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It's not clear what I am to say here. On this page, this screen, this location, millions of miles from the sun, a few blocks from downtown Oakland, CA, on this strange old chair. Here a tiny, tiny pinpoint on the time/space palladium. Here a strange chemical conglomeration sits, motioning, clicking, bursts of little chemical reactions sputter through the conglomeration to you sucking it in to your own chemical plant. Sipping, gulping, spatting it out. Niblets, squiggles with and without a common understanding, squiggles that generate, transform chemicals into chemicals, squiggles that pass through the conglomeration without touching a single spec.
But I am aimless here/now. Surely there must be a message, a note to slip through my fingerly digits. The big Dog must have some simple niblet to pass through and into our mussy stream, a button to sew, a lip to stitch, a wound, a cut, a gash to give or heal. But the cold breeze blows silent when it freezes. It slows all mingling matter, all chemical transformations, the explosions, the tiny, tiny explosions we use to safely jump across to one another. The teensy bursts that mar the surface of quiet, that scar spectrum of light, that linger for others to reap. The explosions that fade but not due to observation, not due to harvesting by others. Every crop of bursts can feed an infinite flock of chemical soups, vibrations of light, conglomerations.
And so we begin our journey with a taste of foundation, the jello blocks that form the little scraper to come. Still, not a clue of foreshadowing, forewarning, fore anything. Is this the story of Dog? The Dog, a dog? And what of the boy. If there be a dog, especially the Dog, there must be a boy. The story of a boy and a dog. No matter that it be the Dog. Irrelevant really. It's all love. Well, then it's settled. This is to be the story of a boy and a dog. Strange though. I am not with dog. I've never really loved dog. But I appreciate dog. I love the dog of others. Ah love. How is it that one can never really love yet love the one of others? Perhaps that will unfold. That would be a good one. That morsel, that kernel of love, that string in the nest of what love might be. That glimpse would be a good one. Perhaps the thats and ones will also unravel into a more clarified butter. Slippery for sure but free of feculent matter.
(Time for a little break already. I'm compelled to disclose my use of dictionary.com. I appreciate the reader's curiosity or inability to change channels thus far. But I would be cruel to leave "feculent matter" clinging to the reader with no disinfectant to explain it's unexpected appearance. As the reader guessed I was inclined to say "free of fat". But I was in doubt regarding the content of clarified butter. I'm just not sure what chemical compounds result in the separation. So I turned to my friend dictionary.com. Just as I turn whenever I'm in doubt regarding these silly squiggles we call language. I turn to dictionary.com not because I trust it as a final authority but rather because it is expedient when I am in doubt. As the reader knows I have little regard for ensuring the proper use of squiggles. Some of my squiggles have not yet entered the great book of language. So I turn not to squelch misuse but rather to squelch doubt. And not for doubt regarding the order of squiggles, but doubt regarding meaning. I use Microsoft Word to clarify the order of squiggles. Dictionary.com gives me meaning.)
We find the boy and dog:
- alone with each other
- in love with each other, yet without any concept of love
- in a strange time that others consider ordinary
- in a strange place that others consider normal
- with great curiosity
- with considerable hunger
- in perilous danger (I say this with no doubt that perilous means dangerous)
(I will paint the picture. When I return to these squiggles I will describe what I painted.)
(5/4/01 I am back. I have painted nothing. Not a single brushstroke on the invisible inner canvas. No mixing of chemical hues on the great palette. But I see boy is talking to dog.)
It's quiet. Some would feel it as lonely. Dog is happy. Dog is not weighted but the burden of ever increasing expectations, expectations of new stimuli, expectations of greater and longer lasting stimuli, expectations to forge one's own path. Dog is happy just to be with boy. Dog feels a deep unconditional love for boy, and now feeling a quiet ecstasy just walking. It's not clear at all if boy recognizes the danger they wade in. Dog definitely does not recognize the danger.
It's very quiet. Not with an absence of sound. The quiet we know as the absence of human contact, the absence of the sound and movement of human life, especially the absence of humans we recognize, especially the absence of humans we recognize in a way that makes us feel warmth. It's a quiet more common to darkness. Real, physical darkness - the absence of light. Not the darkness of evil. Not the darkness of pain or sorrow. Not the darkness of giving up. Boy has not given up. Boy still feels some sense of adventure. Boy has not penetrated the barrier of invincibility, the shell of protection, the warmth of the greater womb. In his brief life boy has felt fear and pain. Just not at the intensity that comes with the understanding that you are prey. As prey, sounds in a bed of silence make the little chemical factory work double-time - fear is less abstract, moves closer to pain.
(What? Fear moves closer to pain? Fear is an emotion induced by thoughts of the future. Pain is an emotion in the awareness of the present. A boy might feel fear in the moment, but it requires some degree of abstraction, some experience, some knowledge of what is possible. Pain does not require knowledge. Pain and joy are the only emotions possible in the absence of past or future thought. Okay then fear can become less abstract if it approaches pain, as the future approaches the present. Whew! For a moment I thought I had made up that whole fear/pain connection.)
(I love these parenthesized sections. It gives the faint impression that I've stepped out of my voice, that these inner thoughts are somehow distinct from the outer thoughts.)
(5/19/01)
Nothing is recognizable. Boy is familiar with a dark, empty landscape. Trees, pavement, structures, are known in their generic images, but boy has not seen these particular trees, pavement, structures, and the creatures in the distance. The creatures moving in an out of distant light. The creatures stopping, motioning, moving with intention, with inattention, with their own thoughts and images, with self-perspective, peering out of all senses into the surrounding bio-soup, churning the bio-data in their little chemical plants, unaware of boy and dog in the distant darkness. Dog inexplicable becomes uneasy looking at the distant creatures. Dog shouts triggering a faint but perceptible chain reaction of dog chat on the local area network of dogs. Nobody is certain about the content of dog chat. Puritans will say the chat contains simply greetings, friendly hellos, and some appropriate boundary setting. Scientists will explain dog chat as a complex interchange of audio cues to establish and maintain membership and hierarchy of packs. Ordinary, beer drinking, tv watching, people understand dog chat is nothing more than, Yo. Wassup?, How ya doin?, Did you hear that? What was that?, Check that shit out?, Fuckoff dickhead!, Bring it on mother fucker!, and so on.
(To Be Continued)
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