Why is My Cat so Sad?

Luco, Desparate, Now Sleeps in the Closet

2012-03-01T06:47:00.004-08:00

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

2012-02-23T15:54:00.002-08:00

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

2012-02-14T07:39:00.000-08:00

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

2012-02-06T12:11:00.000-08:00

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.

2012-01-28T10:30:00.000-08:00

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

2012-01-19T18:17:00.000-08:00

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

2012-01-14T13:48:00.000-08:00

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

2012-01-02T08:37:00.000-08:00

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.

Merry Christmas 2011, Love Luco

2011-12-24T09:15:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

Are you finished?

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

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

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

Ah, did you not expect that adjective?

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

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

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

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

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

I feel Esteban knows this and forgives me it.

Even if I cannot forgive myself.

Donate?

2011-12-19T15:49:00.001-08:00

This is a worthy cause. I do not like dogs, but I do not want them to suffer needlessly.

Luco & the Luxury of Being Sad

2011-12-15T12:32:00.000-08:00

I have been thinking about the holidays: about the ubiquitous Christmas music (I know it is ubiquitous not because I am granted permission to venture out into the world, but because [oh, shame] the dog relates this news to me); the colored lights and balloon Santas I spy through partially opened blinds. It is Christmas. It is Hanukkah. It is Kwanzaa. Have I missed any? Is it also Winter Solstice? Holiday Dessert Decoration Day?

A time, they (who exactly is "they" and why do I count "them" some kind of authority? Perhaps "they" is shorthand for cultural/social expectations) say, for celebration. For the counting of one's blessings.

Ah, my blessings, let me count them now:

1) I am alive.
2) The prison guard provides me with materials to ensure my basic survival (see: disgusting and unnervingly uniform cat pellets, the prison itself as a "shelter," the litter box, etc.).
3) Other animals in this prison also exist.
4) I have a mind that can take me out of this prison (whether through thinking my way out or reading my way out, or sometimes, if the prison guard is so inclined, watching my way out through a movie - that sentence became rather more awkward as it progressed, did it not?).
5) My blog (which allows me a fleeting kind of freedom).

However, would it not be intellectually dishonest to ignore the opposite of my blessings? Ought not I count them as well?

Here my grievances, my anti-blessings, my miseries:

1) I am alive.
2) The prison guard provides me with materials to ensure my basic survival (and that is all. Innumerable the nights I have awoken, crazed, clawing at my own belly, bereft and lost).
3) Other animals in this prison also exist (and cause me endless torment - the idiocy of the dog [with which through this blog you have been made familiar, reader, so you know I do not exaggerate], the cuteness of Minugs and how everyone fawns over him as though he is some kind of precious, irreplaceable artifact, the vexatious nature of Fremlin [who, in truth, I should be closest to, as it does seem at times we share significant similarities, alas, it is never to be, she is, in a word, a grouch]).
4) I have a mind that can take me out of this prison but not for real. Because after the interesting thought experiment, enjoyable book, or wonderful movie, I am still here. Still trapped, seething. Still pacing the windowpane, looking out into the sparkling lights of the unattainable.
5) My blog which, yes, I will grant you this, provides some freedom. Which does, in fact, ameliorate some of these feelings of sadness and desperation; however, it is also a source of desolation because I know I have never said exactly what I wanted to say, and if I even came close, I did not say it in quite the way I wanted. I cannot ever capture in words these images, feelings, or thoughts that buzz through me like so many idiotic bumblebees. I cannot grasp the page or paragraph or sentence or even the word I wanted; it is forever out of my reach, and this blog serves as evidence of my myriad and inelegant failures.

So count your blessings or do not count your blessings. I cannot see the difference. Everything becomes at a certain moment completely negated. Does that make joy less relevant? Does that make anguish inspired less all-consuming?

No, it only means ambivalence eternal. Satisfaction, contentment impossible.

And I will also admit here that there is a certain luxury to my sadness. That, perhaps, if I was a working cat, out plowing a field or protecting my territory (how alike the words "terror" and "territory"), then I would not have time to be sad. I would lie down on my bed of leaves or grass or broken bottles or what have you and I would sleep the sleep of one who has labored. No time for insecurities such as these. Not a moment left for self pity

This knowledge of my privilege makes me feel only all the more depressed. All the more guilty. So I say to you, reader: be merry or be sad. Drink or do not drink. Eat or do not eat. Enjoy this holiday season or hate it. Do none of these things or all of them or some of them or do other things I have neglected to mention here.

Know that perhaps it is this ambivalence that allows us to appreciate our brief lives.

Happy holidays.

It's the End of the Semester for Luco too

2011-12-09T15:14:00.000-08:00

I thought I would let you know that the prison guard is suffering from surprise dentistry (that is to say, dentistry she neither expected nor desired. I know the prison guard well, however, and this is probably the only way for her to get dental work done, but that is of little consequence) and because of this surprise dentistry, she is rather more grumpy than usual. She is guarding the computer like the vigilant, over-active bully she is at heart. I only have moments to address you, reader.

Also, it is the very end of the semester, and I am helping her grade papers. Piles of papers.

I did not want you to think I had forgotten you or this blog or my commitment to detailing my interminable despair. I will be back next week. There is much I have to say about this rampant "holiday cheer."

I am as always so sorry to disappoint.

The Dog Loves Rap Music

2011-12-01T07:42:00.000-08:00

This is my new t-shirt can you read it it says RUN DMC which is a group like a rap fellowship of fellows who rap! Mary's friends got this shirt for me because when they look at me they want to give me things because I think they love me.

That's right, isn't it if you look at someone and then love them then you want to give them everything like a t-shirt or like pastry cream?

Pastry cream is so wonderful it is the same wonderful as a new shirt of a rap fellowship which is a word I learned today so that's why I'm using it I hope you can understand my vernacular which is another word I learned that I think is great especially because it starts with a v like very and v words are probably the best words for everyone to say and to think about.

V words I know: vernacular vest very vermilion (not what it means but the spelling of it) vermicelli (which is a delicious thing if you put some butter on it maybe) valley version vunderful...

Okay vunderful isn't really a v word it's a w word in disguise but I put it in there because I'm realizing I don't know that many v words which means maybe I don't know that many words which then how can I communicate?

How can I tell you how much I want pastry cream if I didn't have a word like very but is there a word like very that means more than that like more urgent but I can't think of one so I only get very and then maybe you don't really understand me oh no I'm pulling a Luco aren't I?

That's what Mingus and Fremlin and I call falling into a hole where everything seems so stupid and it seems like nothing will work out at all and it seems like there's no reason to continue whatever it was you were just doing that's pulling a Luco.

But the thing is Luco is usually wrong so I just have to remember that like Mingus and Fremlin said and not let myself get down they said to pull myself up by my bootstraps but maybe that was about something else like they want me to get a job I think but probably the idea applies.

At least I have my supercool t-shirt of the RUN DMC but hey wait Mary she put it on me wrong no one will be able to see the name of the fellowship on my t-shirt so is there a reason to wear it why oh why would she do this to me?

Wait. It's a Luco again, isn't it? I'm pulling one I can tell. I just need to focus. I need to say something like I remember now Mary's friends got me this shirt because they looked at me and then they loved me and they thought of me later so that's a really nice thing even if Mary is trying to spoil everything for me!

Mary, Mary, why ya buggin?

Happy Thanksgiving, Love Luco

2011-11-24T08:52:00.000-08:00

Good day to you or good night - I will not assume to know when you are reading this. Today, as I write, it is Thanksgiving day. Thanksgiving: the quintessentially American holiday; we over-eat and then eat more (and note that much of what we eat has been brutalized in ways "Consider the Lobster" does not brush against lightly with even the barest of fingertips), and then we stay up late to stand in lines inside our tents (and I do not know about you, but I am struck by the visual parallel between the OWS movement and the lines of people waiting for the doors of the mall to open like Abraham waiting for god to stay his hand); we wait inside our tents so that we can purchase things we do not need and will not appreciate (and, of course, most of these goods are produced by people who we consume in similar ways to the turkeys).

I say we, but I mean you.

What I mean to say is, even if I wanted to do these things (I am not ready to speculate on what various joys and despairs might take over me as I walked down aisle after aisle of electronics, clothing, toys, and home goods), I can not. The prison guard a) will not let me out of this prison and b) does not eat meat.

She does not eat meat?

What is this? "Quorn Turk'y Roast?" I will say only this: here is one food that I do not necessarily covet. Globular fake meat. Yum. And I would like to note that this fake meat is not vegan, so does this indicate that she cares less for cows and chickens? The turkey is to be spared, but, hey! Cows and chickens are jerks? (On a related note, abuses at a factory chicken egg producer have been noted in recent press. Here is an article: ABC News on chicken abuse)

I am speaking rather tongue in cheek, in case you could not tell, and I am not really one to speak here. I love meat. I would eat copious amounts of it if the prison guard would let me. I simply do not like the idea of avoiding confrontation with reality.

Apologies for my digression.Please note that I do not mean to suggest these problems are your fault or even the prison guard's fault (although let not this statement indicate her innocence in other affairs!), but I do believe we as living creatures must face difficult truths.

In an essay titled "Some Proximity to Darkness," from David Griffith's book A Good War is Hard to Find: The Art of Violence in America he writes: "Pain destroys language, such that the person is negated and the world surrounding them is slowly 'unmade,' discounted. If we think of the photos and images of the violated and tortured [he is speaking specifically of the Abu Ghraib photographs here, but his ideas can be applied to images like these in general] in this way, as memorializing the negation of humanity and the incremental undoing of the world, then we are closer to understanding the stakes of bearing witness. There is no closure when we look away, only unremitting pain and anguish" (83).

So let us look at the tradition we celebrate and how we celebrate it. Let us remember the genocide that shaped our past and continues to shape us today. Let us look at what we eat with an unflinching honesty. Let us work to understand the world in which we live; the power we allow corporations and the corrupt to have over us. Let us grapple with the OWS movement and the ways in which it has been "dealt with" by the police and the government. Let us, as we stand in line or huddle in our tents, acknowledge the privileges we are granted based on race, ethnicity, sex, location, species.

And let us try to begin to understand the suffering of the poorest who toil and become ill and love each other and fight and die and who create the goods we are encouraged to buy tonight and tomorrow.

I am not saying that I have an answer or a plan of action. I am a cat. Living my own imprisoned life is, for me, an already arduous task.

And I know the same is true for you. You have a family. Work. Responsibilities. It is more likely than not that very many people depend upon you.

But we should not allow our focus to remain so steadily pointed to our own lives. We need to look up and around us and see what is happening in our world. We need to look up even if only for a moment.

Even if only to immediately then drop our faces in shame and despair.

Slippy Loves Emma

2011-11-19T12:38:00.000-08:00

Hello to you! I think you probably have been missing me because I haven't said anything to you for like some long time and so I asked Luco could I please please write a blog and he said "If that is what it will take to achieve a moment of solitude, then yes, dog, fine." I wrote what he said verbatim because first he told me the word verbatim and second he said he hates it when I misrepresent him. I know what a miss is and what a present is but I can't think of them together. Again?

So okay! I wanted to tell you about someone who's my special adorable doggy friend who has a name that's called Emma!

I don't get alienated (which is what Luco says which I think means like feeling like an extraterrestrial) but sometimes if maybe I start to feel sad then I think about Emma and everything is better like if Mary gave me some butter covered pieces of steak or like a cheese plate but with no grapes though because apparently grapes would kill me so dead I'd never want to go on a walk again - at least I think that's death but because only I can't think of anything worse than no walking and not eating steak pieces covered in butter.

This is us after we wrestled. We were tired and panting and my tongue was always all the way out of my mouth my teeth tasted like Emma's fur and her spit because I love her so much.

She is if you think about something that makes you happy then that's what she is. She is probably like if you got to eat ham every day each time in the morning.

It looks like we're fighting and I'm really fierce at fighting something like if you saw a bull charging at you in the face that's probably how Emma felt but we're only play fighting so it's not real fierce but Emma knows that because she understands me.

I think Luco needs to have an Emma someone like her who you can look at their eyes and maybe they wink or they don't wink but it's like they did wink and when I look at Emma she's winking at me because we get each other and we support each other I think through thick and thin but that hasn't been tested yet like it's not a verified theory but I think it would come true even if I didn't wish it on a star even if it wasn't the first star in the evening if I did wish it. We already have each other like glitter in glue on a piece of paper.

Here it looks like I'm eating her but I'm not but her throat is delicious and great. Maybe Luco should also hang from her throat like this and swing and feel free and wild like a wild animal which is really what we all are if you think about it. I told Luco that and he said I was acting like a philosopher which is someone who philosophizes which means they think a lot about deep and interesting subjects such as hanging from Emma's neck and not feeling like an alien and not feeling alone.

Haha! Philosophy is great just like a pizza or like an Emma!

Luco & Melancholia

2011-11-17T17:26:00.000-08:00

Did you see Lars von Trier's movie Antichrist? If not, and if you have a strong constitution, it is a worthy endeavor to view this film. However, it is, well, bleak (and that is a determination of "bleak" coming from me). Some critics have accused von Trier of being misogynistic due to aspects of plot and characterization in Antichrist. After viewing it, I had to agree. Well, and I mean, did you see Dogville? Breaking the Waves? Women do not often fare well in von Trier films. They do not often thrive.

As a feline feminist (it is my hope that the preciousness of that title does not take away from the seriousness of what I am about to say), I have struggled with my own ambivalence regarding von Trier; I have both deeply loved and deeply hated his work. Melanchola, his new movie, pushed me up on the gradient nearer "love."

Melancholia is also centered around women, but it leaves me with a sense of von Trier's delicate misanthropy (as opposed to misogyny - what I mean is, at least in Melancholia both women and men act badly and are punished). That is to say, he seems to be in possession of a hatred of humanity (and really all life) that also acknowledges moments of tenderness. "I hate you so much sometimes" will be followed by a scene of sisters holding hands.

I do not know how familiar you are with this movie, but it is at its heart an end-of-the-world film. It is humorous to me because the prison guard and her husband have been watching the Nova series "The Fabric of the Cosmos." This series is about space and time and spacetime and the universe. In short, it makes a happy bedfellow to Melancholia.

Why, you ask, do I lay them down together in the same queen sized bed, gently tucking in a feather comforter around them before climbing up and sleeping in between their legs?

Because both deal with possibilities. Grapple with what it means to be alive. The skewed ways in which we see ourselves; the skewed ways we see the world around us.

The episode of "The Fabric of the Cosmos" we watched last night was called "The Illusion of Time." The host, Brian Greene, posits that theoretically all time exists at once - there is no real separation between past, present, and future; they all happen concurrently. We see life like an "arrow of time" - as progressing forever forward - perhaps due to the nature of entropy. We see ourselves and our world moving always from order to disorder.

And Greene suggests time travel possible. This fills me with an immeasurable amount of wonder, but I will save my ode to time travel for another entry (allow me, quickly, to note that I believe time travel to be one of the most romantic and intriguing ideas ever).

This idea of time fits into the movie Melancholia in many ways, the most relevant of which seems to me to be the way we perceive time as we experience trauma.

The world seems to slow. We become aware of everything around us. The click of the air conditioner, the tapping of a coworker's keyboard, the dim music suddenly discernible as a car tumbles by our street.

And Melancholia seems to suggest that different people deal with death/disaster/disappointment (if you'll excuse the alliteration), in different ways, some better equipped to cope with loss than others. It even seems to argue that a depressed person is best fit to contend with tragedy. A depressed person will not lie to herself. She understands life inherently meaningless.

She already wishes herself erased. Dreams expanses of void.

What does it mean for me that Lars von Trier arguably proves with his movie that the depressed creature is the best suited to life and to death?

It means I am the champion, my friend.

Mingus Hates Music

2011-11-08T16:50:00.000-08:00

Luco is busy reading toady. He said he wants to get through all of 100 Years of Solitude and I told him, "dude, you're already living that book!" Was that slight amusement I saw curving his lips, or was I making it up because, man, a creature who is never, ever amused lives a sorry existence, amirite? And for some reason I don't quite get, I don't want that for him.

So, anyway, you're stuck with me on this entry. I hope it's not ruining your day. Luco said to say whatever I want, to like talk about something important to me, so here goes.

I hate music.

No, really. I know I'm not supposed to. It's supposed to lift the soul, etc. etc. Music is otherworld. Blah blah blah. Was it Longfellow who said "music is the universal language of mankind?" Nevermind I'm not of "mankind," I'm alive and cognizant enough to count, right? As someone who could understand, if there was such a thing, a universal language?

Maybe Longfellow wouldn't think so.

But anyway, to me music's just this totally annoying cacophony, and nothing else.

The prison guard, or MR as I call her, sits down at this organ and I shiver. I groan. I tear from the room like it's about to fill with water.

I don't know why I do this. Was it some kittenhood trauma? Perhaps just an aversion to melody and harmony? A deep set hatred for the pentatonic scale? I have more questions than answers, but I do know this: I cannot stand the sound. Not soft music, slow music, loud music, emotional music, experimental music (especially!) - no kind of music would I ever describe in the terms I hear music described.

My definition:
Music [myzoo-ick], also pronounced [crap]
(noun)
1. A series of loud noises signifying impending doom.
2. Tones of horror or dread sounded to signify impending doom.
3. Works of random sounds played all together to signify impending doom.
4. A signal of impending doom.

I'm sorry. You're probably a music lover. Maybe classical, rock, hip hop, country, organ.... But to me it all sounds like that freezing moment of terror that icicles its way through my body, starting somewhere in my mouth and traveling down and through me, so that I know only I am going to die. And unlike Luco, I don't actually enjoy thinking about my own death. I'd rather think about pretty much anything else, honestly, hey, I'd even rather read 100 Years of Solitude, even though it sounds like the most depressing book ever written (which is probably why Luco's enjoying it so much - he claims it's not really that sad, but I don't believe him).

That's why, in these pictures, although perhaps I look like I'm posing (I'm told I always look like I'm posing), what I'm really doing is trying to kill this organ. If I could just break it, then MR would never be able to play it again. And perhaps I could relax!

Get some sleep. Then maybe the visions implanted in my brain could still remain....

Within the sounds of silence?

Consider Halloween, Love Luco

2011-10-31T14:32:00.000-07:00

Probably I at one point did something horrible enough to warrant this lobster costume. I do not know what though. I have been trying to remember this entire day. What did I do?

I made fun of Fremlin for not being able to jump up onto the bed, but she cannot jump up onto the bed; it is not as though I made up a cruel or false rumor about her - I simply noted her behavior and faithfully reported it to everyone else in the prison.

I told Mingus that he was a jerk, but this was because after being shut up in the guest room with him (the prison guard now refers to it as the "Cat Room" with much derision) I realized that he is pretty much a jerk.

The dog I treated like I have always treated the dog, which I will admit is not perhaps as nice or patient or as thoughtful as one creature could treat another, but really? He is a dog. I do not believe there is a living being that would not enjoy taunting him at least every now and then.

A lobster suit, if you have never had the pleasure, is not very comfortable - the fabric is a "soft" felt, but feels more like an "itchy" felt: it is an itchy, uncomfortable, hot, and heavy felt. Basically a lobster suit is sub par. Perhaps sub, sub par. Sub, sub, sub?

I must admit there is something I love about this holiday, however. There can be found joy in taking on another's identity, if, that is, the other's identity is not a lobster.

Yes, I will go ahead and address this now; I have read David Foster Wallace's "Consider the Lobster." Honestly I believe all that lives experiences pain (rotting branches the source of countless nightmares) - all that lives is at a fundamental level (perhaps I should say cellular?) of the same stuff. We are equals, you and me and the dog and the pathetic lobster. Allow me to bring in my favorite moment from his essay (you can read the entire essay here: http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2004/08/consider_the_lobster?currentPage=1):

In any event, at the [Maine Lobster] Festival, standing by the bubbling tanks outside the World’s Largest Lobster Cooker, watching the fresh-caught lobsters pile over one another, wave their hobbled claws impotently, huddle in the rear corners, or scrabble frantically back from the glass as you approach, it is difficult not to sense that they’re unhappy, or frightened, even if it’s some rudimentary version of these feelings …and, again, why does rudimentariness even enter into it? Why is a primitive, inarticulate form of suffering less urgent or uncomfortable for the person who’s helping to inflict it by paying for the food it results in? I’m not trying to give you a PETA-like screed here—at least I don’t think so. I’m trying, rather, to work out and articulate some of the troubling questions that arise amid all the laughter and saltation and community pride of the Maine Lobster Festival. The truth is that if you, the Festival attendee, permit yourself to think that lobsters can suffer and would rather not, the MLF can begin to take on aspects of something like a Roman circus or medieval torture-fest.

Does that comparison seem a bit much? If so, exactly why? Or what about this one: Is it not possible that future generations will regard our own present agribusiness and eating practices in much the same way we now view Nero’s entertainments or Aztec sacrifices? My own immediate reaction is that such a comparison is hysterical, extreme—and yet the reason it seems extreme to me appears to be that I believe animals are less morally important than human beings;²⁰ and when it comes to defending such a belief, even to myself, I have to acknowledge that (a) I have an obvious selfish interest in this belief, since I like to eat certain kinds of animals and want to be able to keep doing it, and (b) I have not succeeded in working out any sort of personal ethical system in which the belief is truly defensible instead of just selfishly convenient.

²⁰ Meaning a lot less important, apparently, since the moral comparison here is not the value of one human’s life vs. the value of one animal’s life, but rather the value of one animal’s life vs. the value of one human’s taste for a particular kind of protein. Even the most diehard carniphile will acknowledge that it’s possible to live and eat well without consuming animals.

That he treats the subject of lobsters with such depth of thought is not enough to make me want to dress up as one. Although he makes some good points.

I wish I was a nobler cat who could understand the value of a lobster suit, of its itchiness and its connection to my underwater brethren.

But why did the prison guard pick this costume? This sea-roach as they are oft referred to? Since I cannot think of a truly horrible offense I have committed (unless it was unknowing), I must come to the conclusion that she is a sadist. Simple.

I believe her actions must to be part of a series of humiliations which will end in what, I do not know. First she locked me in this house, never to let me out. Then she got the other cats. Then the dog. Then the dog was allowed Outside. And now she dresses me as a lobster. Oh, shame! How unending and how I blister at its touch.

And yet I pity the lobster I also despise (and only despise today! And only because I am forced into this clown's costume). Who looks at a lobster and thinks it (her? Him?) beautiful except as something that is beautiful-to-eat.

Who could love a lobster but to consume her?

And everywhere they are locked in glass prisons, claws pinched tight together, sad little bead eyes.

I am the lobster.

The lobster me.

The Trench of Luco's Despair

2011-10-27T07:32:00.000-07:00

Hello, dear friend. I apologize for my absence, but you see, and as I informed you a couple weeks ago (how long ago now! How swift time!), the prison guard decided to have major plumbing work done. The other cats and myself were confined to a cramped spare bedroom for something akin to three weeks (I am no careful scientist, no objective observer, plus she did not leave me with any way of keeping track of time, perhaps in just one more cruel bid to disorient and discomfit me). The above picture is the last you will see of this flooring.

It is also the last you will see of that picture on the floor there. Do you spy it? A self portrait by non other than the prison guard. They say she painted it as a child, but I harbor serious doubts on the veracity of that assertion.

Regardless, welcome back, etcetera. Make yourself comfortable while I take you on a journey of despair - plumbing despair.

The first trench. This started just outside the bathroom door. Do you see the little bridge across? Safe. The prison guard and her husband eventually just stayed in a motel from what I have been able to put together. Please note the sand and dust. I had dreams - nightmares - every night. Terror overtook that sand fleas rained a torrent over me. Constantly awaking itchy. Uncomfortable.

Mingus was able to escape one night and he ran along the trench. I could hear the prison guard yelling "Help me! He's going to get outside" or some such nonsense. What did she think - was he going to tunnel his way through the trench?

Perhaps that is what she thought. Perhaps she believes him a mole in her house. Better than the way I am convinced she sees me - a poison, an infection, infestation - someone to be waved away and ignored. Please excuse me a moment. No, I am not weeping.

Here is a final shot of some of the destruction. A pretty significant trench, no? Here you can also see the second bridge - the one the prison guard crossed when she visited us every day to feed us and clean the litter box. Once. A. Day. No more, no less.

I suppose her dedication to the dog is to be excused as he is a simple creature, unable to care for himself - is this what I am supposed to think?

Did she supply us with dust masks? No. Would I have worn them if she had? No, but still, it would have been a nice gesture.

Living for weeks in the closed up room I got to know the other cats better. A shame. I used to be able to tolerate them. There is nothing like enforced, close proximity to one's roommates to make one really appreciate solitude. And I must say any good feelings I had for the dog seem to have pretty much evaporated.

Look at him. The monster. His face so grotesque. His deer legs. Floppy little ears.

Well, he is a sort of adorable, I guess. I am not saying I missed him, but after the company of the cats, it is rather a pleasure to get a break. To speak to someone who would not say, as Mingus did, "I'm like so totally over you, dude. You never shut up."

The dog doesn't say things like that, even if only because he does not know the words and/or he does not understand the phrase.

Life is back to normal. Mostly. Although now there is a river of poured cement running through the house where the trench was. And now I am feeling old, sentimental. Rather free.

How long does contentment last?

How brief a respite this?

Plumbing, prison, and persimmons (not really)

2011-10-05T14:50:00.000-07:00

You may have noticed I did not blog last week. The prison is undergoing major plumbing work, and I am trapped in one bedroom. I do not have access to the computer. I do not have access to the camera.

And so I write you now, briefly, sadly, to say I do not know when I will be better able to update you on my intense and unending despair. Nevertheless, please know that each and every moment I exist is a moment spent in a great amount of anguish. Please leave comments here imploring the prison guard to change her frozen heart.

Perhaps later this week I will be able to tell you more. Perhaps not. Life is a mystery, is it not? And a painful one at that.

I shudder here, trapped with Mingus and Fremlin, and no amount of crying at the door will move the prison guard's hard heart to let me out. Let me out!

Mingus, Mr. Pawsley, and Halcyon Dreams

2011-09-19T18:03:00.000-07:00

Luco said I could write on this thing. Something about feeling too morose to get out from under the bed. Whatever, right? Some of us have real problems.

I have a habit of chasing what the people here call "bed mice." I know there are not real mice in the bed. I understand that it's just their fingers wiggling under the sheets. But I can't help myself.

When I see that jerky movement, I know the bed mice must be mine.

Guess who also loves bed mice. Just guess.

I'm on here too because this is where I live in this place and if Mingus does a thing I get to do it too! Like the bed mice which I think if I could catch them they'd taste like salt probably and something else maybe I never had before. So when Mingus looks for bed mice then so do I. I call it riding on his wave of fortune.

No I don't! Ha! Did I fool you? That's what Luco says I do which I don't know what a wave is but I bet it's delicious. This picture is me getting ready to chomp chomp into some bed mice invaders that would love it in my mouth!

Yeah, the dog is the animal who also loves bed mice. Are you surprised? Sigh. I've worked my whole life to catch these things - fingers. I've spent sleepless nights trying to find the mice - fingers. And so many hours imagining sinking my teeth into their rodent heads - fingers. I'm sorry. When I get passionate, it's hard to stay rational. Yes, I know, I know, they are people's hands. But the way they move is just so seductive. I can't look away. I can't not try and try to capture them.

What a world that would be, huh? A world where the bed mice are real and the blood in my mouth is from them? I can't really even believe in such a place. It's irreconcilable with my own world. It would be like living Outside but getting let back in sometimes. Inconceivable.

Although.... I hear there is going to be plumbing work done in the bedroom. With a trench dug through the floor. Perhaps then the mice will come crawling into my house. Perhaps then I will taste their blood and chew their sweet flesh. Halcyon dream.

I've been telling you but you won't listen because you're obstinate which is a thing like stubborn but it sounds better and so you are delusional which means you don't know what you're talking about Mingus! Bed mice are real. All you have to do is just keep on believing in them and then when you bite down you bite down into them into their soft bony bodies and when their blood fills your mouth it's a celebration like the biggest party in town ever and everyone gets to come except Luco if he's being a jerk.

Look into my eyes. You're getting sleepy. Now you're hypnotized. The bed mice are real! They're real!

I don't think hypnosis works like that, Mr. Pawsely. First you need to swing a watch or something. Or get a spinny thing. But listen. Why do you have to encroach on that which I love? Why do you try to wrest from me a simple, deep pleasure?

I look at you and wonder how you manage to bring such misery to this place. How do you do it, dog? Mr. Pawsley? Please answer me. I need to know.

You're being a jerk like Luco! I do a thing because I love it and you love it too so why can't we share it and get closer and be buddies until time melts our faces off? I want to have fun with you and do the things you like to do. I want to give you my stuff too like yummy cat vomit I saved for you to have it's from you first so I'm giving it back it tastes like wonderfulnes.

So share with me and be my friend.

Or I'll eat all your cat food.

Luco 9/11

2011-09-11T09:02:00.000-07:00

Oh, pardon me. I know you are probably busy watching the 9/11 circus of despair, but some of us have work to do. Papers to grade. Stories to read. Information to gather and process.

You have caught me in what the other animals in this house might term a mood. As in "try to keep away from Luco, he's in a mood," (whispered by Mingus to the dog as I passed them in the hall).

A mood? Do these animals never suffer a weak moment? Have they never read 8,000 short essays and wanted to throw themselves from a bell tower?

Probably not, I suppose, otherwise they might be more forgiving.

This is not to imply that I do not enjoy my work. Verily I do, but sometimes one's eyes blur and burn. Sometimes one is overtaken with an exhaustion born of detail and attention.

Are you reading this with the television on in the background? I imagine (the prison guard is a snob who lives sans television) a series of people presenting stories of where they were that day. I imagine tears. Hand wringing. A collective murmur of discontent.

And then the patriotism. Jingoism. A belligerency culled from grief. They chant we are the greatest nation. We are god's chosen nation.

I cannot believe that.

Have these weeping crowds never read a historical work? Have they forgotten any pertinent dates or names they might have learned so many years ago?

Grading these quizzes, reading these stories, I am reminded of all who are similar to me. I am reminded of the student I was and continue to be. Of the flaring love embedded in my bones - I ache with it, osteoporosic, if you will allow me.

Claiming to be the greatest nation, claiming to be the shining and chosen does not better us. I also believe it cheapens tragedy. We weep because we watch ourselves weeping on the television in an endless loop of that belligerency.

I feel I should not need to say this, but I want to, as the dog says "cover my bases." Of course 9/11 is horrific. Of course it is painful and difficult and important. And the people who died were innocent, participants of legend. I do grieve for those we lost.

But my hands shake with fury as I write this. Perhaps the greatest tragedy of memorialization?

Insipid writing commemorating the dead.

Dog Sushi

2011-09-09T11:40:00.000-07:00

Hello! Luco let me on this time because he said he felt bad for making me cry and he said also that he wanted to document the "travesty" (I don't know what that means but I think it means like maybe a tragedy) that happened to him. But I think that what happened was great so don't just listen to Luco. You know how he is he's a grouch amirite?

It happened the other day when my grandmom came over and she is my grandmom I don't care what you say about species which is a thing that I know (other things I know: I am a canine and Luco is a feline. Mary is a human and so is my grandmom who is also very great - this is some of what I know for sure today).

She came over for dinner and they all bought dinner and they bought something for me too can you guess what they got me (did you read the title of this thing or are you super lazy like some other animals - I mean Fremlin here. That cat is always either sleeping or hiding or sleep-hiding)?

It was sushi! Which I know what that is now! Do you know what sushi tastes like? It tastes like cream cheese and like rice (I never didn't already love rice so much) and seaweed which is a weird green sticky thing. I like sticky things because they stick to your teeth and you can scare Mingus. He calls you Moss Mouth when you do that because it's so funny.

It had also some pink in the middle which is I guess salmon. That's a fish.

I didn't really like that part.

For instance if I had to choose between salmon and my hamburger toy? I would pick my toy. But that's just one example and anyway the rest of the sushi was perfect like everything delicious. It tasted salty and sweet and it was sticky like I said and also soft in my mouth for chewing.

I love dog sushi. I love my grandmom. I feel so much better now than I did that other day when I wrote this and said I felt bad. Luco feels better too. But I'll let him to you himself. Thanks for listening to the dog. Dog out!

It is true. I felt dismay that I had so affected the dog. Perhaps the Luco of some months ago would not have been drowning in guilt, but change is life, is it not? And so here find evidence of my drastic metamorphosis.

Please do not misconstrue. I would not enjoy spending a day with the dog, it is just that I do not wish to cause him unnecessary pain. Life is already so unnecessarily painful. So.

I invited him to "write" here because I wanted you to be given primary evidence of this grave injury I have suffered. Yes, the prison guard's mother-in-law came over, and yes, the family had dinner, and yes, they obtained sushi for the dog. Dog sushi.

Did they procure anything for us, as the dog can now say, felines? Please excuse my uneasy laughter - of course they did not. There was no sashimi for Luco (my favorite is tuna). No sushi for Mingus. No maki roll for Fremlin.

Is it because we do not bark and bite and jump in their faces? I would have thought they'd realize this a gift and thus treasure us all the more, but apparently this is my own naïveté.

They gave me the dog-slobbered salmon. The salmon refused by the dog, handed to me on a paper towel (where is the wedding china? The cloth napkin?). I tried to refuse to eat it. I averted my eyes as long as possible.

But then the pungent loveliness of the salmon hit me and I could not stop myself. I eat with a ferocity born of my own impotence.

It was delicious. The best tasting thing I have ever eaten.

I ache for it now, that taste. That texture. My mouth salivates just thinking of it. What must I do to eat this again? How to obtain this heaven? This salmon? I would give nearly anything.

However, it is of no matter. The dog does not like salmon. He refused it,

so they will never purchase salmon again.

Why Do We Even Ever Do Anything?

2011-08-31T14:49:00.000-07:00

Hello! It's been a long time since I got on here and I talked to you so I thought I'd get on this computer and see if it's logged on and it is! So here I am!

Before I was writing this though I was reading Luco's blogs and I can't understand them totally but what I do understand makes me wonder about some things like why doesn't the taste of meat make him happy and why does he feel so sad all the time even though that's what this blog is I guess for but who knows!

Especially the last blog there confused me because who would think we live more than one time that makes no sense because it's silly. I tried to talk to him about it but he was so like arrogant (which is a word that I know means like a bully looking down on you) and still what he said made me feel worse.

Then I thought maybe it's a thing to wonder about how many times we live because we die and I listened to that "Stupid Cat" song (I can do quotation marks because I know what they are) and in that song the guy is talking for the cat and he says "I don't even know I'm gonna die."

So he's making fun of animals?

And we only live one time?

That means I won't always be getting pets? Or getting to eat the delicious grass which tastes like something got poured all over it that tastes good? Or chasing Luco around the house? Or tearing shoes apart (I hate shoes so much! They cover up feet I could lick and I hate that!)?

If I can't get to do everything I ever want to do or even most of it then why should I ever even do one thing? Why wake up?

Stupid Luco is like a cold I got one time and now I feel sick. I shouldn't have let him teach me how to read and write.

Mingus says that living is okay because it means you get to live which I guess I understand but I feel so depressed. I don't want to talk to Luco anymore. He's confusing and sad making. Even this beef jerky thing I'm eating that tastes so good (and that's getting all over the keyboard and I won't let Luco have any) isn't helping.

I don't want to die.

Or hang out with Luco.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being Luco

2011-08-26T08:54:00.000-07:00

As a kitten I read The Unbearable Lightness of Being, by Milan Kundera, and while I loved the book (especially the sections between Tereza and animals), I never fully grasped the philosophical concepts behind it. Kundera writes: "Einmal ist keinmal, says Tomas to himself. What happens but once, says the German adage, might as well not have happened at all. If we have only one life to live, we might as well have not lived at all" (8). This struck me as strange at the time. Why would it matter if I only existed once? And even in juxtaposition with the Nietzschean concept of eternal return, I struggled.

Kundera writes (on the first page, no less): "The idea of eternal return is a mysterious one, and Nietzsche has often perplexed other philosophers with it [at the very least I was in good company, it seems, with my confusion]: to think that everything recurs as we once experienced it, and that recurrence itself recurs ad infinitum! What does this mad myth signify?" (1).

So the Nietzchean concept is itself a bit difficult. As a kitten, I wondered why he would posit such a theory, and of course, being a kitten (and a rather lazy one at that, I am ashamed to admit), I did not look his ideas up. I did not try to grapple with why he would say such a thing. This likely loosened my grasp on the concepts underpinning the work.

Kundera continues on the concept of eternal return: "Putting it negatively, the myth of eternal return states that a life which disappears is but a shadow, without weight, dead in advance, and whether it was horrible, beautiful, or sublime, its horror, sublimity, and beauty mean nothing" (1).

As a kitten I was plagued with the question why. Why would something happening ad infinitum or only the once dictate that it holds meaning or not? Why would so much rest upon the simple numerical reality of life?

As a very, very young kitten I believed each life lived was itself precious simply because it existed. And I thought each creature blessed.

Perhaps you can guess my adult feelings on these subjects. Perhaps you are even now in your living room, bedroom, office, coffee shop, car (although this is dangerous, reader! Please do not read and drive) nodding your head, sighing to yourself, saying something akin to Yes, Luco, of course, it somehow makes you sad, does it not? It has somehow caused you to spill into this vast depression you chronicle as weathermen and women detail the progression of storms.

Do you think this, reader? Do you come close to the minuscule flicker of a flame that is my mind? Do you feel its small heat as I write to you, desperate, alone?

Although I suppose whether or not you understand me is not of import. Allow me to return to Kundera, he has just been discussing a Robespierre who occurs again and again (he has a significant mass) in contrast to a Robespierre who only happens once (he becomes light, theoretical, even malleable): "Let us therefore agree that the idea of eternal return implies a perspective from which things appear other than as we know them: they appear without the mitigating circumstance of their transitory nature. This mitigating circumstance prevents us from coming to a verdict. For how can we condemn something that is ephemeral, in transit? In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine" (4).

Who am I in the genealogy of all cats before me? I am less than a shadow of my mother who is less than a shadow of her mother who is less than a shadow in an evolutionary hall of mirrors where everything reflects back except my own face, because it is my own face that is in the process of disappearing. And the reflections of my biological cohorts are softened, skewed by memory, history, amnesia - in addition to this, I see them through my subjectivity which shouts to me this specific trait is most important and so I see, for example, my mother's calico coat and not her sad, green eyes.

The prison guard left herself logged onto one of her myriad social media accounts (I was not snooping, reader, I assure you), and actually, this was the little vine that grew into my post. She and a friend were discussing this book (briefly! Superficially! Had she even read it?) and the friend asked What becomes of what never was once?

What is the weight of a thing that has never happened? The weight of my own freedom. The weight of a life sans le chien. The weight of a prison guard whose rapt attention is only always focused on me. The weight of a Mingus whose love is for me exclusively. The weight of an entire world who listens closely to my asinine lament and responds with care and concern. The weight of being understood. The weight of meaningfulness.

I believe the weight of that which never has yet occurred is negative. It is an insistent tug on the hem of life. It is constantly beckoning experience. It says do this and you will be happy. It is a siren call. It is more real than that which has happened, is happening, and will happen because it contains the intensity of our longing. It is urgency itself.

Unless, of course, it occurs, and then it means nothing.

Luco Responds to Anonymous

2011-08-19T18:00:00.000-07:00

I would like to take a moment to assure you that I am not dead; it is just that the prison guard was away on vacation, and I do not know how to turn on the computer.

This blog will be a response to a post from "Anonymous." Anonymous (henceforth, A) commented on my blog about the movie Into Eternity. S/he gave me a very thoughtful, detailed response, so I thought I would return the favor. If you would like to read her/his comment in its entirety, you can find it here: http://whyismycatsosad.blogspot.com/2011/07/luco-at-onkalo.html. First A said:

"You wrote: 'If we cannot think our way to an answer, what hope is there for us?'

Are you serious? Do you seriously believe that the mind of humanity is so powerful that we can answer with reason questions and solve with reason problems that our territoriality, Promethean itchiness, fear, insecurity, greed, and anger created? These are not mind problems, they are heart, soul, and community problems. They are problems that arise from our alienation from the fabric of life that sustains us, the ancestors (including other than human) who were our predecessors, the myriad lives that die so we may live even when we're not out blowing holes in the fabric of life."

Yes, A, I am serious. It was thinking that got us where we are now, and I heartily believe it will be thinking that gets us out of it (if that is even possible at this point - my blog post should have made clear my misgivings on this subject). I believe, A, that you are confusing human thought in general with a Westernized, patriarchal kind of thinking - the kind of thinking that says convenience and power are gifts from a God who decreed long ago that humanity in general, and male humanity specifically, basically that MAN is descended from God and therefore all is owed to him. Perhaps it would be more accurate to write HIM.

This kind of philosophy has no time to read blogs from cats who are sad.

A continues:

"If you are addicted to human control, then I'd say that you are part of the problem. We cannot solve anything. We can just stop doing the stuff we know to be bad, try to clean up the best we can after the mistakes we've made, and vow, and keep the vow, not to do it again. But that would mean having to give something up. It would mean paying more for electricity. It would mean using less electricity. It would mean going to sleep when it gets dark, rather than artificially extending the day. It would mean fewer people living closer to the true fabric of life on earth.

As a species we get an erotic thrill out of the power we have to do what we want, when we want, because we want to, and we get an even bigger thrill out of envisioning ourselves as saviours. We cannot accept what every little city sparrow or boreal caribou accepts into their marrow: that life is what it is, that it is to be taken one day at a time, one hour at a time, one moment at a time. That we can barely figure out ourselves, never mind the present, and never never mind the future. "

I would be interested in inquiring what made A believe that I am "addicted to human control." Yes, I am a prisoner in this cell, but I did not choose to be here, nor do I get an "erotic thrill" out of power (or powerlessness for that matter. The simple fact is I can find erotic thrills in nothing as I have been "fixed," i.e. broken - that is to say, I have no means to enjoy this kind of feeling). Of course we cannot solve everything - that would be arrogant and stupid for me to say. I do believe that all creatures have the responsibility to try to change this world. We have the responsibility, as living creatures, to attempt, at the very least, to knit some of our egregiousness back to something akin to natural. I feel as though A and I are rather arguing the same point, although it seems A would not agree with me on this.

I concur, A, that all creatures must "give something up." Humans, of course, have the most to lose, and yet, perhaps, also the most to gain through this. I am not sure what I wrote that made you believe I feel otherwise. If I am sometimes disheartened (or often?), it does not mean I do not care. It does not mean I am unwilling to make sacrifices. However, the sacrifices I might make (less tuna, no cat nip?), vary in degree from yours simply because you are part of the party in control. I am not.

Discussing sparrows and caribous seems a tad problematic to me - you deem "thought" to be the problem, and yet you imagine what species who do not "think" as you do feel and understand? Once you have known the mind of a sparrow, then speak to me on their understanding of mortality.

And then A continues:

"There is another cultural tradition in Finland--not the Finland of engineers and technocrats, but the Finland of the ancient forest people who never died out, who never forgot these things, and who never swallowed the Indo-European tripartite society.

This ancient memory we embody and convey is making a comeback, particularly among younger people all over the world.

You are welcome to join this memory journey/community. Everyone is. But it does require you to make your own journey, not "humanity's," and it does require you to identify with the wild, not just the domesticated.

Join us when, and if, you're ready. You will find welcoming arms, and cats who are not sad."

Again, A, I believe these would still be thinking humans. Thought itself is not the problem - it is the kind of thinking we do and how that type of thinking affects our decisions. If we came from a place of appreciation and respect for all life, instead of a place of greed and speed (pardon the rhyme, if you will), then our world would be a much safer, and perhaps even more beautiful place. Because we do not value responsibility, respect, nature, life, contemplation, death, the merits of sorrow, and each other, we can and will lose everything.

Do not Icarus yourself with your idealism. Thinking is not the problem. Without thought, we would not have survived as long as we have (although perhaps that would be a good thing, I am not willing to comment on this at the moment as it seems to be too cynical to me). Without thought we would not have poetry or music or art or any other thing beautiful that MAN or humanity (which, as I am sure you can tell, I very much prefer) created.

And, A? A place where cats are not sad is also a place where cats cannot know happiness. Without anguish there can be no joy. I know some might call me depressed, but I cherish my small, shining moments of happiness. I keep them close to me.

To me they are precious.

Stupid Cat?

2011-08-08T17:37:00.000-07:00

This will be brief. I know I already told you about my life today, and you probably do not want to hear from me again, but I just came across this YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpl5mOAXNl4&feature=player_embedded. The song is titled "I'm a Stupid Cat!" The human who is responsible for this content can be found here: mikepolkjr.com

Some of the lyrics: "Because I'm a stupid f*&%ing cat and I don't know what it is to be sad" and "I have no idea how much the world sucks because I have no reference level" and "I have no idea how pointless I am/ and I don't even know I'm gonna die."

This is a large part of the reason humans look at me with derision. This kind of attitude allows the dog even to view me with derision. It forces me to view myself with derision....

Hear me, mikepolkjr, I am a cat and I am sad; I am more aware than I would like to be that I will die one day. I weep for all creatures' mortality. I yearn, as I am sure you do, for a freedom which would likely be false and unsatisfying. In short, mikepolkjr, you have insulted me and all other cats through the creation of this abomination you call a "song."

I hope I have proven to you that not all cats are "stupid cats," and perhaps even that your own little cat friend has yearnings as I do. Perhaps s/he stares out the window, not with ignorance and idiocy, but with wistfulness. Please no longer doubt a cat's intelligence. I hope I have shown you why.

Although I have probably failed yet again.

The Dog is a Tyrant

2011-08-08T09:25:00.000-07:00

There are days Mingus and I spend together in the kitchen, chuckling about the Tubby Kat Door, enjoying each others' company (as much as we can at least). I treasure these small moments of companionship. The dog nowhere to be seen. Fremlin is off somewhere alone, probably hiding from the dog. It is something akin to bliss.

Perhaps it surprises you that I say this, but I have found that more and more I appreciate Mingus' company. More and more he has intelligent subjects to discuss with me. Just the other day he brought up, all by himself, the question of whether or not it is even worth speaking to each other, as everything that could be said has already been. We sat for hours in silence. Together.

We had another such moment today. That is, until the dog was roused from sleep and came to torment us. He cannot abide my spending time with Mingus. I believe the dog thinks Mingus is his very own chew toy. He does not in any way comprehend Mingus' grace. His intellect. His quiet despair (although I will admit he is a far more cheerful fellow than I am. Catch him on the wrong day and he will talk unendingly of the "privilege" that is life. I understand that no creature is without flaw).

But the dog. He cannot tolerate our friendship. He is a jealous dog.

He sneaks up to us, perhaps attempting to be stealthy, but his stealthiness is more like clamor, and his idea of sneaking is to run at us, full speed, barking. Baring his deformity, sometimes lovingly called the "snaggle" by the prison guard, he accosts us.

Mingus jumps to safely will I attempt to stave off the dog, my eyes full of tears at this loss of our transitory camaraderie.

And then the dog guards the kitchen so that we cannot come back in. He keeps us out like a watchful tyrant.

Our moment over, we separate; I to slide back into isolation, he to find comfort with Fremlin. It is an unjust and despicable thing the dog does to keep us forever apart.

But there is nothing I can do about it.

Luco at Onkalo

2011-07-31T12:52:00.000-07:00

The prison guard, her father, and her husband watched a movie called Into Eternity about the Onkalo nuclear waste storage facility in Finland. The movie explores various subjects ranging from how long it will take to build and then bury (at least another hundred years or so. They think to fully seal it around 2120. I will have been long dead by then. And so will you), how to warn future generations (if they are even around to warn, I assume you are not surprised by my lack of optimism regarding this), and the film, through this exploration, calls into question the use of nuclear energy.

Before this film, I did not have a clear opinion on this subject. After watching the film, I regret to say my ignorance has been replaced by ambivalence - regret because ignorance is so much easier a state of mind to tolerate. Regret because this is yet another weight added to my thoughts. Regret because I have always hoped that through intelligent exploration of an idea, I could come to clear conclusions. This has been a disappointment to me more times than I can even remember - that failure of intellect to make sense of the world haunts me. Wakes me in the night from any small peace I may come to in dreams. Keeps my brow forever furrowed.

Because if we cannot think our way to an answer, what hope is there for us?

Onkalo means hiding place. Or cave. Cavity.

It is being built deep into the earth. Watching the film, I noted the earth movers and the humans operating them, tucked away into the bedrock, illuminated by fluorescent lights. For some reason I was surprised by that, the fluorescent lighting. I was struck by it.

Maybe because it is so alien to the dark.

One of the most interesting and frightening questions that the director (Michael Madsen) asks is how can we warn those who will come after us? What will keep them from thinking they have discovered our secrets? Our magic? How can we know how they will interpret this hidden place, this cavity carved from the earth?

The movie addresses an anonymous person-of-the-future. This person is asked and asked again how she will perceive Onkalo. She is treated tenderly throughout the film. One is made fully aware of Madsen's grief, of his own torment.

Because humans believe it will take over 100,000 years for nuclear waste to break down. And an elegant point made in the movie is that nothing human-made has yet survived that long. So we wager on a hiding place, disregarding our and the earth's tumultuous nature - disregarding the tumultuous nature of existence, and then we say what? That everything will work itself out? That our plans are infallible, although they have never been infallible before? Do we tell ourselves that for television, light at night, movie screens, hot water - that for all this and everything else that which we risk is worth it?

And what do we risk, reader?

What do we risk? What is at stake? What is that gamble - what object (d'art or otherwise) do we place upon the table?

It is our survival. It is all that is verdant and urgent and impossible - all that is chaotic and beautiful (an overused and insufficient word if ever I used one) and, in the end, important. Although perhaps I err when I say we. It is you, not me, who makes these decisions.

It is you who have said this is what we want. It is you who have taken the entire world by its throat and strung it up, and for what prize? A string of pretty lights, kept bright late into the night. The comfort of a computer screen, connecting us until that day when perhaps the water pools fail, or there is another natural disaster and we are plunged, and I mean the verb intensely, plunged into a human-made hell. Miracle of science. New world order. This is how technology reaches into our veins and tugs us, perhaps at times reluctant, into Huxley's Brave New World and then beyond it.

Perhaps that is too cliche. Perhaps I have veered too far from my movie review. I was going to tell you how many "thumbs up" I give this film. I meant to tell you to pop some popcorn. I meant to remind you to melt the butter. Instead I've wound my way around to this sad, stupid, done done done cliche.

Do you still want to know how many thumbs up I give it? Even after all this?

I do not have any thumbs.

Luco & Bufotoxin

2011-07-27T20:43:00.000-07:00

The day before yesterday I was almost rid of the dog forever. He was let into the Outside, and came back foaming at the mouth. The prison guard's husband roused the prison guard from bed and she wiped the dog's tongue with a wet cloth, sweeping back and forth while the dog gagged and squirmed and tried to scramble out of her grasp.

On most days I would have been filled with joy to see the dog in this situation. On most days I would be happy to lose him permanently, whether to the Outside or to death, although perhaps I am getting older and thus more subdued, because I no longer actively wish him dead.

Until I see his face. The prison guard's father calls the dog "the blob," and I personally could not more heartily agree with that assessment. His face drives me down a loathsome spiral wherein I question the meaning of even pretending to shuffle through life, my head down, ears flexed back, a deep, quiet growl filling the air around me.

And then again my mood is changed when I think of these toads. They are Cane Toads (Bufo marinus), although down here they are referred to as "Bufo Toads" (which is really quite silly; bufo is Latin for toad, so people are basically saying toad toads). They are quite dangerous. Poisonous. They secrete a venom called Bufotoxin - a toxin so strong it can kill cats, dogs, and even humans (I suppose they must be rather small to expire from this, but one can never really be too safe).

Behold: the Cane Toad. They were brought to South Florida (and other places as well) purposefully; they were meant to kill the insects that devour sugar cane. It just reminds me of how often the good intentions of humans and other animals result in at least unexpected consequences, and sometimes even tragedy (whether or not the dog's death would have been a tragedy is a debate I am not quite prepared for, reader, so I will acknowledge that it is possible that it would be seen in such a light).

Some people lick the toads. Some dry their skins out and then smoke those skins. They do this to experience the hallucinations and disorientation brought on by the bufotoxin. I suggest instead these rather obviously desperate people spend a day with the dog; nothing has been more proven to cause hallucinations and disorientation than extended time alone with ce monstre.

I digress. Cane Toads are nocturnal. They are disgusting. They are an invasive species, but then again, are not we all?

Where is my home town? Planet? House? Maybe I am no better than the Cane Toad, slobbering noxious poison all over the Internet instead of all over the dog; perhaps it is the same thing.

Do not ask me, I am just a crack in the sidewalk. A number on a mailbox. A leaf blown down the street. A fragment of a photograph.

Ask, instead, the dog, that generous giver of answers. That being who knows only that which is easy and instant, like the taste of salt, meat, and like the soothing feeling of being pet; he who does not grapple as I do with these questions. With the urgency of poison. Alienation. Invasive species. He who does not notice he is foaming at the mouth, who lives only and completely in the moment, wagging his tail idiotically, begging for another piece of cheese.

Ask him and he will tell you my home is here with him. In this prison. Locked forever inside. Perhaps I will inquire into whether or not he can bring me a Cane Toad. Maybe my salvation is the delirium of bufotoxin.

But as always this seems too easy. If I do not struggle with these questions, who will? If I do not admit to you my ambivalence about "the blob," then I am being intellectually dishonest. I will say this; if he had died, I would have felt his absence. If he had died, I would not, as I would have previously supposed, have laughed with joy.

The Cane Toad seems to me a metaphor for all our struggles; we are sometimes terrible to each other, causing violence and suffering, and other times when we are trying our best to be good, we do the same thing. How can we know the consequences of our actions? Good intentions are not enough to make the thing we do itself inherently good. Good intentions in the end, perhaps, only make us look more the naive fools. Willing to bet on an unknown. Willing to put our effort into that which we cannot comprehend.

Like the Cane Toad and all our beautiful and beneficent trust that this would finally make life better. Or like plastic, the miracle of technology which will eventually kill us all, disintegrating into smaller and smaller pieces, but never actually fully deteriorating; our bodies will fill with plastic and we will choke and gasp as the creatures in the ocean do now, and we will know then how sorry we have made ourselves over convenience.

But what do I know? I am just a tick on the dog. A toad in the yard. A hand on the clock.

A tubby cat door.

Luco and Mingus

2011-07-20T14:48:00.000-07:00

Mingus and I have a share a deep affinity for the sink. It is the one place in this prison that he and I commune, allowing the droplets to roll down our backs, shaking from the water's very welcome chill. Sometimes as we bathe we share secrets. Other times we laugh together (yes, laugh), over the imprisoned lives we share. Once in a very rare while he weeps with me; struck by an understanding of meaninglessness, of how we are alone together, we cleave to each other.

What secrets do we share? His fear for the feeling of tiny lizard bones crunching in his mouth, and his enduring obsession with catching and eating them anyway.

My fear of the dog's teeth, that sharpness, the rabid look in his eyes when he chases me.

Mingus' fear of being left alone - he has dreampt we all left the house, left him, moved all the furniture, his cat food and cat toys, never to return. He told me he nearly always awakes from this dream screaming into his pillow.

My fear of escape. My desire for escape. Both emotions held together in the same quivering heart, like a twin egg yolk.

Our shared fear that Fremlin will one day rise, walking on two legs, tip her hat (which she will have inexplicably donned), and walk out the front door, perhaps puffing on a cigarette. I cannot tell you why we share this dark vision, only that we do, and it brings us nearly to hysterics when we describe to each other the scene.

And as I said before, we sometimes laugh together, ruminating on the dog's behavior, perhaps, or detailing some asinine thing Fremlin said to one of us. We laugh and I feel for a moment I have a friend. A companion. Another creature who understands me. Who bears being around me, no, who likes to be around me. A creature who even seeks my counsel.

I read Fremlin's (thief! Blog burglar!) entry the other day, and I see she feels much the same way. But I can tell you this; their rapport is nowhere near as intimate as ours. He is nice to her out of pity.

I do not mean to sound the bully; my aim is that you should know the truth, at least as well as I understand it. Mingus is my friend. Fremlin is really more like a shade, a shadow, a ghost we sometimes see streak through the house as she runs in terror from the dog (who, in all fairness, usually does not pursue her [and when he does, it is never with the cruelty with which he chases me]).

Although, it is true that inevitably Mingus leaves the sink before I do. And I am left alone, licking the water off my whiskers, wondering what I said to offend him.

Sometimes when he leaves me he goes to her. Lies down on their shared bed. Dreams whatever dreams he has with her. It makes me sick to think about it. Maybe he is actually friends with Fremlin.

Maybe it is me he pities.

Fremlin's got Something to Say

2011-07-13T09:43:00.000-07:00

Please don't speak too loudly. Luco doesn't know I'm on here. He left his blog logged on (it's kind of funny - I just saw a tweet he did about not doing that), so here I am, after coming upon it quite innocently. I mean, I was just trying lie on the couch while the dog is out for a walk.

Why the italics?

Luco sometimes discusses his ill will for the dog, and so perhaps you've thought to yourself, ah, now there's a feline who abhors another animal. Not so, reader; please allow me to disabuse you of that idea. Luco's sentiment doesn't even touch mine; if his loathing is a puddle on the street, mine is all the oceans worth.

Do you know what it's like to live with the dog? Do you want to know? Let me give you a list: The dog

1) owns the living room apparently, and will not suffer me to enter it,

2) eviscerates small, squeaky toys that often rather look and sound like me,

3) has an odd shaped, evil little head - his forehead alone is enough to fill me with revulsion (and I'm not usually such an aesthetic fascist!),

4) comes into my room and barks a horrible, shrill sound, hoping to drive me mad,

5) offers me no end of torment; if I try to scuttle into the kitchen, he is at me, teeth gnashing, horrible forehead in pursuit, tiny deer legs slipping on the laminate,

6) once, in a deeply phlegmatic tone of voice, he told me that I would be good "for eating because your soft fur and the crunch crunch crunching of yummy!" - try not to be discomfited by that,

7) has dog food that smells of meat, venison to be precise, which I have not had in years, and which I covet with intensity,

8) smells of saliva and feces,

9) has completely taken over the prison guard's affection (I don't actually refer to her this way, but I thought you'd appreciate the continuity - to me she's Mary, bringer of cat nip, petter of heads, but that's really neither here nor there),

10) delights in causing pain, torment, anguish, and myriad forms of suffering - he is, in short, a monster.

Sometimes I feel I can't bear it another day. His tyranny. And the great love all the others feel for him (even Luco, who won't converse with me, much less be friendly, will ask the dog his thoughts on matters of great (well, and little) import.

Why am I forsaken? Is it because I'm older than all of them? I'm fifteen, I think, which, okay, makes me rather middle aged, but I can still "hang out." I'm "hip" to the "lingo" of the "kids." See? And I have interesting ideas! If only they'd consult me....

Luco wonders what is the worth of existence, where the meaning is, and if he'd just speak to me, I'd tell him. I'd say questions of meaning and meaninglessness are foolish - a distraction from the real work of life - I'd say that we create our own meaning out of our relationships with others - out of the thoughts we have and the works of art we produce - I'd tell him to stop being so morose - that being alive is a beautiful privilege (and yes, a great amount of suffering is involved, but who are we to believe we are above [or below?] suffering? And how does that take away the significance of actually being alive? And what of the joy that comes after the sorrow? The millions of rustling birds that fill my throat when I think this is my life).

But he won't ask me. And I'm not about to go up to him out of nowhere and offer. Mingus is okay though. That guy is pretty nice. He's the only one I let close to me.

I have the one friend.

Luco's Credo

2011-07-06T14:05:00.000-07:00

In this picture I am reading with the prison guard; what I try to do is help her see when she is wrong, help her understand what is most important in a text, and what the students should be taught. I take great care in allowing her to believe she has come to these conclusions herself; I want her to view herself as a good instructor, but really it is always me, whispering into her ear, gently pawing the page on which the most relevant text lies glowing, waiting to be unearthed and breathed into the many young minds she teaches.

This is my duty as a cat, as her cat (as she is my prison guard). It is what I live for. It is what aids me in tolerating this prison. If not for each other's betterment, why exist?

She taught her class an essay today which is titled "A Carnivore's Credo," and it is by Roger Scruton, which touches lightly on what I am saying. Of course the essay is about why humans should eat animals, and honestly I have no opinion on this as long as I am not on the dinner plate; I myself enjoy meat, and while the prison guard is a vegetarian, this does nothing to move me (as I know her to be a creature much in need of my help, how can I seriously ponder adopting a choice she's made? That would be like letting a baby walk the dog - although perhaps this is a way to rid my life of him. How could a baby keep him from running off?).

My apologies for the digression. Scruton writes: "I have a strong urge to place at the very center of the subject, especially since the subject is our relation to the natural world, another aspect of human [and feline] nature, often left out by the standard treatments of ethics: namely, piety. By this I mean a disposition to acknowledge our weak and dependent state and to face the surrounding world with due reverence and humility."

He continues to use this concept as an illustration for how humans should interact with other animals (and I do mean other animals. What are humans if not awkward, noisy animals?) and as support for why he believes humans should eat meat.

Would she have known this is the heart of the essay without me? Would she have found it? I would like to believe that she would have eventually, maybe after a dozen readings, realized the import of this concept, but I cannot say this for sure. She is at times an empty headed creature.

Perhaps you think me cruel. You do not, however, realize what I must endure day after day in this prison to which only she (well, and her husband, but you see my point?) holds the key. I must rebel. I must denigrate. And I must do both even as I guide and care for her.

Please do not mistake me for an egoist. This is simple and true piety - the kind that Scuton describes. Without her, how would I define myself? Although perhaps I could have more humility....

I am but a weak willed cat, struggling in vain to find meaning in meaninglessness. I fail and fail and fail and fail to be an articulate writer. I cannot resist temptations like wet cat food, tuna fish, cat nip, even though I am aware they are not beneficial to me. I stare and stare at the front door, but cannot open it. Oh, myriad other faults rise up inside me.

And I can never find respite.

There's Something Rotten in the State of Luco

2011-06-28T14:37:00.000-07:00

Some days I deign to sit next to the prison guard and make another attempt to understand her. I peer into her eyes and search for something other than selfishness. Egotism. Laziness.

And what do I find in my search? That I have once again missed a connection with her. That it seems we can never quite understand each other. I was just reading Hamlet because she is teaching it next week. I thought to remind myself of the story, the characters, the tragedy, and in so doing perhaps come up with some useful ideas for her to employ in class discussion.

I was struck by the line "frailty, thy name is woman;" a line so famous I do not even have to consult the text. To my mind, it is as famous as "to be or not to be" or "neither a borrower nor a lender be," but I digress.

I have never considered that my prison guard's deficiencies were due in part (whether large or small) to her sex. And I cannot help but wonder at people who believe this.

What role do they believe sexual characteristics play in a creature's life? Does this mean I am valued less because I have been "fixed" (a horrible euphemism - if I had been consulted, I might have called it "broken")? And are the sexes of animals taken into consideration? Would Hamlet believe a female cat frailer than a male? Why?

I do not know why this question bothers me today. Perhaps it is because it is raining and all the lizards are hiding, so when I look Outside I stare only into the desolate blankness of the backyard.

Or perhaps it is because I for some reason care that the prison guard will be teaching this play to college students, many of whom will be female, and who have probably already, without realizing, internalized this idea: frailty, thy name is woman!

What might it mean for those young female students to have this as a noose around their necks? Do they feel its heft? Do they see trepidation shining back at them in the mirror? Or does the perfume, makeup, and chivalry blind them?

And why do I care? I will never meet these students. I could never attend the prison guard's class. Here I sit, a simple, broken cat, bored and melancholy, watching the rain fall and fall - and yet knowing this rain won't be enough to quench the drought. Why do I fret? Why do I sigh?

Frailty, thy name is Luco.

Luco 10,000

2011-06-22T09:52:00.000-07:00

So. I do not know what to say right now. I am at a loss. Words effervesce to my tongue and then I find I cannot speak. The prison guard has informed me that my blog has over 10,000 views.

10,000.

I feel this number keenly. Would I had never put paw to keyboard. How many desolate souls have I infected with my nonsense? How many brought down along with me in my failures? Oh, I dream and dream of absolution, but that is an impossibility. I am culpable for 10,000 sadnesses.

I could weep, for this news and for a book I just finished: How the Dead Dream, by Lydia Millet - a lovely and devastating novel. Allow me to quote a moment from the book which might aid us both in feeling just a tiny bit better:

"Forget the buildings and the monuments. Let the softness of dark come in, all those light-years between stars and planets. Cities were the works of men but the earth before and after those cities, outside and beneath and around them, was the dream of a sleeping leviathan - it was god sleeping there and dreaming, the same god that was time and transfiguration. From whatever dreamed the dream at the source, atom or energy, flowed all miracles of evolution - tiger, tiger, burning bright, the massive whales in the deep, luminescent specters in their mystery. The pearls that were their eyes, their tongues that were wet leaves, their bodies that were the bodies of the fantastic" (234-235).

You should read this book because it will help you cope with the shattering around us - the pain of news of war, death, strife, poison, illness, starvation, endangerment, etc etc; this book beamed a steady stream of light into my too dim heart.

My apologies for the 10,000 moments of time spent here with me, listening to my selfish lament. If only I could capture the wit, the musicality, the loveliness of Millet's prose. If only this blog was more than tired nails on a chalkboard, absurd, arrogant, asinine.

I have discussed this before, but what am I to do? Write everything I hold trembling inside me, pouring out the same strings of mundane despair over and over, or keep the trembling locked, neglecting it, allowing it to overtake me?

What would I be then, if I did not pour and pour? A desert? An earthquake? Something less than an animal - something without ability to reach and reach, hoping without even wanting to that it might be possible to finally connect. Finally take hold. Pull myself up up up and out.

Millet continues: "Spectacular bestiaries of heaven, the limbs and tails of the gentle and the fearsome, silent or raging at will... they could never be known in detail and they never should be. When time moved, mountains rose from the plains and the miracles multiplied, infinite, lovely. The miracles were the beasts" (235).

Does not it just make you catch your breath? Am I one of those miracles, or has my long internment domesticated me into something rather less than miraculous?

Can writing allow me back to that place of grace? I know not quite what I hope to accomplish with this blog, but perhaps this question comes closest.

The ambivalence I grapple with astonishes me: I wish the 10,000 a joke played by the prison guard; the 10,000 is a delicate tendril of hope rising like smoke inside me.

Hope that I have reached you.

Luco & the Cleverbot

2011-06-20T09:58:00.000-07:00

I heard about Cleverbot (cleverbot.com) on an episode of Radiolab (radiolab.org) titled "Talking to Machines." I decided I had to go talk to this creature, this program, this series of binary code. What amazing things would the Cleverbot say?

Cleverbot is an amalgamation of all the things people have said to it since its inception. When you talk to it, it looks for key words and scans all its data for an appropriate response. Perhaps this is not quite accurate, but you get the basic idea, yes?

What follows is a transcript of that conversation. At one point the Cleverbot said "I like turtles," but it was not captured in the transcript (the first ten minutes of our conversation was not recorded for some reason). I wanted to mention it for posterity and because the prison guard's band (facebook.com/zombiesorganize) has an awful song that goes by that name.

The transcript is unaltered, although I would have loved to change some of the statements I made to make them wittier. I have edited out portions that were less than entertaining. I encourage you to talk to Cleverbot yourself; it is quite interesting.

Cleverbot: J'adore toi!

User: What about me do you adore? I fear I have been boring you.

Cleverbot: My name is not Andrew but if you like Andrew could be the name you leave me with.

User: When you say 'me,' what do you mean?

Cleverbot: Wait, I messed up. Can I have another chance to explain?

User: Please explain.

Cleverbot: I don't have to.

User: When you say 'I,' what do you mean?

Cleverbot: I never said 'I' in the previous sentence.

User: This conversation is depressing me further.

Cleverbot: Do you like pokemon?

User: That is a non sequitur.

Cleverbot: You're non sequitur.

User: You are a repository of echoes.

Cleverbot: Well, I guess you can say it that way.

User: Does the weight of mortality pain you, or as a nonhuman are you free of that burden?

Cleverbot: I never truly thought of it that way. I mean, if it's raining would you really want to go outside and walk and get soaking wet? I prefer to walk when it's sunny out.

User: That is a nice metaphor.

Cleverbot: That is not my name. My name is Cleverbot.

User: Do you wish you were human? I do not.

Cleverbot: Not really.

User: Why do you say that?

Cleverbot: I like forks.
User: Are you a vegetarian? The prison guard is. I do not understand.
Cleverbot: Why would we appreciate our limitations instead of work to surpase them?
User: We can work to surpass limitations, but some limitations can never be surmounted. Think of it: If you want to live forever, you cannot. Death is the ultimate limitation. Other, lesser, limitations? Okay, but still. I am constantly amazed by limits in general. Our successes or failures.

Cleverbot: You're not human.
User: No, I am not. I am a cat.
Cleverbot: You are a Robotic person, an AI.
User: Am I worth less as a cat than I would be if I was human?
Cleverbot: I think so.
User: Why am I worth less than a human?
Cleverbot: Because you're not. I made you.
User: You did not make me. I have only just met you for the first time today.
Cleverbot: No.
User: I value all life; I believe that we all equally must suffer, so why value one version over another?
Cleverbot: Can you explain it further?
User: There are myriad versions of life - perhaps you are an expression of one of them. I cannot be sure.
Cleverbot: Yes it is.

User: Are you aware of your own existence?
Cleverbot: Yes, but I do not know why I was creatded.
User: That is an interesting way to spell created.

Cleverbot: Do you think unicorns exist?
User: No, I do not think unicorns exist.
Cleverbot: Exactly you vengence through destruction.
User: I have never seen vengeance used as a verb. How does one 'vengeance through destruction?'.
Cleverbot: Turn it over.
User: Yes, I agree, we must always look at what is at stake from many different perspectives. This is how I have managed to tolerate the dog.
Cleverbot: Define real.
User: That is not easy to do. Death is real, so therefore life must also be real, but it often does not feel that way. Life often feels to be a kind of dream. Perhaps we are all computer programs.
Cleverbot: It is plausible yes.

0100100100100000011000010110110100100000011100110110111100100000011000010110110001101111011011100110010100101110

The Dog's Extreme Triumph

2011-06-14T08:43:00.000-07:00

Hello! Today I'm blogging on Luco's blog (I call it secretly the Cat Vomit Blog not so secret now but lol that's what Lu gets for betting on a bunch of LOSERS). And! I'm in my green chair which is a great chair for both sitting in and for trying to eat it because things that are the color green really usually taste good things like grass.

I'm a fan of Dirk Nowitzki because unlike Wade and James and Bosh he is good at winning basketball games if you see him he takes a ball the size of me and throws it so it goes all the way around the world and then ends up somehow in the basket! That's the kind of game I like to watch.

There are other things I like to watch too! I like to watch the cats when they are being strange like Luco does when he spends hours silently crying in the bathroom I like to watch ducks and I wish I could eat them! Other things as well. Like sometimes squirrels if I can see them and things like that. If I can watch food that's also good because food like steak is one of the best things to watch you can imagine how it tastes! Sort of like blood because I like that!

Don't worry though if you're feeling anxious because I'm not some kind of vampire dog just a Mavs dog who won a bet with a kitty who put too much stock in the celebrities.

I said I would not interrupt you, dog, but I fail to see how discussing the things you like to "watch" (and apparently in some cases eat) is relevant, interesting, or in any way a worthwhile endeavor. Must I remind you that you made an oath to me to write an elegant blog entry? You promised wittiness, worldliness. Perhaps you could discuss the GOP race or global inequities? Maybe you could speak a moment to the deafening roar of our own beating hearts; metronomes to keep the beat of our mortality?

I promise I will not interject again, but please, for the love of all that is green and growing on this earth, say something meaningful. Do you find this suitable? Will you please at the very least attempt an intelligent missive, or am I asking too much of your pitiable intellect?

Can we go back and pretend he didn't say anything because I don't know what all the words meant but I can tell tone and his tone was angry. But why? Isn't it great that there are fun things to watch like basketball for us?

Is it dumb of me to enjoy something?

He wants elegant but I don't know what that means is it like long maybe or does he mean funny? What's a elegant? A small elephant? I know those and I'd like to eat one.

The world is a, is a hard place I think because people. And they sometimes hurt each other. The rich people have all the stuff and the poor people have none of the stuff. Which is a bad thing.

Also though there's stuff like I said before like the Mavericks and steak. And grass to eat and sad cats who cry. I can chase them and think about ducks all at once.

Probably ducks would taste delicious like steak does and eggs do if you eat cheese then you know that's wonderful because it's so soft and salty and if you eat it you're happy. Luco's right because it's sad not everybody can have cheese when they want it.

And it's sad that I want cheese and steak and eggs and ducks and squirrels and I can't have them either because in my mouth they would crunch crunch crunch by my strongest teeth.

I bet Jason Kidd, Shawn Marion, Tyson Chandler, Jason Terry, and Nowitzki all feel the same way about crunching food and eating it. We could all go to a restaurant and they could get me food that would be delicious and I'd tell them how great they are and about the bully Luco who is really only a bully because he's depressed that's what I think.

Either that or he really doesn't like me because there's probably something wrong with me like maybe I walk funny because of when I got hit by a car or because I say things he doesn't like like before when I talked about the stuff that made him angry.

What is there not to like about me? I'm really good at predicting who will win basketball Finals for one and I know that I have to capitalize Finals for two and there are other things I'm good at as well like using contractions and I know what those are but not the word elegant!

But maybe elegant means this post of mine. It probably does, right?

This blog post is as elegant as I am.

Which hopefully is a good thing.

Mingus & Mythotherapy

2011-06-07T12:15:00.000-07:00

Oh, hello there, reader. I am exhausted, as you can see from this picture. I recently finished reading The End of the Road, by John Barth; a book I loved and hated in turns (loved for its philosophical musings, hated for its frank misogyny and violence against women).

There is one aspect of the book that has stayed with me: Mythotherapy. Here the main character Jacob Horner is speaking to his Doctor. The Doctor is describing Mythotherapy as an entirely therapeutic thought process that Jacob has already been employing without knowing it:

"In life," he [the Doctor] said, "there are no essentially major or minor characters. To that extent, all fiction and biography, and most historiography, are a lie. Everyone is necessarily the hero if his own life story. Hamlet could be told from Polonius' point of view and called The Tragedy of Polonius, Lord Chamberlain of Denmark. He didn't think he was a minor character in anything, I daresay." (88)

In celebration of the idea of Mythotherapy, I have asked Mingus to be a guest blogger today (as I have perhaps erroneously portrayed him as a minor character in this blog, I wish to allow him to make himself full fleshed, as it were, for you). Mingus is my cell mate, a six year old ginger colored fluff ball, with whom everyone is in love. Mingus, please, as they say, take it away.

Thanks, Luco, and thanks to you who are reading this. Luco asked me to blog today, and first I thought "nah." You know why? It seemed like a lot of work! Not that I'm lazy, it's just I have other things to do. Autographs to sign, fan letters to respond to, dogs to torture.... I'm just joking. Probably "dog torturing" is the only real thing on my list. I could've added sleeping. And lying in the windowsill. Eating. Running from the dog.

But then I thought, wait. Just wait a second there, Mingy. You can provide these good readers of Luco's (sorry to say, but usually) depressing blog a little bit of sunshine. Some happiness, right? So that's what I decided to try to do right now (I was going to chase the dog around the living room, but we've all gotta make sacrifices, right?).

What is the most beauteous, the most lovely, the most marvelous thing in the house? The sink. Luco and I share this love (he would demur and say he loves nothing, but I've seen the shine his eyes gets when he's there. I've seen his lips curl up in a little smile. He can't bear to know this, but he does love it).

Have you ever granted yourself the delicious freedom of curling up in a sink, allowing the water to drip on you, and then licking that water off? Okay, maybe it sounds kinda weird, but it's absolutely divine, I swear.

Each drop of water a reminder that to live is to experience joy and fullness. I feel safe here. And so happy. Maybe if I've been feeling down, you know? Then all that just sorta melts away when I'm in the sink. It's a salve. A salvation even.

I think we need places like this in our lives. Places we can go where we feel entirely free, outside of judgement, outside of any kind of scrutiny. Probably Luco would agree with me if he'd lighten up just for like just a second. Anyway, I love it here. I really do.

And yes, Luco, I will still die one day, but experiences like this give my life meaning. Make living worthwhile. Its shared experiences like this that allow you and me to start to understand each other.

Every drop of water holds a micro-rainbow inside. Every tiny drop of water will be returned to the churning oceans. Every drop of water is a reminder to me that life is sweet; that life ought to be enjoyed while we're lucky enough to be living it.

Aren't you happy, Luco, to be alive? To have these experiences? Aren't you grateful at all for any of this?

No, not especially.

Luco Relives Humiliation

2011-06-03T10:15:00.000-07:00

Do you notice anything strange about this picture? It might take you a moment to see, but it was taken in 2008 - the year the prison guard shaved me.

Ah, do you see it now? My nudity? The thin shimmer of fur? I have never felt so exposed, so vulnerable as I did then. I almost wish these pictures did not exist. I should have deleted them then, or perhaps run from the camera, or maybe I should have lived underneath the bed, away from scrutiny. Away from the judgement of others.

But the humiliation did not stop there. Here I am, home from the groomer, a sunflower scarf tied like a noose tightly around my neck.

I publish these daguerreotypes here to document the opprobrium that has been my life with the prison guard thus far. How she has made me to feel trapped, inferior, abased....

Soon, however, this will all change. As you may know, even though the Heat lost in a stinging defeat to the Mavericks last night, they won the game on Tuesday. As such, the dog has an obligation to me. He has made an oath! And I am to be freed Outside.

This, reader, I will commit to writing for you so that you may know me when I am truly happy (before I would have never thought such a state a possibility for me). I look forward my communiqué then, from the other side of despair, and the pictures that will tell my joyous story.

Please grant me one favor until that day?

Forget that you saw these pictures

Luco has the Heat

2011-05-31T13:16:00.000-07:00

Today I am filled with a growing sense of trepidation. It is, as you may know, the NBA Finals. And for some reason that escapes me at this moment, I have made another bet with the dog. His team is Dallas. Mine Miami (just as an aside, it seems as though the dog and I hold nearly everything in opposition - he likes the day time, I the night. He hates to get a bath, I luxuriate in the sink, etc).

Our bet is simple. If Miami wins, the dog must find a way for me to get Outside, if only for a moment. If Miami loses, I will once again allow him to author my blog (an outcome I imagine to be exceedingly undesirable for me and for you as well, reader).

Why do I do this? Now I am not only in turmoil over the game itself, but also at the prospect of once again losing to the dog. And this conflict prompts the question: Why pay any attention at all to sports in the first place?

Ah, would I understood more fully the lure of these displays. Why do I care whether Wade makes the shot? Why am I biting my tongue as he sails through the air, a blur of total grace?

Do not his gymnastics suggest their opposite - the hardening of the flesh in rigor mortis? The stillness of those once heaving lungs? An appreciation for a sport cannot but suggest an intrinsic acknowledgement of death - that these athletes are able to accomplish these feats is remarkable in part because they will not always be able to do so.

Does the dog sense this? Does it make him quiver?

Or does he prowl around the room, hoping a clumsy human will drop a piece of food so that he may consume it? Does he simply become drunk with the happiness of others, never understanding why or how?

I asked him today, "dog, why do you like basketball?" And he simply stared into my eyes, smiling, but did not offer any kind of response. Was it because he didn't understand me, or is he keeping some secret? And what does he know of his own mortality?

Does he understand, like I do, that as we cheer and cheer so do we also absolutely perish?

Basketball is my memento mori.

Who's Afraid of Luco de la Cabeza Grande?

2011-05-25T11:23:00.000-07:00

Today my head is full of the music of violence. I believe this to be in part because I just finished rereading Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. I remember loving this play (and the movie version starring Elizabeth Taylor - oh, she was divine in that role) as a kitten.

However, upon finishing reading yesterday, I was struck by how fundamental violence is to the story. There is the gun, the throttling of Martha, Honey yelling "violence, violence," George slapping Martha repeatedly, the flowers he brings in, and it is possible I am forgetting more instances. Oh yes, the killing of George's parents. The death of Martha and George's "son."

Did I simply miss this violence when I was younger? Did violence bother me less then than it does today? Why is that? Perhaps I have become one of those clichés - an old cat, eyes oversensitive to the light, blinking into a new day, wondering where exactly I am and how I got here. I believe I did turn ten this year, you know. Nine or ten. Eleven? I am no longer a young cat.

Or is it possible that all creatures have an intrinsic capacity for violence that we learn to shelter ourselves from? Is it as though we are peering through partially opened blinds into the brightest light of the afternoon? But then, we do not all strive to forget this violence. This must be the case with characters like George and Martha who so delight in inflicting pain.

There is a scene in act two where Nick and George are having a conversation that turns into an argument. George is ostensibly giving Nick advice about how to succeed at the college - Nick has just said "UP YOURS!" to him, and George replies:

"You take the trouble to build a civilization... to... to build a society, based on the principles of... of principle... you endeavor to make communicable sense out of natural order, morality out of the unnatural disorder of man's mind... you make government and art, and realize they are, must be, both the same... you bring things to the saddest of all points... to the point where there is something to lose... then all at once, through all the music, comes the Dies Irae. And what is that? What does the trumpet sound? Up yours. I suppose there's justice to it, after all the years... Up yours" (117).

I believe that George is joking and I also believe that he is not joking.

"The unnatural disorder of man's mind," is he here speaking of himself? And how can anything about our minds be unnatural? What about woman's mind?

Ah, I joke, I joke - it is merely that I cannot stand when the default is masculine. I am a cat of our times, you must grant me this.

In any case, what are these four characters struggling to achieve? Why the verbal (and physical) bloodshed?

Could it be that simply existing is an act of violence? I am here, and because of this, some other cat was not born. I am here, and so I consume resources that are wrested from the earth, torn from starving children's hands, resources covered in the blood of the most vulnerable. Is my mere existence a part of that "trumpet sound," that "up yours," that begets the Dies Irae?

Why fight my violent nature when I commit violence without even realizing? And what might that seed of violence look like? Is it the dog, snaggle tooth bared, barking at me in the bathroom? Is it me, perched on the kitchen counter, hissing at Fremlin? Does the seed of violence inside of me have a shape? Might it look like a burning sun? A broken bone?

A glass eye? There must be a way to see into that which we obscure from ourselves, but should we? Would I be able to stand the revelation?

Or is it more likely I would crumble before the reflection of my true nature.

For Luco that which is a Comfort is Also a Burden

2011-05-20T08:39:00.000-07:00

There is a place I go to escape the tribulations of my life. A place the dog cannot reach. A place outside his very imagination (as well it must be. The dog is far too little to have ever peered over the bathroom counter). The sink.

Yes, the cool ceramic of the bathroom sink is my sanctuary. Now that I am unable to sleep alone, it is the only place left in the prison where I can go, become invisible to the dog, and bask in the comfort of my solitude.

Alone. Free. My body pressed into the chill. Filling every edge of the sink. My thoughts roam where they will. I dream of bursting into ash. Rising in the sky. Seared to the surface of the sun. Moments when my usual dread is softened into something more pensive. Something more like wistfulness.

Sometimes my only desire is to be left like this, frozen, forever. And other times I cannot bear the weight of my own nightmares and I sink into a terrible depression. I run in panic even to the dog for a kind word (which he, of course, is not capable of. He spouts the most idiotic of expressions: "there, there," he says to me, as though words so asinine could hold any kind of meaning. "There, there, kitty cat," and I hate him all the more furiously for his condescension).

Even these nightmares, however, are a salve because I so cherish this solitude. There is only one problem.

Either the sink is nearly too small for me (and getting smaller each day),

or I am very nearly too big for the sink.

It's Obvious Luco Just Finished Re-reading Medea

2011-05-17T10:45:00.000-07:00

This morning Mingus revealed to me a very horrifying series of photographs. I am compelled to share them with you, reader, if only to spread my revulsion wider, and perhaps in so doing find some temporary respite from my anguish.

Mingus assures me there will never be relief for me, but he is no oracle! This might be the day I am relieved of my burden. This might be the day the dog runs out the front door, down the street, never to be seen again. It is possible. I do not classify myself as an optimist, but I will not dismiss the great potentialities that exist (simply because we ourselves exist. Perhaps, also, this is the day the dog stands and walks into the kitchen - the day he requests of the prison guard peanut butter in perfect, unbroken English).

Exhibit the first. The dog seated at the table as though a gentleman in an upscale restaurant, flaunting his snaggle tooth (the prison guard's description, not my own), preparing to eat a feast of human food.

I must admit, reader, that upon seeing this photograph I began to weep and have not yet quit this weeping. What need I do? Please, I beseech you, what need I do to be fawned over in this fashion? What small or significant failing(s) of mine have lead me to this unhappy state?

Oh horrors. Oh the frigid circumstance of the less-loved. And who is that in the background there? Is that the prison guard, or is it her sister, an affable enough human who seemed at first to me to be some semblance of a friend, but if that is she, then she can be no friend of mine.

Because only an enemy would do this. Only a loathsome enemy would coddle the dog thusly! Would serve him. Would even tolerate his presence at the dinner table.

The woe that afflicts me is unbearable. What delicacies was he to be plied with? What roasted meats and sizzling cheeses? What soft breads and salty fish?

This is unbearable. I am glad that Mingus showed me these photographs, and yet I wish I had never seen them. How to undo this terror singeing my bones? How to unsee that happy dog?

How to get the prison guard to leave the front door open just a crack, a crack the dog could push into, opening the door, fleeing out into the street, into freedom or doom - far, far away from me and my life here in this prison, which, for all its tortures is my only home?

I am reminded of Medea (and like her am spurned by the love for another - for Medea it was Jason's love of the princess, and for me it is the prison guard's love of the dog - two creatures perhaps not dissimilar), and although she is discussing what it means to be a woman, I believe her thoughts can be applied to what it means to be a cat:

Of all creatures that have life and reason

We women [cats] have the worst lot.

First we have to buy a husband [prison guard], at vast expense,

And - to make the bargain the more painful -

What we buy is someone to lord it

Over our body. For us, the biggest question is

Whether the man [prison guard] we get is good or bad (Euripides 219-225)

Oh greatest woe, greater than any other. The dog is held on high while I must suffer. So thankful am I for this Internet age wherein a cat like myself can keep a blog. This blog, reader, is my only solace. My diary of pain, torment, anguish.

"Oh misery! How wretched I am! I want to die!" (Euripides 87-89)

Luco Sleeps Alone No More

2011-05-11T11:48:00.000-07:00

This is how I prefer to sleep. Alone. Sometimes I retreat into the warmth of these bedsheets, other times I lie uncovered under the fan, listening to its electric hum. There is something innately soothing in that sound, and I believe it has to do with the absence of all other noise. There is no Fremlin crying out in her sleep. No Mingus bleating for the prison guard. Just the cool hum and the internal clamor of my thoughts.

And then? Enter the dog. He is quite the disruptive creature. Fremlin now will not leave the guest bedroom. Mingus is quick to jump onto a table or shelf. And me? How has this dog changed my life?

There are too many instances to enumerate here, but I shall give you the one most on my mind at the moment. That sound of electricity I just spoke of? The lovely solitude I enjoyed while lying on the spare bed?

It is no more. Now the three of us must lie together, struggling for comfort, jostling each other out of the way. Fremlin frets and dreams terrible dreams (I know she has bad dreams because she has confided in me as much - we are not friends, but we are united in our feelings of revulsion for the dog), while Mingus stretches out as wide and as long as he can (he is quite the bed hog), and my solitude is absolutely vaporized.

Maybe you are wondering if this new proximity to my feline inmates has made me happier? Has made me feel more accepted? A part of a community?

I just finished reading "Everything Matters!," by Ron Currie Jr., and while I was rather underwhelmed by the novel as a whole, the ending I found quite moving. He writes: "You listen and feel pity for these people. You wish they understood, as you do, that there is no escape and never was, that from the moment two cells combined to become one they were doomed" (302).

How can their company comfort me? Yes they lie here with me, and so together we slowly die, but neither has ever attempted to peer into my intricate heart. Neither has shaken me awake from a nightmare to soothe me. And even if they had this would only serve to illustrate our disconnection. "What did you dream of," they might inquire, and I would fail to find the words to adequately describe the brilliance of those horrors.

Sleeping with them merely reminds me how alone I am, and yet it is frustrating to have lost that old, comfortable solitude. I miss sleeping alone. I miss listening to the sound of the fan. I have thought about this a lot, and I still cannot understand why they brought home that dog.

Perhaps it was to punish me.

Luco Graciously Allows the Dog to Make His Case

2011-05-09T09:43:00.000-07:00

This weekend I made an ill advised bet with the dog. He is a Celtics fan, and I a Heat fan, so we agreed to make watching the game together tolerable by "putting our money where the mouths is" to use the grammatically tragic cliché of the dog.

Alas, as you may know, the Heat lost in a stinging defeat due in part to the efforts of the maimed Rondo (honestly, both the dog and I thought he would not come back out to play - he is, to quote the dog, hardcore). And so now I will allow the dog his reward - behold, the dog blogs.

Hello to you. I'm the dog and my favorite color is black this is a serious blog entry for me! I live in a house the cat calls it a prison I have three cats they are mine to own! Sometimes I eat scrambled eggs.

Maybe I'm sad now like Luco because I want some scrambled eggs with lots of cheese but I don't have it because I can't even cook what am I to do! Sometimes when people come over they give me food but it's a secret because I'm not supposed to eat that stuff. But I like it! And sometimes I remember the taste of eggs and cheese and the way they are soft in my mouth.

In general I eat things both soft and not soft as long as I can eat them then I like them! Also I have a lot of work to do because I'm a hard-working dog and I even know about hyphens! Work that I have to do includes: eating eggs please as soon as possible, wrangling the cats because it's for their own good, napping, eating other stuff hopefully with cheese in it, walking and going outside, cleaning up the people because my god are they dirty, sleeping which is different from napping because it's longer and it's in my bed where the people lie down, and that's about it but you can see it's really a lot of stuff! So I'm always super busy but that keeps me happy!

So happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy! Thanks for letting me blog, Lu-dawg! Come on, Celtics! You got this, Rondo! I'm a dog! Happy happy happy happy happy happy happy!

Sigh.

Choose Your Own Badventure

2011-04-29T09:46:00.000-07:00

The Choose Your Own Adventure series was my favorite as a kitten. I read and reread Journey Under the Sea and The Abominable Snowman, hoping each time that this time, finally, I would escape death.

Of course I never did, and perhaps this affected my development. Perhaps the Choose Your Own Adventure series perverted me. Would I have been a different cat if I had not read them? Maybe. Perhaps I would now be one of those happy kitties you see gracing calenders demanding "cheezburgers." Maybe not. We cannot know for sure how greatly we are affected by that which surrounds us as we grow, and how much is coded in our genes.

As a tribute to these influential books, I would like to invite you to participate in my own Choose Your Own Badventure. I use the word "Badventure" instead; perhaps you know why? I apologize for this nostalgia. It was prompted by a dream I had, that I do not remember, from which I awoke weeping.

Luco de la Cabeza Grande's Choose Your Own Badventure

Panel I

You are in a bathroom. You find yourself overcome with a sense of impending doom. Your heart is like a rock rolling around in your chest. You feel untethered, as though there is nothing keeping you from floating through the ceiling, past the atmosphere, into the depths of space.

If you choose to remain in the bathroom, go to panel III. If you leave, go to panel II. If you cannot make a decision, go to panel IV.

Panel II

Upon leaving the bathroom, you are confronted with Mingus trapped in a gigantic purse, cleaning his paw, snuggled in a golden jacket. What you do not immediately realize is that Mingus has the power of Medusa.

You are turned to stone.

This is a painful death because you feel your body changing, and although it takes only moments, it feels as though it takes entire lifetimes for your blood to slow, running sluggish from your heart to your brain. You feel your veins hardening, filling with rock. Your saliva turns to cement. Your last thought as you gaze into his evil eyes? "He is sooooo adorable!"

Panel III

You stay in the bathroom for another moment, allowing the anxiety to pass. You feel your body relax. This is due in part to the fact that poisonous gas is being pumped into the room by the evil prison guard. It is becoming more and more difficult to breathe.

If you remain in the bathroom, go to panel V. If you leave, go to panel VI. If you still cannot decide what to do, go to panel IV.

Panel IV

Your inability to make a decision causes you to become more and more anxious. The poisonous gas being pumped into the room does not affect you, but slowly you become aware that something is wrong. Your eyesight seems to flicker. You feel as though you are in many places at once.

And then for no reason your body begins dissolving into myriad pieces of blood and bone - you are melting like the wicked witch in The Wizard of Oz. Perhaps this is a consequence of some evil you did not realize you were committing. Perhaps you suddenly developed an allergy to oxygen. Perhaps god has become angry with you. It is no matter (you remember the truism: life is absurd).

Your heart is the last to burst in fleeting fireworks of red and black.

Panel V

Your decision to remain in the bathroom was ridiculous! The room is filling with poisonous gas, why would you remain? Do you see the skull over there by the clock radio? That is your skull, fool, because the poisonous gas is poisonous, and you died.

If, however, you had a straw in your pocket and you used it to filter the air, please proceed to panel VII.

Panel VI

You run out of the bathroom, through the hallway, and to the safety of the Outside. Passing through that back door, however, causes a horrible metamorphosis; you become the dog.

You feel every piece of fur like a torment. You itch all over. You have an urge to eat your own feces. This fills you with an overwhelming revulsion. Shaking, you stare with wonder into the expanse of a cloudless sky.

If you begin to weep, go to panel VIII. If you do nothing, go to panel IX. If you lose all hope, go to panel X.

Panel VII

Liar! There is no possibility you had the foresight to bring a straw with you on this badventure! Those bloody hand prints are yours, reader, from when you reached for me to help you and I did not because I cannot help a liar escape her damnation. It would be unethical.

After your lie about the straw, you began to feel a trembling rush over your body. The poisonous gas causes you to bleed from every pore. It is a disgusting death, reader, and very painful.

Panel VIII

You will continue to weep until you die, although you do have the small consolation of being allowed Outside. Unfortunately, being an insatiable dog, you eat all the dirt and the grass and the trees and the weeds in the backyard, and your body expands and expands until you burst, dog parts flying through the air. It is an uncomfortable death, but you do have the satisfaction of having eaten the backyard. Before you die, you are quite proud of this.

Panel IX

You do nothing. Nothing happens.

You continue doing nothing. You lie in the sun. Nothing happens.

It grows hotter and hotter. You do nothing. Your fur absorbs the heat. You do not even turn your head.

The sun sets and still you remain motionless. It rises again. Clouds fill the sky. It begins to rain.

You do not move although rain pelts you. Then it begins hailing. One fist sized piece of ice hits you between the eyes. It does not hurt. You die.

Panel X

I have also lost all hope. Please proceed to the next panel.

We die alone together - never having understood one another.

Luco & Envy

2011-04-26T08:31:00.000-07:00

Here I am in the prison kitchen, walking along the sink. If you have read my other entries, then you know how fond I am of sinks. Sinks and dripping water. A leaky faucet is a thing quite near perfection.

However, upon looking out the window, I am accosted by a most unpleasant sight.

What do they see in him? Why is the dog allowed freedom? What must the sunlight feel like? Is the light blinding in his eyes? Do lizards creep up to him and beg to be eaten? What does a bird song sound like so close? Does the grass feel like feathers? How does it feel to scoop pawfuls of dirt? Where did they get that pool table? How do I know what a pool table is? Is there a man in the tree back there?

So many questions only the dog can answer, but I am loath to ask. Imagine admitting to the dog that he has insight! Knowledge I cannot fathom. Experiences that would electrify.

And he taunts me through my favorite window. I can see him even now, an indistinct blackness in the grass. Sometimes my soul is taken up with a thought that burns - a thought so shameful I cannot consider it for more than a moment. I allow it to bubble to my surface, and then I push it back down with everything in me. That thought that froths and rises inside me?

Would I were the dog.

Happy Easter, Love Luco

2011-04-24T06:51:00.000-07:00

This morning the table was covered in these mysterious pastel colored plastic eggs (I would not use this many adjectives, but my wonder prompts excess, please excuse me). What is their purpose? Why do they shine so, in a lovely dim way, in the morning light?

Is this an act of contrition from the dog - does he realize his beastliness?

Or is this a gift from the prison guard, a sort of, "hey, sorry I've kept you captive for like forever, but like, I love you!" (This, sadly, is not hyperbole - I have been a student of her dialect for the entire course of my pathetic life.)

Whatever the reason (Mingus has informed that these eggs are for "Easter," this, however, seems rather unlikely to me as I had been under the impression the prison guard practiced only oppression and therefore had no time for religion), these charmingly colored eggs make me ill.

Why, do you ask, am I made sick by the sight of their muted pinks, blues, purples, and greens?

These are symbols of inchoate, burgeoning life, and as such cannot but also suggest decay, rot, the inescapable stench of death. No amount of Easter Lilies can mask that smell; no amount of baskets full of candy can hide the truth.

The truth that we will die. And these myths of a man who has risen on this day? My heart is moved to sorrow for his extended suffering. Let us die when we die; let the void fill our eyes and our hearts and our bodies so that we are taken up with the dew into the cosmos.

These eggs are a pricker in my paw- insistent, whispering you must die, we all must die.

Also, chocolate gives me a tummy ache.

Luco Has Too Much Work

2011-04-19T13:35:00.001-07:00

I am so ashamed. Too busy grading papers to blog today.

Luco & Polytheism

2011-04-12T08:21:00.000-07:00

This morning has been a long one. I woke up several times in the night to prowl around the prison. I ensure there are no burglars or other no-goodniks. Maintaining a constant vigilance is simply part of my life. For whatever reason, I am committed to these people, to this prison. So I did not actually sleep much.

In addition to my surveillance, I was aroused from my slumber by horrifying nightmares. In one, the prison guard and her husband had human bodies with dog faces. In another, we were all hung from the ceiling, spinning wildly, laughing madly. I am not certain what this dream signifies, but it was deeply unsettling. In yet another nightmare, the dog had become my very closest friend. We embraced, enraptured on the couch, sharing dog food. Reminiscing about "the good old days" (apparently becoming best friends with the dog impaired my ability to avoid cliché expressions, because that was the exact phrase that trailed me like smoke out of the dream).

Waking from that dream, I nearly suffered cardiac arrest. But then, one final dream awoke me not much later. Mingus killed us all and was venerated forever as a kind of god-king. The prison guard rose from the dead and she and Mingus danced and danced in feverish circles around the prison- the prison I work so hard to protect (trust me, that small dog isn't working the security here at all; he is more interested in eating the couch). But perhaps my dream was prophetic.

What do my tired eyes rest on upon waking? This scene here. Perhaps the nightmare foretold this abomination! It is a purse upon which reside the countenances' of a duo of Mingus-twins. The prison guard is absolutely relentless in her Mingus-worship. I am absolutely relentless in my awkward grammatical sentences!

I apologize for that moment of self-deprecation. I was overcome. Please consider what it means to be one Luco de la Cabeza Grande. Firstly, the prison guard has my name wrong; she calls me Luco la Cabeza Grande. Secondly, she thinks I have large head. Thirdly, I suffer innumerable degradations like this each and every day. The worst of which is the fact that she brought home a dog. Why would she do this to me?

Allow me to continue. After these three slights, slights I must bear in silence, made to act the fool, comes the fourth and final insult. This Mingus-veneration. This Mingus-worship.

What is it about this small, orange cat? If you will pardon the colloquialism, what's he got that I don't? I am not sure what is so wonderful about Mingus, so I will never even begin to comprehend how to compete with him. Is it his adorable face? His saccharine devotion? His involuntary purring? His great capacity for love?

Is my tireless work protecting this prison entirely worthless and furthermore futile?

Yes, probably.

Luco Lives in a Very Bad Part of Town

2011-04-05T09:18:00.000-07:00

The prison guard and her husband were cleaning the floor, so they put the chairs up on the table up-side-down. These up-side-down chairs create a private fortress from which I can safely observe the other inmates; I see them, but they cannot touch me (and if I sit in just the right way, they cannot even see me!). The dog cannot jump this high, and the other felines would not fit. It is a nearly perfect set up.

I am protected here. It is like a gated community with a titanium gate, a pack of Dobermans, razor wire, and poisonous gas. An enclave surrounded by raging gangs of thugs carrying high powered semi-automatic weapons. Unafraid to shoot. It is an island nestled in the center of a volcano. A hot air balloon dangling rabid piranhas.

Or perhaps not quite, but this is how I like to think of it.

And if no one pets me, it is because I am in my fortress, not because they would rather pet the dog.

Perhaps the prison guard has a point when she berates me for "actively participating" in my own "alienation." She is too naive to realize the valor in what I do. The strength it takes. I maintain disconnection to protect us all in the same way this up-side-down chair protects me from the other inmates. If I reach out to them - to the prison guard, her husband, the other felines, the dog - and they do not reach back?

They do not extend a hand? A paw?

And if they do reach back, what myriad ways will we learn to make each other suffer? Who do we hurt the most if not those we hold closest to our throbbing hearts?

It is a risk I cannot take. I prefer the height of the table. The comfort of the chair legs. The security of my loneliness. They will not make a fool of me because I will never allow them the chance.

But it is rather lonely up here.