Covering for your puppy

This is a painting of my childhood pet, Trixie, done by one of Mom's patients. Mom was a gerontology nurse for many years. It was painted from a photograph. Trixie is sitting in front of the Franklin stove in our living room, which Mom and Dad added when I was in 5th grade or thereabouts.

When I was a boy, we had a frisky Dachsy Beagle named Trixie. (As I recall, Mom said one of her grandmas used the same name for her puppy; I was becoming aware that names were often repeated in families and I liked the idea.)

I had wanted a pet more than anything in the world, and Mom knew someone whose dog had just had a litter. She took me to pick one out. I actually was attracted to one with long curly hair, but the owner had said she was becoming fond of that one, so I didn't take it. But there was another who walked right up to me and nuzzled against my leg. I took her home and named her Trixie.

I used to hide the tattered remains of things Trixie cut her teeth on (for example, I tossed a gnawed winter glove behind the big freezer in the basement so Mom didn't find it - sorry mom); the goal was just to prevent Trixie from being scolded; she couldn't help being a puppy. Mom and Dad were never physically angry, but no kid likes to see another kid yelled at.

I do the same for my children now.

Strange world, isn't it.

Or perhaps not so strange. Maybe I'm just a softie: puppies, children, the weak and unwary, the marginalized and trivialized, the invisible masses that turn into human petroleum after a few generations, into statues and speeches and parades.

[2014-05-31]

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Nightmares (one more post about dreams)

Henry Fuseli, 'The Nightmare,' 1781 (Wikimedia Commons)

One more post about dreams, this one a nightmare:

I was travelling south on Division Avenue with my family past a crew that was paving and graveling north. My wife was driving. I thought I saw a child atop the gravel truck and in peril of flowing down with the gravel through a mechanical chute. I shouted at my wife, Stop! Back up! She did. And I shouted at the driver of the gravel truck to stop, but it was too late; two small children were being buried in gravel as I shouted.

It took hours to find them, and they were dead. My coworker, Jamie J, was actually atop the gravel searching when they were found.

TV and other news covered it widely. No one asked me to file a report or get involved, so I was an invisible bystander.

I was later asked by someone if I'd heard about this tragic story, and I said Yes, I was there.

The event became so troubling, I could no longer write, and so I wrote in this blog [yes, the same one you are reading now] that I had been struggling with some sad news and would not be writing for a bit.

And there the dream ended.

I've always told myself that if I ever must endure truly sad news, I wouldn't write about it here, at least not until afterward, and not directly (since a writer can't not write about everything, for everything informs every thought and word). You won't, for example, see me chronicle a battle with cancer. I wish all good things to those who do, but that's just not me.

I mean, if I started being that transparent, I'd have to write about the bodies under the floorboards, too, and I just don't want to go there.

[2014-05-31]

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Dreams (Alfred Hitchcock in his underwear)

Pablo Picasso, 'The Dream'

What's in a dream?

I dreamt last night that I was visiting Alfred Hitchcock and he was in his underwear. His wife was there, too, in her nightie.

They made me feel right at home, served refreshments, and Alfred talked about making movies.

There's a reason we dream about a thing, or about a thing over and over. It may be random electrical activity that our sleeping brain is trying to make sense of, but if so, it's the making sense that makes it interesting.

Sometimes we say dreams mean nothing because we want them to mean nothing.

I've been a great Hitchcock admirer since a boy, have read some biographies, seen most of his movies numerous times, and studied him in college.

Right now I'm listening to 12 hours of interviews with him by French director Francois Truffaut.

That is probably the immediate connection, though not the only one.

[2014-05-28]

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God bless you, Maya Angelou. R.I.P.

Why do we wait until someone's life ends to celebrate it?

CNN: Legendary author Maya Angelou dies at age 86 >

[2014-05-28]

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This poem was my first experience with Maya Angelou. A segment was used in a public service announcement many years ago.

Maya Angelou Still I Rise

What a beautiful human being, and so in love with words.

[2014-05-29]

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Monday Morning Zombie Apocalypse

I get ready for the day with my own coffee nook, TV room, and bathroom, all to myself, two floors below my sleeping family. Above the coffee pot is a cupboard with swinging doors. These doors are rather high and happen to swing out just a couple inches below the top of my head.

One morning, as I straightened my posture to return the coffee to the cupboard, my cranium encountered the corner of one of those doors in the most painful way.

I was already running late, and so managed through it with a few mild oaths.

Now, it was a humid morning, and my long hair was refusing to stay put, so just before leaving the house I went back to the bathroom to secure my spirited locks and discovered blood dripping down my face. Not a rivulet, mind you, but streams that divided and trickled into spidery veins like I'd just risen from the dead and was seeking fresh brains.

Imagine how I'd looked had I not fixed my hair before going into the office.

[2014-05-27]

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Dawn Of The Dead 1978 Trailer
When there's no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the earth...

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