Alfie is Lonely, Frustrated

Oh, hey there. I like to sleep on a child's piano. Is that strange? I sleep alone, now is it weird? When do we get to weird? Let's just get there, okay? I'm so sick of the derision I imagine roiling in your eyes like potatoes in a pot of boiling water. 

Rage potatoes.

That's where I am today, I guess, metaphorically anyway. Figuratively.

But let's be fancy and make the potatoes the small and varied type - the blue and the red and the finger shaped. Roiling, toiling, what was it I was saying?

Oh yeah, hi. It's summer. Hot. Sticky. Got a haircut (furcut?). The top of this child's piano is cool. It settles my addled heart.

Addled for these reason both: MR, the prison guard, she's found out how I was jumping the fence in the backyard and now I'm confined to its limits: the cat I saw when fence-jumping, now I can only see her when she deigns come to me.

Which isn't as often as I'd wish. I call her Sharon - don't know her real name. She is small and she is feral. Mostly grey with some calico across her face. We roll and we play and MR frets I'll catch something from her.

Ugh, typical bourgeoisie BS. Because the cat is homeless, she must be flea bitten and sick. Because she is feral, she must be crude, rude, a big, bad dude (oh, heavens, where did that rhyme come from? Readers! My malaise is affecting my very language. I didn't realize the situation was so dire!).

I need to get it together. 

There's another reason I sleep thusly, and I'm kind of ashamed to admit it, but here we go.

Yeah, these guys. Bear-Bear and Dribble-Doggy.

Unlike MR they don't judge my Heathcliffesque adoration of Sharon - they don't judge my desire for chicken meatballs - they don't judge my new furcat (haircut?) - they simply allow me to press against their softness and dream of grey and calico.

And, why should I be ashamed! It's Luco and his elitism, MR and her ignorance, the other animals and their beastliness.

No. No it's not. I'll be honest.

It does something to my idea of myself when I'm locked up, trapped, forced to nap like a prisoner in this air-conditioned living room. I want to feel the cool of the morning grass against my belly. The heat rising from asphalt in palpable waves. To drink the blood and the guts of lizards too slow for my claws, too sun-dazed to resist me.

And I want to do these things with Sharon.

We could eat rage potatoes together beneath a gleaming super-moon (Sunday, 6/23/13, folks).

Bear-Bear and Dribble-Doggy get me. They understand me on a fundamental level. They must - otherwise how could they so perfectly anticipate my needs?

They know I need to dream and to dream and to dream.

And to feel less alone.

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.

Luco Too Shall Pass

The dog says he is in love. Fremlin says she might be. What has happened to these animals? Do they not know "this too shall pass?"

I would not usually quote a proverb. I think it rather too cliche. I prefer the more tangled wording of something like all of life is in constant flux and it is foolish to otherwise believe. The awkward grammar in that statement is dearer to my heart, but "this too shall pass" is a tolerable approximation.

Ah, yes, so as I was saying. These animals. Are they so naive as to believe their wonder and their joy, their twin hearts, their effervescence, unique, unchanging?

Not that they have said as much. I have yet to hear the dog bark out forever or Fremlin whine eternity. 

However, if they did, why should I care? Am I so cynical, so sadistic as to need to press into their animal eyes, their animal hearts my disdain? Am I truly disdainful, or am I jealous.

I must be honest with myself. I have a vow made this year, and I will be strict; there will be no turning from the truth. Perhaps it is a bit of a "this too shall pass" for some of my deeper antagonism, but what do I know? Another beloved old saw is that no one changes, so how are we to know upon which cliche to rest our anxious heads?

Kate Light writes in a poem titled "There Comes the Strangest Moment:"

Your heart's in retrograde. You simply have no choice.
Things people told you turn out to be true.
You have to hold that body, hear that voice.
You'd have sworn no one knew more than you.

How many people thought you'd never change?
But here you have. It's beautiful. It's strange.

I love this poem. I know not why as it is certainly not my usual fare.

Or, well, yes, yes both you and I know I know why I love this poem. You see? The truth? It is a difficult affair to commit oneself to honesty, but I will persevere.

Why do thoughts of love, thoughts of Slippy and Fremlin, bring this poem into my mind? It is because I am, reluctantly, willing to concede this: perhaps there is something to their delirium.

See? I have changed. I am not sure if "It's beautiful. It's strange," but it is there, a moth's wing brushing against my heart.

All is flux, but the all is itself static in its movement; all is flux, but there is an all that is always; this too shall pass, but there will be a this until we cannot conceive of it; there is constancy in inconstancy, eternity in the fragmentary, momentary, in the fleeting, in the beating of dusted moth wings, in the calculated logic that turns and turns my thoughts - this too shall pass and pass again and again and again like the golden mean, a rectangle divided into a square and a rectangle, which can be divided into a square and a rectangle, which can be divided into a square and a rectangle...

Where a + b is to a as a is to b. Golden numbers. Irrational numbers. Repeating and repeating and repeating and all together the one thing made up of every swirling filament.

"How many people thought you'd never change?"

To be alive is to change, but no one changes so much that there is no evidence of the past. We are story tellers, Mnemosyne's progeny - you must forgive this romanticism - and we persist in attempting to define that which defines us, but we cannot see those slight threads clearly. Often it is simply that we hear repeated in our thoughts asinine platitudes - this too shall pass - as we grapple with difficulty.

Yes, and we will die as love dies (but I do not truly believe it does, see here), but let us hope at least. I need to let the other animals have that.

I need to let them clutch and cling and lullaby each other. Let them see what blossoms wild in their embrace.

I did not think I would change, and I have, and it has been a strange experience reconciling the old Luco with the new.

However, I do not think my two selves bipolar, paradoxical; rather, they complement each other. Before, despairing, I lost myself for days sleeping beneath a couch, dry eyed and full of woe; now, despairing, I find myself searching the animals' eyes, bent toward contact like a satellite circling, circling. I am no longer trapped on some distant planet.

I have become the planet itself.

Mingus is Bummed

It has been a long day.

A long day for me, for the lizards I chased and didn't catch. For the barking dogs who won't ever, oh my god, stop barking. For Luco, who hides in the laundry room because the air conditioner fixing guy is here, ostensibly fixing the air conditioner. For MR who who feeds me, but not the food I want. For her boyfriend who lives here and who is made to toil, cleaning the house, fixing leaking pipes. For Fremlin who has ventured into my thoughts as of late, unexpected.

She's there, hiding in the kick drum.

Creeping past the kitchen cabinet.

Batting at my tail.

Nosing her way through the Tubby Kat Door.

She sometimes looks as lonely as I feel. Why do long days make me wistful? I glare through the window to the Outside and dream my stupid, impotent dreams.

In neon I catch and kill rats. Swirling prisms of blood and of screaming. Trees arch into the limitless sky.

If I could climb one? I'd never stop - always moving up, up, up. Taste the clouds. Claw my way into the sun.

Burn there, alone again but purposeful. Stretched out across the horizon. Mingus-Sunset. Mingus-Glory.

Fremlin tip toes. The dogs wail with ambulance sirens. I stalk flies and imagine myself a moth.

Oh, how I'd cling to the window screen. And how I'd careen through atmosphere.

Imagine me: Breath bursting in my ribcage, extended to wing filaments - perhaps the other animals' dreams dusting my body, cascading hail cracking sidewalks, rooftops, splintering lizards into fractilized pieces.

Sometimes I hate this.

It, me, everything. Feeling like I'm waiting when I'm not, because no one is ever going to open that door for me. Only Outside brief moments I shoot past legs, through grasping hands.

Moments Outside feel like a lifetime. Like briefest dream.

I grapple with the memory. Taste of breeze. Tree limb. Mud.

The dogs get this freedom every day. They don't, however, seem to understand that which they have. Perhaps a truism for all of us, but still.

I mean, I know I have it pretty good here. Better than the lizards crushed between open window and closed. Better than ants marching for poison. Than mold sweeping its slow way across the patio.

Perhaps to be alive is to yearn. For movement. Excitement. The heat and the crash of chance, of chaos. This a type of entanglement - you and I and everyone bending to reach for the slip of a hook that will pull us up, out, away. That will us liberate.

I sound like Luco, don't I? He's been reading Sartre aloud for days and days and days. “I am alone in the midst of these happy, reasonable voices. All these creatures spend their time explaining, realizing happily that they agree with each other. In Heaven's name, why is it so important to think the same things all together. ”

But we do, don't we? I think we do.

And it makes my loneliness all the more bitter.

Luco & the Teddy Bear

In a fit of something like empathy, the prison guard dragged out this stuffed animal to try and soothe me, she said, to make me feel less alone.

To make me feel less alone. Because at a fundamental level, whatever she tells herself, she knows and I know and you know that we are all alone.

Alone in our thoughts. In our experience of life. I look at this stuffed animal, this teddy bear, and I am revolted, but perhaps you look at it and you see something else. Something sweet, something to hug close and cherish. Perhaps you look into its beady eyes and see your own face reflected and this is like a hand to hold.

Not me.

Reflected back in its beady eyes I see torment. Anguish. The bathos of not-being. Although maybe I am sentimental. Expecting too much from fluff and nylon and cotton.

I would like the prison guard to look at me and to know me, to know that this sort of thing, this teddy bear is not going to quell my suffering. Is not going to light in me love.

That it, instead, sows the opposite.

I find myself filled with disgust. Revulsion. Sad trick, this, stupid gesture, it - teddy bear a lit match to my skin, smoke in my eyes.

If I wanted company I would seek it. I would not do as I do which is to lie here and pretend the animals do not swarm me. Which is to lie here and not listen to Sir Alfonso's bumbling recitations of Wuthering Heights from memory (it goes something like this "I've just returned from seeing my landlord, that weird guy who's going to be a total pain") for the thousandth time. To lie here and read Sartre's Why Write:

"[T]hrough the various objects which it produces or reproduces, the creative act aims at a total renewal of the world. Each painting, each book, is a recovery of the totality of being. Each of them presents this totality to the freedom of the spectator. For this is quite the final goal of art: to recover this world by giving it to be seen as it is, but as if it had its source in human [animal] freedom."

Can this be applied to the bear? Is he the product of some creative act? He must be, if he exists-but-does-not-exist. Sartre continues:

"But, since what the author creates takes on objective reality only in the eyes of the spectator, this recovery is consecrated by the ceremony of the spectacle - and particularly of reading. We are already in a better position to answer the question we raised a while ago: the writer chooses to appeal to the freedom of other men [animals] so that, by the reciprocal implications of their demands, they may re-adapt the totality of being to man [animal] and may again enclose the universe within man [animal]... the writer, like all other artists, aims at giving his reader a certain feeling that is customarily called aesthetic pleasure, and which I would very much rather call aesthetic joy."

This teddy bear, reader, does not in me birth an aesthetic joy. Does it you?

I shrug away from it. I shudder and growl. Still it persists. Still it glares at me, all beady-eyed (as previously established! I apologize if I, in my terror and boredom, repeat myself. My nerves, reader, are frayed).

Oh, how I wish it did soothe me. But I am ever troubled. Ever struggling to straddle despair and my greed to communicate - an ambivalence seemingly irreconcilable. Sartre writes: "To write is thus both to disclose the world and to offer it as a task to the generosity of the reader."

Reader, be generous. Reader, it is you who, although I am bereft, although I am misunderstood; although I weep alone and often; it is for you I write. It is to you I send my deepest respect. Love, even.

And it is you only who quickens in me the thought. We are all alone.

But we are alone together.

Luco, Desperate, Now Sleeps in the Closet

I feel I am too tired to speak. Too exhausted. Too old. 

So I hide in this closet. Away from les chiens dangereux. Les chiens terribles. Monstrueux. Le chiens que je déteste...

Is it true though? Do I hate these dogs. Apparently a construct not worthy of a question mark, but regardless, hate is perhaps too strong a word.

Does their incessant barking drive needles into my forehead? Yes. Does their smell churn my stomach and dizzy my brain? Yes. Does the sight of them frolicking together Outside send paroxysms of  jealousy through me? Yes.

And that, reader, is perhaps the thing. The basement, if you will, of my ill will.

Its foundation.

Brian Spears in a poem titled "Florida" from his book of poetry A Witness in Exile writes: 
"We cannot build
retaining walls to hold back
the sea - ocean percolates
through our limestone bedrock
and will drown us all one day.
Mangroves will survive,
sawgrass: that which salt cannot
desiccate. All else collapses,
but not yet. For now we build
bubbles; flipping is in our blood.
Land pulled from the swamp;
land the sea will soon reclaim."

I find my weary, sodden, dopey, recalcitrant mind fixated on this idea of my peninsula, my own entire prison, enveloped by water, overtaken, consumed by salt and by sea air and by les poissons.

Do the dogs think of this? Is it shuffling inside them as they play? And if not, do I covet them their ignorance?

Their affection for each other?

Because here I lie. Hiding in a closet. Some of that which the salt will desiccate, but then, I suppose that is the point of everything.

That we are dissoluble, ultimately. Ashes to ashes and all of that which you already know. A fragment of a melody stuck spinning in your inner ear.

We are so brief as to be invisible. And our own lives so full of gravity; as though you are the sun, reader, as I circle you, and we chortle, or we fill with anguish, or we love, but we nonethelsss circle, circle, circle. 

 

And those horrible dogs, they do this together. And they are satisfied to never wonder where Florida may move. How it might sink. How my heart breaks to see them embrace, doggish, in the Outside, halcyon fields of flowers and lizards; perfect in their pure happiness (and I am not one to believe in "purity" or "perfection," but one only has to watch them - the complicated geometry of their bones and muscles working as they dance together in the dirt); Hyperion's own daughter and son; and I am from their union and their joy kept, a cat in a closet, trapped in the closet.

Or I slouch into the prison. Glance around me. Fall asleep. Watch the prison guard. Read. Fall asleep. Gaze out every window. Dream. Imagine Florida just a tip of rock jutting from the water. Eat - each pellet of food exactly the same in taste, texture, size. Fall asleep.

Dream my prison guard staring into my eyes, finding something like a soul (I do not believe in souls); dream her understanding; dream her riotous; the dogs insects balanced on stick legs wrapped in paper, shipped off somewhere; dream my own blood a surging tide, my heart the moon balancing all of gravity, my center the center of everything - more than heat, more than fire, more than all-everything, and this: an admission of guilt, and then the caress of forgiveness; my mother's eyes on me. Ocean waves licking my feet.

And I wake alone.

 

 Because I am always-already alone.

Merry Christmas 2011, Love Luco

I suppose you know I am not here to wish you the merriest Christmas you have ever had. Perhaps by now you do not expect such platitudes. This is my hope. 

But I am also not here to wish you the saddest of Christmases. Please do not think that. Is this how you see me? A cynic, someone who has lost faith in life? Maybe I am this at times, but could it not be that I am willing to admit my moments of darkness, of doubt, and you are not? There is nothing inherently depressing or wrong with being skeptical. I believe it is important to question life, tradition, society (well, and if you are reading this, you surely also believe this); why else exist but to try to change the entire world for the better? 

Do you think me an egoist? This is not a task I believe I alone or even you and I together can complete. And what is "better?" We can move to terrible places with this idea. I suppose for argument's sake I shall define my idea of "better" as less suffering. Less suffering in general. For people, for animals, for the planet (and yes, I believe a planet can suffer. Does this strike you as a trifle romantic? Are you still rolling the word "cynic" around in your mouth?).

And I, until yesterday, believed the prison guard, for all her abhorrent behavior, felt the same way. That is, of course, until I saw the tree. Have you read "The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World," by Gabriel Garcia Marquez? If you have not, I will give you a moment. Go look it up online. Read it. I will wait. I can be patient. 

Are you finished?

"They only had to take the handkerchief off his face to see that he was ashamed, that it was not his fault that he was so big or so heavy or so handsome, and if he had known that this was going to happen, he would have looked for a more discreet place to drown in, seriously, I even would have tied the anchor off a galleon around my neck and staggered off a cliff like someone who doesn't like things in order not to be upsetting people now with this Wednesday dead body, as you people say, in order not to be bothering anyone with this filthy piece of cold meat that doesn't have anything to do with me."

This Christmas tree is Esteban. Now, if you have not actually read the story like I asked you to, this will not make sense to you. I care not! If you flout the requests of a talking cat, I do not know what to do with you. Seriously.

To continue, I say the prison guard is cruel because this tree is too large for her house. It is embarrassed. It shrugs its massive branches to accommodate. It ducks its (poor, pruned) top to fit beneath the ceiling. It is magnificent.

Ah, did you not expect that adjective?

I enjoy lying on the carpet and staring up into its branches. I imagine Esteban and myself in a field, a breeze, wild flowers; we stand and look up at the sun. And Esteban is my shelter.

So romantic today. I do not know what has gotten into me, except that it must be this behemoth. This hulking, lovely, ridiculous tree in the living room of a prison I cannot escape.

The prison of the prison, the prison in my own head. Less suffering. I come back here because looking into the lights and the plastic snowflakes and thinking of what this holiday has come to mean (and what it has always meant, I suppose), I can only conclude that for all its beauty, all its generosity, and for as much as I (surprisingly, unwillingly, completely) love this tree: everything that it stands for is anathema.

Oh holiday of taser guns at Wal-Mart, buy one get one free plastics, sweat shops and rock bottom prices, gas emissions, starving people who could be fed with just the waste from our Christmas or Hanukkah or Kwanzaa dinners (I put them in no particular order expect to mention Christmas first as it is apparently what the prison guard [and therefore I?] celebrates); so much of what is produced by this holiday causes more suffering, not less.

And yet Esteban is beautiful. And yet I love it. And yet I stare into these colored lights and feel something akin to joy pricking at me. Oh, I who do not deserve this warmth. My impotent heart which can only yearn for change, which can do nothing to begin to alleviate suffering.

I feel Esteban knows this and forgives me it. 

Even if I cannot forgive myself.

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!

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?