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).

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?

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.

Mingus Enjoys Sleeping, Dreaming

I dream often and intensely of other worlds. Science fictions where cats reign as kings and queens, the inside is Outside, and our current masters become our kin.

I dream whirlpool worlds of color; places on the laminate that sink into other dimensions; voices crowd and crow in the dusk a chorus of love, of hope, of dizzy joy; rustling bones freed of skin; days I sleep and never see the color white.

Upon hearing of my recent, nearly somnambulist sleep (nearly so because it's been five if it's been twenty separate moments I move to get up in my sleep, gesture to a shadow friend, leap into the air), Luco asked me to write. 

But language fails me and it does so exponentially as I work the words around and around; what this shady glen, and this? Myriad flaming birds alight on my body-not-my-body. Taste of copper. Of anchovy. Of sugar sweat.

And I don't sweat though, so what is that? And why this infestation of imagery?

I've got it like a flu. Shivering alone in bed, but shivering in a kind of luscious glory (luscious because it is sumptuous, plunging, all-consuming; the kind of glory not of pride but born of deepest felt emotion).

The dogs watch me jerk in my sleep. Do they laugh?

Do I care if they do? And if I try to tell them, morons, of these impossibilities, will they grasp even the most delicate thread of my meaning?

Luco said something about how I'm not alone, he goes through this too - spends whole "fortnights" (so tired of having to look up his antiquated language, jeeze) awestruck by his dreams.

His are, you might have guessed, darker. More morbid (he jokes he is moribund, so this morbidity "makes the clearest and most logical sense").

I could continue to list for you these images, these dreams, the conversations I have had and the epiphanies, but I fear I'd just bore you. What is worse than someone trying to tell you about a dream? And anyway, I bet listening to a cat's dreams (a mere cat!) seems all the more absurd.

"To sleep, perchance to dream," etc etc etc!

Luco tells me my dreams are meaningless. The frantic workings of a brain harried by the trials of every day life. I disagree. I tell him to just let me have my other-worlds. To leave me to revel in my sleep.

But you know Luco. He's kind of a jerk. He won't leave me alone.

You know? He probably had me write this blog just to distract me, because I'm pretty sure he dumped coffee in our water dish.

 

 And now I can't get back to sleep.

The Scarecrow is Afraid and She is in Love

Luco advised me that I could use this blog-thing (or however it's referred to these days) to discuss my feelings. He said that writing might help with my anxiety.

I don't know why he cares. He has ulterior motives. He must.

However, I decided to take him up on his offer, if only because there really is a mustard seed of sense in it. Talk Therapy. Although not Talk, I suppose, more like Write Therapy or Monologue Therapy or perhaps Self Absorption Broadcasted Directly From My Trembling Heart To Your Scornful Eyes Therapy. Your Scornful Mind Therapy.

I apologize if that characterization displeases you. Honestly, it's just I've had a long couple of weeks. Months. And I can't help but see, leaning in from the periphery, the opprobrium of my peers, of strangers, of friends; the opprobrium of even the flowers and the trees and the leaves collecting on the ground. Ludicrous. But, and so, as much as I'm aware this is silly, I'm also convinced someone, some thing, some group or collective or even just an individual is out to get me. Be it the Maulman or some other such person. They are out to get me.

I feel it standing, looking out the window.

I feel it as I chase Pawsley through the backyard.

I feel their eyes on the nape of my neck as I strain forward on my leash.

On my wet nose as I drink.

On my belly as I roll over for MR to pet me.

In my heart when I thrash in my dreams and Luco rests a paw on my forehead. He seems to feel we're kindred, but I know better. No one feels the way I do.

Which is a lonely existence, yeah, so maybe Lu has a point. Do you know what the Idiot calls him? Mr. Pawsley, he calls Luco "Groucho to the Max," which for a dog of his intellectual level is quite clever, don't you agree?

Yesterday when we were outside raising some kind of a ruckus (this is my friend Pawsley's dearest activity), I found one of those Cane Toads. I know someone put it there for me to taste in my mouth. I know someone was watching.

They watched as I foamed and wriggled. As I pawed my mouth and pressed myself into the dirt.

In truth sometimes it is comforting knowing that she or he or it or they are out there, plotting. It does make me feel less lonely. Funny how they'd go to the trouble with the toad though. Those guys are gross. Luco wrote a blog about them last year.

Anyway, the world is evil, blah blah blah, and I am all alone.

Save the company of Pawlsey. And of Luco I suppose.

Luco who says he sees in me something he understands. He asked me to list for him the things I fear. I'll give you a portion, reader, so you can see what we're up against with this. What I have to work through... Although sometimes I don't think it's a thing to be fixed, but rather that this is just how things are. Luco says I have an anxiety disorder, but how does he know? From whence came his doctoral degree?

Anyway, the list:

1) The MaulMan
2) Toads of all sorts
3) Poisonous toads
4) People walking by the house which oh my god why do they do that
5) Small things
6) Large piles of clothing
7) The computer and its seductive offer of connectivity which often really just makes me feel more alone; its connectivity which raises in me a profound alienation. A nameless sadness like a song lyric I cannot remember.
8) Creepers of all sorts
9) Gumby (he is altogether too bendable - how could one ever look at him and not cower?)
10) Making references to aspects of popular culture which have long ago ceased to be of import (I am a young dog with an old soul, friends, if any one of us can be said to have a soul)

There. That's about a tenth of my list. It just goes on and on and on and on and on and.

But Luco's right, right? To try to get me to face my fears? To get me to open up, trust, reach out to the animals around me and breathe deep of their breath and not shudder when they stroke my head?

And then there's Mr. Pawsley. I never saw myself with someone like him. With another dog so carefree and stupid. So deeply joyful every morning to wake up, to be let outside, to be given food, to be taken on a walk. One only must look into his eyes and see that joy burning there, a fiery, expansive happiness.

I mean, I've really never seen anything like it. Like him. And I've never felt comfortable with another animal before. Luco, by the way, is more of a creeper. He makes me feel.... restless. Agitated. Although that's really neither here nor there.

It's Pawsley who has started this small flame in my chest.

Would that he never snuffs it out.

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.

Luco & the New Dog

I do not have to tell you the life I lead is one of misery. You have known me long enough to see the anguish in my eyes, have you not? Can you feel the way it blisters inside me? Forced to hide behind a bathroom door, surrounded always only by those who despise me.

Oh, and how they must despise so fervently - so fervent is the prison guard in her loathing she never tires of conjuring new punishments, new torments.

I cannot think what I have done to cause this, to call forth this life (if one can be said to have ever called forth the life one inhabits. I believe this to an extent only - those who posit "the Secret" and snicker to themselves behind their palms horrify and sicken me).

What have I done, dog? Please, Mr. Pawsley, I can barely form sentences. You write this vile blog tonight. Take you up this torch.

Luco he sounds mad because of the other dog who lives here with me but not just in the bathroom where we go to get Luco when he is hiding in there like a big grouchy gus which is a kind of an annoyed person who doesn't want to say anything but complaining which is what Luco does most of the time I think. Except when he's sleeping!

Actually I heard him even complaining in his sleep the other day when he said aloud real loud in a mean voice "those are my cat treats!" but when I told him about that he said no that's not what he said. He said he woke his own self up from a dream when he "cried out" something more like "lo! Yonder fields are fair and green" which doesn't sound anything like treats but Luco can be the boss because he's in charge so I guess that's what he said but I don't really think that very muchly at all.

Anyway, that little pointy guy over there is another dog she's a girl her name is Lucy aka Big Pointy Face Dog aka The Scarecrow (my favoritest of her names) aka the Angry Dog aka One of the Two Jelly Dogs aka Lucy Lucy. I'll let her say hi now because I think she really wants to she's got that look in her eyes like she's about to say something and since Luco already left the room I don't even think he minds about it what can he say anyway?

Hello.

Are you dangerous? You look a bit dangerous. I will tell you this -  one must be careful. Very, very careful. For instance, there is a man who stalks the prison. He comes almost every day. I've gotten the sense of his scent and it's bad. He is called "The MailMan," but I imagine it must be short for something else. Perhaps I've misheard and really he's "The MaulMan." That makes more sense to me.
You see, I see him looking in at me. And I know he's going to drop off... things... Of an indeterminate nature. What things I cannot say. Weapons, probably, or poisons. Bills of course. You should hear The Prison Guard howl when she slits open his letters of malfeasance. "I can't pay this," she moans. And "where will the money come from?"

Not that she's a pauper by any means; she is, I think, a touch melodramatic. But it could be that The MaulMan has her in his clutches, and although she smiles, opens the door, and always says hello, she senses in her gut his evil. I've counseled her on this. We've had discussions.

For what could this MaulMan want but trouble? What other prize could he be after? I've hid the toys and their squeakers. I've dug holes in the yard to bury my every possession, and yet still he lingers. A villainous fellow if ever one I spied.

I worry he's made a key and will come in this prison as he pleases.

I worry he has a taste for dog-meat.

I worry he watches me, all sinew pumping as I run and run outside with the other dog, that Mr. Pawsley, my idiot friend.

I worry his nose is as good as his eyes for sniffing out dogs.

He'll pack us up in burlap and drive us into the night. Come back to the prison with bills and more bills. He'll harass and he'll hound and he'll weasel his way into something like the secret heart of my Prison Guard and her People.

I say my because she is. Mine.

And but hey, wait! This is the Slippy Pawsley dog and I have to say she's mine though too because I saw her first and I licked her face and chewed up her every shoe and socks too and I sleep next to her legs and when she looks at me then she gives me a treat and I love that so you can't write on here anymore, Scarecrow, and you can't have the all my things that you want to take from me and personally I like the MaulMan Mailman because he's nice I think it's that he smells like potato chips which I can eat and eat and he lets me have the salt on his hands and I like that because it's nice so that's really everything all that I think.

But also I like you Lucy Lucy and Luco doesn't but I think your barking is so loud and so fierce and that you're a force like lightning is and like the thunder is and if I could catch you I'd want to have you in my mouth because you'd also taste like salt and like dog food and also dog treats which are delicious things for me to snack on when I'm snacking and also it's nice to never feel alone with you and your loud face around that makes me comfortable and that I can chase and chase and show you my dead lizards and remember that day when we found a mole and we threw it into the air and it arched and sailed like a beautiful bird in the sky? Even like a vulture which is a bad bird but which is so very beautiful when it just hangs there like it doesn't even have to move like it just floats of its own gorgeousness.

I wish I could fly like that like more than I can when I'm running so fast to catch you in my teeth and bite on you and have you near me like I always want you to be. Can you be closer to me? Can you get any closer? How can I have you so near me but not near enough and I'll take all the space Luco doesn't want you in and I'll look into your beady eyes of brownness and goldenness and I'll love and love and love.

 

And love and love and love you.