sleepless nights trying to find the mice - fingers. And so many hours imagining sinking my teeth into their rodent heads - fingers. I'm sorry. When I get passionate, it's hard to stay rational. Yes, I know, I know, they are people's hands. But the way they move is just so seductive. I can't look away. I can't not try and try to capture them.

What a world that would be, huh? A world where the bed mice are real and the blood in my mouth is from them? I can't really even believe in such a place. It's irreconcilable with my own world. It would be like living Outside but getting let back in sometimes. Inconceivable.

Although.... I hear there is going to be plumbing work done in the bedroom. With a trench dug through the floor. Perhaps then the mice will come crawling into my house. Perhaps then I will taste their blood and chew their sweet flesh. Halcyon dream.

I've been telling you but you won't listen because you're obstinate which is a thing like stubborn but it sounds better and so you are delusional which means you don't know what you're talking about Mingus! Bed mice are real. All you have to do is just keep on believing in them and then when you bite down you bite down into them into their soft bony bodies and when their blood fills your mouth it's a celebration like the biggest party in town ever and everyone gets to come except Luco if he's being a jerk.

Look into my eyes. You're getting sleepy. Now you're hypnotized. The bed mice are real! They're real!

I don't think hypnosis works like that, Mr. Pawsely. First you need to swing a watch or something. Or get a spinny thing. But listen. Why do you have to encroach on that which I love? Why do you try to wrest from me a simple, deep pleasure?

I look at you and wonder how you manage to bring such misery to this place. How do you do it, dog? Mr. Pawsley? Please answer me. I need to know.

You're being a jerk like Luco! I do a thing because I love it and you love it too so why can't we share it and get closer and be buddies until time melts our faces off? I want to have fun with you and do the things you like to do. I want to give you my stuff too like yummy cat vomit I saved for you to have it's from you first so I'm giving it back it tastes like wonderfulnes.

So share with me and be my friend.

Or I'll eat all your cat food.