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.

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.