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.

Happy Valentine's Day, Love Fremlin

Today I'm rather melancholy. It's Valentine's Day, but probably you already knew that? I woke up with a headache that echoes the ache in my heart. It's a pulsing kind of thing. A wind-in-the-leaves-that-keeps-you-up-at-night kind of thing. Fluttery all around and through my body.

I live in this storage room.

It's small, which I like, but lonely. So lonely. Sometimes at night when the-wind- in-the-leaves makes me anxious I pace around the house. Imagine myself a larger, more terrible animal.

A panther. Jaguar.

But who am I fooling? No one, reader, you're right. No one. Most days I stare through the cheap plastic of the Tubby Kat Door and dream myself free.

Free of dogs and of other cats. Free from the myriad bondages of my every day. The binding board of the laundry room door - it keeps me from company. From MR, from whomever. From my love, Mingus.

My valentine, Mingus.

The reason I weep as I write this: Mingus.

his eyes glittering

from across the room he stares

and won't reach for me

Oh, Mingus, for whom I write poetry.

And when I'm brave and I stick my head from the door like a turtle from the water it's just seconds before chaos slams me back. The cacophony of barking, screaming, traffic, singing, bass guitar, cooking, laughing...

It is too much. Too much for an admittedly elderly feline to tolerate. Yes, household, or as Luco would have it, prison - yes, I can stand you, but only in the night with the company of the sounds-of-leaves. Only when you are restful. Only when the dogs and all their humans sleep.

And yet. If I had an inkling, reader, a fragment of a hope that Mingus would return my sincerest affection I'd away to him in a moment.

Be at his side, leaning forward to lick his forehead. 

But it is not to be and it is not to be. It seems to me even that he prefers the company of that woman, that prison guard, that MR, to me. Like a dog he comes when called.

And so, do I want that in my life? I tell myself no. I tell myself to hold out for a cat more wise. A cat who is maybe just a bit into me. Who would tell me my stories are interesting and my manner charming.

A cat, in a word, who would adore me. Adore.

It seems the closest I get to this is to adore myself, and I cannot. A haiku for Fremlin:

the snap of my back

bleached out bones that compose me

domesticated

Oh, Valentine's day, how you mock and pester me. Materialistic, plasticine campaign to inform those-who-stir-in-the-night-at-the-sounds-of-leaves-through-trees that we are all, finally alone.

 

Alone and crumbling to ash.

 

Luco, Till Death

Is there anything that is forever except death? Is compassion eternal? Misery? Do we sit at our dining room tables, reflecting on whatever (Dostoevsky? The price of meat? Siblings? The incredible momentum of aging? Dancing with the Stars? The march of consumerism [as an aside, in papers the prison guard was grading, one student listed consumerism as a force that binds us together, and while I believe this true in possibly positive and most certanily negative ways, it was such a depressing moment for me. I thought Really? Consumerism: the avenue to holding hands in a world of peace and understanding]?); so we reflect on "whatever" and, but, for why?

How?

The dog in his most recent entry wondered if I would comment on what he wrote. Please forgive this protestation - it will be my only - Mr. Pawsley loves Mingus, and he loves food, and this is something he deigns to broadcast across the Internet as though it were a beacon guiding ships to shore?

My thoughts are often such as these when I sit at the dining room table. Sometimes I regard him with a fury surprising to me. Sometimes with a love even more so.

I digress and I digress and I digress. Forgive me. I was reflecting on the possibility of any sort of eternity. I have come to the conclusion eternity exists merely as an idea. A concept. A dearest wish breathed into the ether. A dream not told upon waking for fear its dissolution.

Eternity: I will love you forever. I will live forever. My memory of you and your kindnesses and your trespasseses and my own.

And this is not to speak of a heaven or a hell, although these also have weighed on me. It is trite, but I believe that in our brevity, in our inability to accurately keep that which we treasure, there is a singular beauty. What could be more precious than that which we will lose?

Which, then, means everything is singular, everything precious, because what do we lose but everything? Contradictory, because my aching back feels less than precious. Pernicious isms even less so. And, but then how can everything be precious? If everything is precious, then nothing precious. Nothing dear. Preciousness fingerprints on a mirror - seemingly unique, but more like every other than not.

A house. A life. Children. Parents. Trees. Hope. Other animals. All die when we do. All lost once we are lost, but in losing, and in our fear of losing, and in our ability to risk that-which-we-hold-most-dear?

Absolution.

The prison guard related to me a dream she had recently of her grandmother. In the dream the grandmother hugged her, saying "You don't look a day over 23," which was meant in the dream, the prison guard continued, to indicate the grandmother's forgiveness. Her love. Her abiding joy in her granddaughter.

The prison guard woke up crying, she said, missing this woman she hasn't seen since she was actually 23.

 

And so again how lovely that. How moving. I begrudge the prison guard her myriad cruelties, but, and as I have mentioned previously, I do not actively wish her harm. In honesty I wish her more dreams such as these.

I wish them for you, too, reader. Oh, how fleeting our moments of joy and redemption. How wonderful and how outside of language. Affirming, even, if one lets oneself peer inward to spinning double helixes where, perhaps, a grandmother sits, sipping iced sweet tea on a lounge chair by a pool, smiling and gesturing for the ghost-of-you to come closer. For your childhood to crouch, expectant, by her knees, reaching for her cup to take a drink.

Yes, we are capable of nightmares. Yes, some believe in things I do not understand and cannot fathom for their hatefulness. Yes, I have realized I am a cliche - cat on the Internet: oh, woe, woe, woe.

 And joy without limit.

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.

Luco & Gender Performance & the Dog

The dog brought up a relevant point in his last blog. A point I am unsure he actually meant to make, but make it he did, and so I am compelled to comment.

Perhaps you are familiar with Judith Butler. If you are not, I would advise you become so. She is one of those rare philosophers who captivates me; I must admit, reader, that most philosophers rather bore me and often even offend me, but not Butler. The work she has done with the concept of gender and on gender as performance have been, for me, life altering.

They have been life altering because of the awareness she breathed into me. In Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity she writes: "As much as drag creates a unified picture of "woman" (what its critics often oppose), it also reveals the distinctness of those aspects of gendered experience which are falsely naturalized as a unity through the regulatory fiction of heterosexual coherence. In imitating gender, drag implicitly reveals the imitative structure of gender itself - as well as its contingency. Indeed, part of the pleasure, the giddiness of the performance is the recognition of a radical contingency in the relation between sex and gender in the face of cultural configurations of causal unities that are regularly assumed to be natural and necessary" (Butler 175).

Butler states here elegantly what the dog, in his vast inelegance, got at with his "Dog in a Dress" entry. If gender is a thing which can be imitated, then it is itself a construct (albeit a construct we grip with locked fists and eyes streaming with tears for the "sanctity" of nature and/or of God). That the dog somehow came to this conclusion on his own, in a ridiculous dress no less, is a matter I find just a little depressing.

Or very depressing. Let us not pretend you do not know me, reader. Let us not cower behind convenient fictions. Oh, would I were a cat who could crow at the dog's accomplishment, but my heart recoils that he, with his bean brain, has come to this idea on his own. Without Butler.

Without any books at all.

Without even deeply considering the consequences and implications of his own, pure joy.

He is like a kitten (or rather like a puppy I suppose - I detest those creatures so!) who stumbles into a ball of yarn and mewls string theory at the ceiling fan. Sigh.

It is just that I work at this, reader. Do you identify with me? I work and I study and I research and I log onto the computer, read his blog, and the dog has come up with something akin to brilliance (I do not actually believe him capable of brilliance. This is deepest chagrin guiding my words).

Perhaps instead of reading tonight I will lie as he does on the couch and stare into space. Perhaps then I will be able to come up with something worthwhile to write about.

But I very much doubt that.

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?!

Happy New Year & Happy Birthday to the Blog, Love Luco

After re-reading my blog from last year at this time, I can say I am glad that I failed in that endeavor. It seems my wish from last year was one of denial; a gesture to ignore all that is difficult, all that is painful, all that tears at me. How ignoble. Easy.

Why was it my desire to forget, ignore? "I'm hereby holding myself accountable for my gloominess," I said. "For each time I've looked at that glass and called it half empty. In 2011, I'm going to do things differently. I'm going to stop worrying all the time..."

I disgust myself.

What kind of animal am I if my goal is thus? If it is to look away, hide my face behind my paws? Maybe it has been this year of blogging, maybe it has been the prison guard's ruthlessness, perhaps I can attribute it to Esteban, but this year no such wish tugs on my heart like so many feeder fish.

This year I cannot pretend the Great Pacific Garbage Patch does not exist. I cannot pretend the wars this country is engaged in are justifiable. That the platitudes espoused by politicians hold within them any kind of meaning. That the media is a lens through which we can clearly see the world we all inhabit.

I will not look away.

Because what kind of a life is one spent reshuffling reality into something more palatable? What do I gain by smiling at Mingus, Mr. Pawlsey, Fremlin as though we are free and happy creatures.

Which is not to say I believe joy has no place in my life. It is merely that happiness is not inherently better than sadness. When I am as mindful of this world as I can be, any joy I experience is all the sweeter. Here a moment of humanity (catity? There should be an synonym for felines) is altruistic in the most fundamental sense. 

The dog told me of a woman outside the prison guard's post office. She had a sign the prison guard did not deign to read. And she had a baby. After rethinking her actions and leaving the post office, the prison guard tried to give this woman some money. Charity. But the cops had arrived and chased her and the infant away. Oh, Boca Raton, oh, South Florida, oh our lives which entangle us and tear at us and the despair that could swallow me at these thoughts.

But to fully fall into that despair is something not within my genetic code. Yes, I am despondent, and I believe we all should be at some level, but to allow oneself to sink, to never begin kicking one's feet, to never try to burst through the surface of the water, gasping, choking on plastic - that is true failure. It is a failure of imagination, of empathy, and of character. We must struggle with the truth and then we must act. Even if in our lives our actions to reduce suffering seem minuscule. Even if the five dollars the prison guard wanted to give that woman and her baby would have only bought the woman a cup of coffee; these actions are worthwhile. They are what will make us worthy of this world and our privileged place within it.

I cannot speak for you of course, dearest reader, but I feel a fracture in my heart and I know I am not the same feline who began this blog. I cannot be.

I will not be.