spleen

Black Eyed Dog

In my dream this morning, I found myself entering some sort of amusement park, a reconstructed era type, like a Renaissance Festival or parts of Gettysburg. I was with someone, a woman, but I don't know who. I remember that something was strange about the gates of the park — they were at an odd angle, like they were about to fall. It was all very Ren-Fest like, with hawkers and people dressed up and whatnot. A cheesy-looking Green Man, a few other assorted characters. But I also saw siamese-twin dogs, connected at the head (or the shoulder? The neck? It kept changing). I think they were some kind of setter. The healthy one — dark gold fur, friendly-looking, cute — was always turned away from me, while the sickly one — dark fur with grayed edges, barely alive — was always turned towards me. I'm not sure why I didn't realize I was dreaming, because I was intelligent enough to turn to my friend and say, "That's a symbol of some kind. I think it's a coat of arms, or the standard of a royal house."

I went up to the dogs and tried to pet the healthy one, but it started growling at me. My hand came to close to the place where they were conjoined, a clear seam in the fur. I decided to try the sickly one. In my friendly "I love dogs" voice, I said, "Hey buddy." I wasn't even sure if it was alive until it looked up at me, and a flash of light shot through its eyes. The healthy one suddenly became friendly again, grinned at me and said, "Shhhh."

My friend and I walked on and ended up in a flower or trinket shop. It was small. We walked through the shop talking about the dogs, and as we reached the back door (near the shopkeeper's desk), my friend exited but the shopkeeper stopped me. "You're interested in a dog?" she asked, as though she were trying to sell me one. I told her about the siamese dogs, and she said, "Oh yes, it's been around here for a long time. About twenty-five years."

"It's awful spoiled," I said, remembering people throwing scraps to it.

"Oh yes," she replied, "but then again, most dogs are. I spoil my dog. I remember when I was pregnant, it was a difficult birth — I won't go into the weird zen of it [her phrasing, not mine], but it was difficult. After I had given birth, my dog came to visit me in the hospital. He wanted to shepherd my children home. And I thought, why not? It's an honorable thing. Dogs have honor. And if they have a way, you must let them be. You must let them go, honorably."

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notes

Often you sit down with the page and you say: come forth. The poem looks like 2x + y = z. You need augmented matrices to solve it, lemmas, obfuscated points and axioms. You curl up on the floor, pace, do push-ups, brew coffee, sing to yourself, all the while thinking: come on already, come on. Come forth. Where are you?

Often you give up around sunrise and sleep a little, somehow still waking early.

Rarely, you sit with the page and you stare and stare. Not because you're stuck or frustrated, and not because you're bored or uninspired. You do it because you're joyous and afraid. You say to yourself: I have had a wonderful vision. You say to yourself: I can't write this. I'm not that good.

You say to yourself: how is it that I have been so lucky, so blessed to see?

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