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.

The Dogs Love Ice Cream and They Love You Too

It's a Lucy and Slippy day today because we were wondering if you would please go to the store now and get us some of the cheese and fried chicken and broccoli for us to be eating all covered in butter it's been so many times now we've seen you eating at the table and we want some too this is Slippy listen to me I have important things to say! Like ice cream ice cream ice cream ice cream ice cream please!

And me, Lucy, I have something to say as well.

I'm in the middle of reading The Giant's House by Elizabeth McCracken, and unfortunately I don't love it. I mean, I don't dislike it; I don't love it. But this quote I'm about to give you, it sums up a feeling I want to discuss.

McCracken writes: "Despite popular theories, I believe people fall in love based not on looks or fate but on knowledge. Either they are amazed by something a beloved knows that they themselves do not know; or they discover common rare knowledge; or they can supply knowledge to someone who's lacking" (10).

Before I comment on this quote can I just tell you something? The spell-check on Blogger wants to correct McCracken's name to gimcrackery. Before today I knew not of this word. How strange and wonderful - my life is studded, it seems to me, with gimcrackery.

Anyway. The quote!

Nope nope nope Miss Lucy Scarecrow you're too far off topic so it's me Slippy Mr. Pawsely to the rescue here to tell you some more things of which I know a lot about like love is a thing I know too and although McCracken might have an interesting idea and maybe you'll tell us more than verbal gimcrackery (I can learn words too!) but I know love and I know how to say what it is.

Love is you Lucy and your brown eyes and us together eating meat and dog snacks that pop and fizz in our mouths from fermenting which makes things all the more delicious like the bread we found on the street and the biscuits out behind the grocery store which we ate with such relish and look love is this dining room table full of food and you and me Scarecrow sitting down to eat together with dogs' napkins and dogs' silverware and nothing to fear because no one will come up ever to us with a rolled newspaper and no one will ever yank us on our leashes away and no one will ever again my Lucy cage you in a puppy mill because you are the sweetest most decent and kind doggy of psycho dogs I've known in my whole life.

Slippy. I asked you never to bring up my past. That life. It's far behind me now. It's a greyish blur that sometimes colors my nightmares, but that's it.

Let me get back to the quote. McCracken's ideas of love. I think she has an interesting thought here, but also that she neglects something of biology. For me anyway, love is molecular. You, Mr. Pawsley, and I mean no offense by this, wouldn't have been my first choice as a friend, as a companion. I might have, had we merely met online, dismissed you as a dullard. But here, with you, the heat from your skin and the static electricity zinging from your heart forcibly pull me toward you. You are, my dear, magnetic.

And I don't pretend to believe you love me for the things I say more eloquently, or my IQ level (although, yes, it's true, you have [several!] degrees and I have none - perhaps I'm street smart? Who, dear Slipper, gave you that PhD anyway? Who?!); you love me, simply, because you love me. We are entangled. Entwined.

And yes, of course, I want  ice cream ice cream ice cream ice cream ice cream too and dog treats and tuna and peanut butter and marshmallows and tacos, and perhaps this appreciation we have could be defined as a "common rare knowledge," but I rather doubt it. We just love each other.

Reader? I implore you. If you have any love for us as we have for you, give us all-every of your cheeses.  Now. I swear to you the prison guard hasn't been feeding us. Ever. She's never once fed us food. Hurry. Our time is running out.

We'll die without ice cream (but at least we die together).

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.

Happy 4th of July, Love Alfie

It has been too long since we've spoken. I can only imagine how you must have pined for my beautiful face. And it is, isn't it? My face? I'm beautiful - Helen of Troy issue, at least figuratively (the literal in this instance would be ridiculous, friend, don't you dare think me so foolish) - but please, I haven't meant to be vain.

It's just that I try to face facts, reality. And, for really real?

I'm gorgeous. Pulchritudinous. Magnificent.

But I guess that's, as they say, neither here nor there. Except perhaps you're happier to read this because I'm writing it, haha. I wanted to say a thing to you, and Luco was gracious enough to allow me use of his platform (we other cats joke it's his walk-the-platform, as in, read Luco's blog and walk the plank, the plank of despair, you know, into a shark tank of misery, but we don't mean to be cruel. Joking about his blog allows us briefest moments of levity).

So, anyway, here it is: Happy Fourth of July, Internet.

Luco didn't want me to say that. Wouldn't have let me write this blog if he knew. But I care not! I love sparklers and lemonade and tiny little American flags. Fireworks I care not much for, although I do, as a comely creature, enjoy their beauty.

Why would he not want me to wish you this?

He is a grouch, a grinch. He'd go on about atrocities this, and unjust imprisonment that. Major corporate takeover blah blah.

Not that I'm an anti-activist, it's just I believe there is room for critique and for celebration.

Like that time I saved a litter of kittens from doom. They were huddled in a picnic basket, about to tumble down a waterfall, but I swooped through the air (I had donned my flying squirrel pants, but that's a story for another day) and caught the basket in my mouth, swinging them to freedom on the lush riverbank.

How the kittens protested when I proceeded to eat the sandwiches sandwiched next to them in their picnic basket. Their grousing didn't stop me from eating those delicious ham and cheeses and it didn't change the fact that I'd saved their mewling little selves.

A well fed hero, that's what I like to be.

How does that relate to the Fourth of July and patriotism (or perhaps Luco would grumble nationalism, but again, he's a grouch, a grouch, and if he just did something with his looks, he might find his mood improved. Speaking of, have you noticed my hair cut? Fur cut? It is utterly divine in this summer heat to be shaved thus. They call it a Lion Cut because they look into my heart and know my true nature - they know the wildness that prowls my bowels and my eyes, waiting for the chance to streak, firecracker bright, into the night sky).

Honestly, I'm not entirely sure how it relates, except for the matter of subjectivity, which is to say, life is as we understand it to be, and if a creature is unable to ever peer through something like the foreign pupils of empathy, then that creature will never approach understanding, not even to lick it lightly with barest tongue tip, and never taste the desire of another.

We must all strive to pull on the boots of others, to lace them up to our thighs and prance around in them, puss in boots of all-who-live.

Right? Or do you think me mad? I wonder sometimes when I read Wuthering Heights for the fifteenth, fiftieth, five hundredth time. Why do I so identify with this literature? Maybe I'm morbid, captivated by so much death and thwarted passion (as I imagine my passions to be thwarted?).

I can't be sure, but I love these lines which end the novel:

I sought, and soon discovered, the three headstones on the slope next the moor: on middle one grey, and half buried in the heath; Edgar Linton's only harmonized by the turf and moss creeping up its foot; Heathcliff's still bare.

I lingered round them, under that benign sky: watched the moths fluttering among the heath and harebells, listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass, and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth. (251)

"Benign sky." I thrill so at each reading. I find it beautiful.

If I was a poet, I'd rewrite those final paragraphs this way:

three headstones grey half
buried harmonized by moss
creeping still
linger benign sky
watch moths fluttering heath
harebells soft breathing
grass imagine
unquiet slumbers
quiet earth

Ah, but I'm no poet, I mean, I might have been, Iowa said they were very interested in my manuscript, as did Cornell and Syracuse. And I might have attended these MFA programs, but I feel my place is here.

The flame to Luco's wick. Someone has to say to him, "Yes, Luco, it's okay to allow your belly to fill with joy at the sight of those sparklers, and look! A neighbor brought steak over to the vegetarian prison guard -she's left it out on the counter - let us eat it and rejoice, for today is the day to celebrate our freedom and our imprisonment, because who can be free but the already imprisoned?"

And we did eat the steak the well-meaning-neighbor brought over. It was delicious. I wish I had some now, but it's done, we finished it. And oh but when oh when oh when will I ever eat steak again?

True despair is to be left meatless. Without tenderest filet.

Perhaps Luco is right and I celebrate for nothing when that-which-I-celebrate is itself so fleeting, so sudden and but so immense is my joy.

No, it cannot be. My joy is boundless, my capacity for love limitless. And this is why I smile on the Fourth, and this is why I do not hide my eyes forever inside my book. It is irresponsible to see only misery; irresponsible to become drunk on anguish; irresponsible to fail to note that beauty, love, grace, charity, and compassion are bedfellows to desolation, ugliness, injustice, wretchedness, and oppression.

Irresponsible to ignore my elephantine heart.

Okay, okay, Slippy is Probably in Love

 

I don't know if I know what to say sometimes I lie here in the grass with the sun pulsing like MR's hands petting me smoothing my fur down pressing her hands against my heart it races in the heat instead of being languid which means slow as in under water maybe and it's what warm hearts are supposed to do slow down but instead mine moves faster maybe at the speed of electromagnetic rays maybe ultraviolet which is also a color perhaps the colors inside my dreams filling my lungs with heat and the smell of grass.

Sometimes I read Sappho I like the book Sappho: Poems and Fragments translated by Stanley Lombardo and all the Sappho poems I talk about for this bloggy thingy today are from that book which is a beautiful book to make you cry if you like that I think you should read it.

Because I love the smell of grass and the feel of warm warm warm and even if I am here alone Outside lying down and even if I'm alone here sometimes with no one to talk to not even Lucy and even if no one ever wants to talk to me again still my heart will be racing at the heat of everything trying to burrow down into the dirt get closer to magma-hot beneath all-everything you want to come over some time and hang out with me? I can tell you what I think about things and you can tell me what you think about things too if you want to but not if you don't I don't want to be a bully like Luco is I want to be a nice dog not a mean dog if you know how mean a dog can be you should know I don't want to be that.

Listen. Have you met the Scarecrow Lucy the dog? If you did meet her you'd wonder how you could never have not met her before which is more than a double negative but I don't care about that I try to care about grammar but grammar is so tedious which means like when I have to sit and wait for MR to throw me a treat and she takes forever to do it! All I want is more more more meat in my mouth!

But Lucy the Scarecrow has black eyes that are also golden and they are warm and they are sweet. Her eyes are like burning constellations which is maybe why the heat races my heart like a crazy whirlwind jet engine I wish I could live inside of them and just sleep sleep with her all-every around me cradling soft she is usually close by to me but I think never quite close enough.

I said it before but it's what I mean I want to clamber into her body and live there there is close to her but never close enough there is talking to her but never talking enough there is telling her she is beautiful but I never say it enough or correctly or exactly how I mean to want to need to.

She is elysian fields. I've been reading Sappho and she is every-all-any Sappho ever wrote about:

I do not expect my fingers

to graze the sky

What would the rest of that fragment read probably something like but when I look at you Lucy clouds stick to my fingers spiderwebs.

And Sappho also writes this fragment it is for Lucy it must be for Lucy for my Scarecrow the Scarecrow of my heart:

and I long and yearn

These fragments make me sad they are so small and incomplete and but they also reach what I want to say to her the heat welling in my heart and spilling over for her for her for her pooling at my feet even hotter probably than the magma I dig for in the earth's liquid center.

 Eros has shaken my mind,

wind sweeping down the mountain on oaks

Oh Sappho of ancient Greece oh Sappho of so many years before I came to be how is it you clearly know my truest my sincerest my longingest longings for the doggy of my dreams who when I dream I always dream of Lucy Lucy and who when I close my eyes it's her eyes I see shining in the dark golden beacon and who I make myself a fool for loving who I never loved so much before and her delicate bones I search her body for answers already embedded there her genes must match mine line up like algebra. 

earth embroidered with flowers

When I see my Lucy Lu when I fall down hot onto the grass and roll swimming in sunshine.

Eros once more limbslackener makes me shudder

sweetbitter irresistble creeping

Oh Lucy Lucy who echoes in my heart in my skeleton who is electricity who is molecules and particles who is atoms and clouds and who is the atmosphere and every fizzing thing Lucy who is my Scarecrow who keeps nightmares from me who sleeps me gentle who I love and love is not enough of a word for my stumbling tongue who is my fire is my truth is my every.

fairest of stars

Oh that dog of mine.

Mr. Pawsley Loves Mingus. And Food.

Do you ever when you're sleeping then you suddenly wake up because you heard a noise or got scared maybe the temperature in house dropped or your legs went all pins and needles together and you jump up and yell "ayaii?"

I do that sometimes and sometimes when I do that I also wake up Mingus he sleeps with me when he's nice which is kinda often because maybe he's the nicest of the cats of which there are three three cats one dog I'm the special one. I'm unique.

But sometimes I'm lonely thinking about how I'm the only dog and I live here with these cats who hate me and who love me and who say to me "why are you always so annoying, Mr. Pawsley" and "I refuse to call you mister!" Which who the one who said that was guess who Mr. Grumpy Grouch Luco and I think grumpy is a great word and so is grouch but when someone is both of those words it can be tough on a dog who's the only dog in the house and who's trying so hard to be a good dog but come on Mingus has a delicious furs I can eat and catch him!

He is nice though like I said before sometimes to me and we sleep together. I'll make him tell you that. Tell them Mingus that we sleep together on the bed and that we can say we pretty much love each other forever and ever which is what I want to do live eternally with you loving you and your orange face which is covered in weird whiskers I taste sometimes (they taste like toenails).

Well, I guess since you've woken me up for this, dog, I will say that I enjoy the company. I mean, please understand that I am very much your intellectual superior (although I don't want to make you feel the same way the learned Luco de la Cabeza Grande makes me feel), but it's nice to talk to you from time to time. You don't, Pawsley, have the rather dour nature others of our brethren share.

I don't know what he means by dour or brethren but maybe he means milanesa a food I can eat and eat and if I had some I'd even share it with you Mingus I'd share it even though you're a meanie sometimes and you use words like dour and brethren which probably maybe don't even mean meanings at all. Which are probably maybe just noises you're making in the back of your throat and maybe that's probably what woke me up in the first place!

I'm sad I don't have any milanesa or peanut butter.

Oh the myriad (it means a lot of differents) tastes I have yet to taste and that I want and I want and I want to taste them if I could just get them into my mouth I could bite them! With my very strong teeth!

And Luco said a blog about my other blog which so I wonder if he'll say a thing about this one and if he does I hope he tells me how and where to find all the food I want to eat I sometimes find it on a walk but MR won't stop and let me eat it which is only the thing I want to do all of the time.

I could eat sidewalk tacos cookies beers condoms french fries (a really delicious one) doughnuts probably some pizza too and a salad with salad dressing (a lot!) maybe an opened packet of ketchup and some probably some cigarette butts which taste good even though MR screams so loud when I find one in my mouth finally!

When I sleep I dream all these foods and I dream them and Mingus is right there my buddy who when I think of who I love I think of him and I think that everyone is sleeping too dreaming of food and the taste of food and how it slides and slips down our throats and how it coats our tongues when we tongue the roofs of our mouths to taste it again and everything wonderful of a million different ways for things to taste and to love and to remember which is a great thing too because of dreaming the most relaxing thing and because of the warmth of a bed and a pillow and a friend.

I love food and friends in my own mouth.

The Dog in a Dress

Good afternoon to you or good morning or good night! It's a new years so Luco said we should all make a solemn vow (which I think is like a salmon which is a kind of fish that tastes only okay but not as good as like a tuna or even a pizza) so I wanted to wear this dress that one of M.R.'s students made for me because but she thought I was a girl and I'm not but look at it!

It's pretty as an other dog could be because when I look at it I look great. My new years salmon (but really if you're getting me food to eat make sure it isn't salmon make sure it's maybe what I said before a pizza would be delicious) is going to be to do the things (for example wearing this dress I'm wearing now which spills down my legs and looks like a blanket because I love it) maybe I'm nervous about and then I can find out if they are good or if they aren't good (like salmon!).

Luco is saying to me something about gender identity but I don't know what a gender identity is unless it's like an ID heart which is a thing I have on me on my collar which tells me who I am (Mr. Pawsely, esquire).

Oh. He says it's how you are if you are a girl or a boy or a one in-between which maybe is what I am now because since I tried on this I feel in the middle like partly a boy and partly a girl and partly a neither or a both and so but also happy and pretty which is a nice feeling a feeling similar (a word that means something is like another thing which is one I learned by reading a dictionary which is a book that has all the words and is beautiful) to walking outside and finding a chicken bone or a pizza crust or a cookie or another dog's butt or a person who is smiling which is also a great thing to find.

And if someone says to me they don't like me because they don't like me being halfway one way and halfway another way or they think my dress is dumb or ugly then I won't even look at them! I'll shoot them with my eyeballs into outerspace which is very very very very far away and they'll just spin there in something called a void which is one I still need to figure out but I think it means a place where there is nothing else but the thing that is there which if you think about it doesn't make sense at all to me so I'm confused.

But I'm not confused about how I look with my beauty and my good looks and my handsome dog smile of a dog because I am a dog!

Now let me lick your face okay?!

Slippy Loves Emma

Hello to you! I think you probably have been missing me because I haven't said anything to you for like some long time and so I asked Luco could I please please write a blog and he said "If that is what it will take to achieve a moment of solitude, then yes, dog, fine." I wrote what he said verbatim because first he told me the word verbatim and second he said he hates it when I misrepresent him. I know what a miss is and what a present is but I can't think of them together. Again?

So okay! I wanted to tell you about someone who's my special adorable doggy friend who has a name that's called Emma!

I don't get alienated (which is what Luco says which I think means like feeling like an extraterrestrial) but sometimes if maybe I start to feel sad then I think about Emma and everything is better like if Mary gave me some butter covered pieces of steak or like a cheese plate but with no grapes though because apparently grapes would kill me so dead I'd never want to go on a walk again - at least I think that's death but because only I can't think of anything worse than no walking and not eating steak pieces covered in butter.

This is us after we wrestled. We were tired and panting and my tongue was always all the way out of my mouth my teeth tasted like Emma's fur and her spit because I love her so much.

She is if you think about something that makes you happy then that's what she is. She is probably like if you got to eat ham every day each time in the morning.

It looks like we're fighting and I'm really fierce at fighting something like if you saw a bull charging at you in the face that's probably how Emma felt but we're only play fighting so it's not real fierce but Emma knows that because she understands me.

I think Luco needs to have an Emma someone like her who you can look at their eyes and maybe they wink or they don't wink but it's like they did wink and when I look at Emma she's winking at me because we get each other and we support each other I think through thick and thin but that hasn't been tested yet like it's not a verified theory but I think it would come true even if I didn't wish it on a star even if it wasn't the first star in the evening if I did wish it. We already have each other like glitter in glue on a piece of paper.

Here it looks like I'm eating her but I'm not but her throat is delicious and great. Maybe Luco should also hang from her throat like this and swing and feel free and wild like a wild animal which is really what we all are if you think about it. I told Luco that and he said I was acting like a philosopher which is someone who philosophizes which means they think a lot about deep and interesting subjects such as hanging from Emma's neck and not feeling like an alien and not feeling alone.

Haha! Philosophy is great just like a pizza or like an Emma!