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.

Slippy is a Murderer!!!!!

Hello you know me my name is Slippy Slipper my full name is actually really long if you want me to I'll tell you it it has all my titles that I earned from schooling and such it is: Jefferson Cornelius "Slippy"Pawsley AA PA BA PhD Esq.

My PhD is what I'm most proud of and it's what helped me think of my very sneaky thoughts which I'll tell you in just a minute hold on and let me establish some context!

This is MR the prison guard the one who keeps us here and who sometimes sometimes sometimes gives me things like chicken meatballs and other stuff like rice and cheese and things which I eat when I put them into my mouth and chomp down on them slowly and quickly the both because then I can slowly taste them quickly all over my tastebuds!

But lately she's been getting on my nerves because she says no no no to chicken meatball and she won't ask her sister Anna to come over and make me a Slippy Cake which is a thing only her sister Anna knows how to make and but she won't do it because she got meaner and more mean and meaner more than that.

Sometimes I look at her and I'm angry and I'm hungry too. And it's her fault for all these feelings I have inside me like the buzz buzzing of flies around a rotten fruit in the backyard. I could've eaten that fruit if my legs took me faster where my nose wants to go! Stupid MR. Stupid flies. Stupid legs.

But then I had my sneaky idea which shows you how smart I am and you'll see when you look at all my diplomas which prove it! 

Dr. Slippy!

Dr. Pawsley! No one calls me that but they do sometimes. My smart idea here it comes.

Maybe MR. Maybe she's tasting good too?

So being my smartest meant knowing to approach her carefully. I licked her wrist to see how she tasted and to calm her down gently with my soft doggy demeanor.

It worked.

Once she was calm I worked on hypnotizing her which is a thing I learned when I was getting my PA which is a good thing to have if you're a dog who wants to make that money!

Then she got thoroughly hypnotized and I knew my trap was foolproof and it was set and soon it would be like MR was Alice tumbling down a rabbit hole except that rabbit hole would really be down my throat into my belly when I munched on her as a snack that would probably be tasting a lot like a chicken pot pie I think.

That's what I thought to myself anyway as I readied the attack.

She couldn't really fight back because of my good hypnosis work and so I got her on her face thinking yes yes this is it Slippy and it was it when it was it which was great for me because that's what I wanted anyway a nice evening snack!

Then I pelted her with dog pain raining from the dog sky of dog justice and prowess and she cowered and cried but I showed no mercy because I hadn't had anything to eat since dinner which was at least seventeen thousand years ago!

Really. My stomach was taking on its own personality making my paws slam down again and again it was like I had become a monster I had no control and my stomach it just growled and growled I was fierce.

I was a force of nature.

I was getting hungrier and hungrier.

Then it was all over and she was dead. Time for my feast! I thought to myself. I also thought to myself this: mwah ha ha which is I think how you make a villain laughing sound and if it's not please imagine however it's supposed to be spelled like that's how I spelled it because that is what my laughter sounded like it was full of malice and really evil and mean because that's just how I roll.

I'm a hardcore dog. From the streets of Miami. Survived a hit and run and so you think I'm going to let a tummy rumble bring me down? No. Dr. Pawsley plays for keeps, okay? And so be frightened of me!!

Although I do wonder if my propensity for violence speaks any of the love I lost as a puppy the years I spent trailing humans hoping one would pull me up into her arms and cradle me home.

Maybe it speaks of a heart too ravenous to accept any but the most intense of love - that which is all consuming - literally - and so I have to use hyphens to show you how very very very serious I am and now I am now now now feeling contrite and everything for really truly eating MR to death because my social commentary can be as deep as Luco's.

But I have to tell you one more thing of importance that I think you'll like hearing if maybe right now I've brought you to tears with this missive of emotionality and pizza yearning.

April Fools'.

Luco wishes you a belated happy Valentine's Day

  

I know it is post Valentine's Day. Post-February the 14th. I have missed it! That time of  hearts, cheap candy, and cries of love. Devotion.

And I know I let the day slide by. I did not look any of the animals in this house in the eye - say to them dearest, my heart is in your paw or something else as bland. Instead I slept. Slept and dreampt and then awoke to find Mingus in bed with me.

Mingus, uninvited. Mingus, my cellmate these past eight years.

Strange how quickly and how very slowly eight years have washed over us. A moment ago, here he was mewling in the night: today I am an old feline, bent, stooped. And he hardly any green left.

He is half my size and twice my heart.

And if I were the type to fall and fall in love, it would be into him that I would tumble.

See you his spotted paws? His vulpine ears?

And when he dreams he moves his body, inching closer or further away from me. His whiskers tremble with slightest sigh.

I did not ask him to be my Valentine. I have never asked anyone to my Valentine be.

And if I did, what would he say? Would he scoff, tossing golden fur in disdain? I imagine every bone in my body disintegrating at the sound.

Maybe I would say - my heart

                                          is a kind of poison            tonight

it is overfull

                                  and  you     an antidote

His laughter would be so resounding as to wake every sleeping bird, every nestling thing starting up, reaching for mother, craning neck to hide - small, small - and I a ghost, then, disappeared, then.

Perhaps he would be angry at my audacity. Angry that after eight years, eight years, I am now sidling up to him, searching his eyes for warmth. He might have loved me once and forgotten. He might have loved me once and grown to hate me. He might have loved me once, before I became who I have become.

And who am I? That which encompasses everything and which is itself nothing - that which is of the air - that which cannot be named and yet we name - the same as you and as you and as you and as you.

And happy Valentine's Day to us all, yes? To us all searching and not finding, or searching and then finding and then losing, or searching, and having searched, grown tired - to all of us buried beneath the rubble of ridiculous expectations. To the tyranny of desire. To knowing better and not caring. To never knowing better and not wanting to learn.

To all of us awake in the middle of the night, startled by Mingus' laughter which permeates our dreams.

And yet he lies here, with me, and I lie silent, lying to myself, playing word games in my stupid head, imagining my tongue on his ear. My body covering his.

And doing nothing. Nothing.

Happy belated Valentine's Day. I could not bring myself to post this before. I could not bring myself to face these feelings.

And facing them has taught me this.

Luco is to craven as Mingus is to kiss.

Mingus & Linguistics (kinda)

People use the word "harrowing" too much. They say, "I had to wait in line for fifteen minutes! It was harrowing!" Or they say "The traffic on I95 was totally harrowing today!" Perhaps "Ugh, the dentist! What a harrowing ordeal."

But we know not, reader, unless we've been initiated to the special world of pain, this: "deeply disturbing or distressing; grievous; a harrowing experience."

Special world of pain?

The nightmares of my nightmares. Spinning silken thread as from a spider. That which becomes caught on everything, an arm, a leg, dangling from hair. An abscess.

Dream with me - a bite, those two puncture wounds, teeth as though sharpened, the quick zing of electricity as the body registers a bite, a bite, a bite!

And no, reader, I won't divulge the animal, the biter; imagine possum or feral cat or raccoon or dog. Imagine those eyes you see lighting up in the night; imagine standing shock-still. Imagine the glow of after-pain as it dissolves your shudders to pitiful mewling.

A kitten like myself, nearing nine years, mewling, cowering in darkness, suffering the violence to my body, the spaces proving my violability.

Harrowing? No. Not yet.

Days passing and nothing amiss save steady burn of puncture.

So I slept, dreampt myself torture dreams; I was a young bride, excited for my wedding day, and careful men broke into my house, donning clean, white aprons, "we'll begin the interviews soon," they said in my dream, and I knew what they meant, which was that they meant to rape me, torture me, kill me.

Dreampt myself outside, alone. Flashing brilliance of passing cars and my bean-bag-body dragged across the pavement sudden and hot as midday.

Dreampt myself lost at sea. A speck of dust. A many-legged-creature smaller than a grain of rice. And I dreampt never-redemption, never-freedom.

Fever pitch of dreams until one day upon waking - a bump.

A bump, a bruise, a swatch of blood. Pain began to unravel the definition of harrowing for me. Began with its tendrils to caress my fevered neck.

And eyes rolling back in my head approaching MR who gentled me to sleep, who murmured something white-noise-ish, who grasped her own bedsheets and cursed, I think, although I felt safe enough to allow my mind to dissolve.

Distant shores. Shipwreck saved as parachutists gliding down dust motes winding tethers to my heart, my eyes, my teeth, breeze of warmth sluicing through me.

Warm water channel, warm water bath. Awaking the next day to my own stench. An abscess, so says the Internet, and pain like a thousand flowers blooming all-at-once-lavender.

Shock of warmth inside my eyes. Taken away in a carrier to a vet, knocked unconscious, upon waking made to wear this ridiculous shirt so that I would not further injure myself as though I had no means of my own to stay my quivering tongue which ached and ached to lick my sore open, a blossom.

And taken back to vet. Stitched closed like a blanket. Like a pillow full of feathers. Harrowing. The word tastes like brackish water. Slightly salty, hot, something stinging about it as it coats the inside of my throat.

And nightmares still but not like before. And pain but also not as before. Every night asleep with MR. Every night a lick on her hand.

Not that I feel I owe her, but she comforts me. Has pulled me free of shipwreck debris.

And I attempt anew to get outside, get to freedom. I brave bites and worse. Make oaths to myself I know I won't keep about cowardice. About lamentations.

Because now I know pain. Know the root of "harrowing." And therefore enough to know what I risk as I risk it. And I love my freedom so much I still reach and reach for it. Still dart to open doorways.

Because the animals stalk me yet.

And yet my heart yearns to bite them back.

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.

Fremlin's Translation of Life

I'm a particle of dust. Mote suspended.

The words I speak, the searching glances - all for nothing. No one listens. No one bends close to me. It should probably depress me, but it doesn't, not really. I've gotten used to this kind of thing.

"Move over, Fremlin, and let the dog lie in the sun," they say. I oblige because I always oblige. A domesticated feline if ever there was one.

And yet, sometimes when I lose myself in Mingus' golden eyes my bones become more brittle, my stomach quivers, and I clench my teeth to think of all that I could've had. I wonder if I pine for freedom in some still place, my liver, for example, or if folded into my kidney some wild beating thing persists.

Maybe there's a part of me that whispers back at the dark shapes forming around me.

Maybe I want more than I let myself know.

Or maybe I'm an old lady, prone to daydreams, ill with daydreams even. I say I love Mingus, but do I? Do I even know him, or is it for an avatar of him that I grow heartsick and more heartsick still? A Mingus I've created from deepest recesses - and, but does it matter?

Would MR throw open the door for me as she does Alfie if I could better enumerate my despair? A list of loss:

1) I am old and no one remembers to touch me.
2) They-that-would-ignore-me make mock of me if I ever so much as gesture toward them.
3) Food tastes of laminate and nothing else.
4) The walls of this house, seemingly more a prison with every sunrise, press in against me.
5) My face forgettable; lamentable the hours I've spent mirror-staring, hoping to glean from my reflection some refraction of worth.

And if she did the door open, would I have the courage to walk Outside?

In my frenzied dreams I am more than mote, I'm burst-open spoke of light striking through glass. What wildness stalks my DNA? What tucked into meaty membrane pulses with ambition?

Am I to old to experience these emotions? Do I summon them; sorcerer-cat dictating desire to writhe forth from the mire-that-is-my-truest-heart?

how can anyone

knowing the cool of raindrop

seek out that which burns

and burns through single leaf note

book words edged to ash struggle

form flowers of ash

form snowflakes of white-as-death

that whirl as they fall

I call myself domesticated who is not tamed.

Oh, but I am. Who am I trying to fool here? Myself, surely. You're probably wondering why I even bother to question my place. Why I'd lift my eyes to the sun.

That mirror will never shine back to me beauty. In it I will never glimpse love. But I keep looking, searching. I keep dreaming myself into stories where I don't belong.

Would that I could quit this. Lie on the couch. Struggle with dreams. Lean my face into MR's palm. Would I were calmer, even-tempered, easy with confinement.

And I am sometimes. I know this.

But stormy days such as these move me, lightning-strike into my breast a fire.

A fire that will not be slaked.