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Afterglow_a dog memoir

Page 4

by Eileen Myles


  OSCAR: So you had your say. First in the book, through Dawn Allen and now here. I would kill for that experience.

  ROSIE: And you have in a lot of movies! A doll coming alive, a puppet coming alive. The only thing humans can imagine about puppets finally becoming free of them is that you guys all want to kill. And for good reason.

  OSCAR: You said it, Chief.

  ROSIE: I told Dawn Allen what I loved. The grass in our yard. The sun on my fur. Jethro was thinking about moving again and in this conversation I let him know very clearly that for me it wouldn’t be so good. Dawn asked if I would come along and I used some language that anyone who came from the Myles family should have known meant no.

  We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. It was a joke. I was talking like Eileen Myles’s mother so she would know in the deepest possible way what was going on.

  OSCAR: And did she take the hint. What did she do.

  ROSIE: Moved to Los Angeles, of course. She wound up sitting in an apartment in Koreatown writing my will. Thank you! Same old story. Most poets, most humans, for my money, if they have anything going on at all will still prefer singing about it over truly being. I guess it was the best she could do. Poor old Jethro. First she killed her father, she killed the family parakeet and then she killed me

  OSCAR: Chilling. Does she know?

  ROSIE: She’s about to find out. We’ve written a book, this very sad book about trying to listen. A dog … even or especially when our hearing’s gone we know what everything means. That the universe is deep. It’s not about what’s inside of you. The inside is empty.

  (ALL PUPPETS nodding.)

  It’s the layered story that is true. That’s what everything means to me. The world is waiting. It wants very much to tell you its facts. It wants to be seen. Once you touch everything—and touch it well—then you can let go. And go home.

  PUPPETS: You mean?

  ROSIE: Then you can sink into the pond and know everything. There’s no God. There’s no dog! Just water. Everything is water. On and on.

  OSCAR: Hah. I think that is a very nice place to close.

  Goodnight, Sweet Queen

  Los Angeles, March 2008

  In a couple of days I’ll be travelling across America. Just me and Ernie, the king, who daily looks more and more like the old Elvis. A lot has happened since you left. I quit my job and moved. To this apartment in Koreatown I feel like I killed you for. Hope you don’t hate me. It really did seem like it was time and I didn’t want to hang around and watch you go into kidney failure. I’m not doing much here. LA feels like a giant solarium. You would have liked it. Little more urban than San Diego. I find it hard to think. So I have this low-slung cardboard box of your things I will destroy after I write about them. Some I’ll put in storage. I’m looking at your paw impression. Is it horrible. I didn’t ask for it. I picture some woman leaning into the wet plaster with you under her left arm. Tight against her breast. That’s how I imagine it. Then whooomp. Her partner, somebody else, throws you into the fiery furnace. The paw cast could be anyone’s. I prefer that it’s yours. [Clunk.]

  PLAID BED (TWO, WITH CAT)

  As soon as I situate the fuzzy dog beds on the floor the cat jumps on them. Ruining the picture. I’m photographing each thing before I write about it. Inventory is key to the moving experience. You make a list. I’m assuming you know everything now cause you’re god. Right? The surface of the beds is kind of “lamby” which made them cozy for you. The plaid along the trim is subtle like scarves. You were always a masculine girl, British like an old upper-class dyke. Though you were wild at heart. My report: I see beige and dark grey almost blue and of course black. It’s plaid like the highlands, like your family’s precious kilt. Plaid is a map of nature, a way of viewing land, plowed lands, like overhead from a plane when there were none. Plaids are one of the proofs that we’ve had extra terrestrial visitors on this earth. They left us this map. Looking just like us (no, like dogs) they say this is how your farmlands appear from our ships. We’d like you to wear it like a flag. To say that you know. That you won’t forget. Dogs look good in plaid. Always do. Few dog beds are not plaid. LL Bean. The original dog bed. A dog is looking down from the sky. I’m standing in a field waving. I’m sorry I let you go.

  CONE

  Fucking see-through plastic cone. You could’ve worn this any number of times. Like after you were attacked by Flora, Jordi’s dog. We came home and there was blood all over the floor and on your white neck and nobody was saying a word. Betty told us it happened around the issue of food and we did always feed you guys separately but we forgot to tell Betty. She would never take care of you again. Every dog you ever lived with beat the crap out of you. Hoover biting your neck, nipping at your neck for months. Then at that party you just turned and bit right through his cheek. You were basically very openhearted not that you liked sharing your home but there they were. First Hoover, now Flora. I loved Flora, but she wasn’t articulate like you. She was a kind beast who enjoyed pears. Which we shared. Last time I saw Flora we were all sitting at Mogador in the outdoor café. You were already gone. I brought Flora a pear and Jordi was so moved but Flora was already eating. How could I forget. We loved pears. How else was there to know, to hold the spot.

  humans have dogs

  to hold a distant spot close

  a star

  a cool glow

  for the

  lonely

  BOWL

  I’m not so sure what’s so special about this bowl. Deep blue with a beige trim. Crumbs stuck in its base. A dab of orange left over from tomato sauce. I always threw my extra sauce over your wet or dried food and because your face was white the orange sauce would stain your maw and you looked stupid plus beautiful. Sauce is makeup around these parts. I also love sauce. I’d let you lick my plate so I wouldn’t. I once saw a grown woman, a very intelligent woman lick her plate after dinner. It was a little hard. I liked her so much and it was sort of disgusting and I’ve thought about it for years. Would I ever be close enough with anyone that I’d lick my plate right then and there? Would I fart? The thing about not growing old with anyone is that you never get a chance to break them in. You’d be all farts right away. Too late, too hard. Much easier to be alone when I’m growing old. I had you.

  DRUGS (RIMADYL)

  It depressed me when I found the bottle in the cabinet. You’d been taking these tiny white pills for about three years and one time we lost them on the road. Our first trip to CA. No it was our second. August 2002. I think your water bowl fell out at a truck stop and the pills were in it. And without them you were completely in pain all the time. It was unbelievable that these tiny little pills made it so you could bear walking. It was already a total maintenance life but I didn’t know. I forgot. You were okay if you didn’t have to move but once you needed to pee you had to be picked up and it was the first hint of what the end would look like. Jordi, who we were travelling with, had a cat. The cat’s name was Avi. Avi had a tent in the back. Jordi drove a Subaru wagon. We got to the house and Jordi cut a small hole in her office door so only the cat could get in because otherwise you kept racing in and dunking your head in his box. Dogs love cat shit. Who knew? And a pit bull has a very wide grin. Now it was a kitty litter grin. Nooo I’d scream. I’m sorry Jordi happily growled as she stood in front of the refrigerator snacking, the door to her office wide open.

  After several episodes of feasting from Avi’s box you began going to the vet a lot. Maybe she’s tired from travelling. She’s twelve. Yeah twelve is old. I could never picture you dying but the idea was introduced then. Each new vet would say how old is she. Twelve. Twelve. Hunh. And then look down at her chart. I remember bumping into our favorite vet like the day before you died. I took you to the park on 30th St. that you liked. There was the vet with her friends and it was like she was seeing a ghost. Is that Rosie! I can’t believe she’s still around. I felt betrayed. You spend all this money and you feel so hopeful and then you realize the
vet’s thinking she’ll be dead. Why don’t they say let her go. A mechanic would. Get something new, right? C’mon. The vet stands there stroking the dog’s head. She’s okay. You smile. Vet’s thinking: she’s dead.

  A day you could have very easily died we were laying in the sunlight on my bed. This is like 2003. I’m always reading cause I teach and you were lying there. Rosie was. An early fall day in San Diego. Beautiful. And you stirred like you were ready to jump. You stood up and swayed. This tiny sway like I’d never seen before. You hit the floor, stood there a moment wiggling, and with that look in your eye you collapsed. Someplace in all of the kitty litter emergencies the vet had said something helpful. Look at her gums. If they’re white get her in here quick. Why. The vet took her stethoscope off. She could have congestive heart failure. So Rosie’s lying on the floor and I lift her doggy lip and there it is. Lavender. Pale lavender. I threw her in the Subaru and we drove. Jordi drove and I sat in the back holding your head. Hurry. As the gums grew white.

  Did the litter do it I asked. Her spleen had burst. Possibly said the vet. Just keep an eye on her. And we said it together. Watch the gums.

  I have to say that the cat died too. Avi’s now a small agave bush in the yard. I liked him. He was a poet and he’s why I got Ernie later on. Jordi confessed that she had once taken care of her uncle’s birds in San Francisco and the birds died. How. I-I stopped feeding them. I was a kid she screamed in this delighted way. Like she was saying something adorable. First her cat lost fur. Then he stopped eating (which I guess seemed normal since she didn’t really eat either) and one night he was under a chair, tiny, and Avi had been a big fat cat and it was like nobody noticed (I mean she kept making vet appointments and breaking them cause she was busy since she was on the job market. I had a job and she didn’t. I didn’t even want my job and finally I took him to the vet but I didn’t know anything) so we rushed him to the hospital that night and then he was dead.

  There was something bad about my house. In June you began to have fits. Cathy called me. She was a graduate student who became my best friend. She said you were jumping into the truck and suddenly you fell and were lying in the driveway your paws shaking and foam was coming out of your mouth. I flew home and saw that you were weakened but still you were you and you seemed fine. I went back to Toronto and then it happened again. I was back for good.

  The fits could happen at any time. I began to be able to feel it same as when you were about to shit. It was like the air changed. I was very wedded to how you were in the world because you held me there with you in the frame. Though I was always waiting. The time I had a dog when I was a kid (Taffy) he was taken away so I only felt safe if I acted like you were someone I was having an affair with and I had to be a little brusque and whenever I came home from a trip you’d be a little miffed and wouldn’t look at me but then we’d be on our walk again which was our life. Which felt like my family. We pretended there was no connection which was how we felt it. I vowed now not to ever go away, I couldn’t and now the definition was simply us, our intimacy here, and you were dying. I mean all those years with doctors when they asked your age and they looked—I mean I knew what they meant but I didn’t truly believe it.

  They thought it had something to do with your white blood cells. They thought maybe it was leukemia. Your heart of course. They gave you tests and put you on that drug and your eyes looked completely crazy. Prednisone. I really hated that drug. I don’t like that I said to the vet.

  TRAVELLING BOWL (“Outward Hound”)

  How hard it is for a poet to live daily with a merchant’s jokes! Outward hound, ugh! I just finished the first half of Elvis’s bio and right as he was having his haircut for the military he said “Hair today, Gone tomorrow.” There’s a salon in San Diego called Hair Today. San Diego is like the capital of bad names. Every third store name is cute. You feel grateful for Whole Foods because at least you don’t have to be offended. You just go in. I’d put your soft blue bowl in my backpack with a bottle of water and a plastic bag and we’d go for our walk. In the later years Ernie followed and a cat friend would follow him. I love how cats follow. They trail and then dart off and then peek from behind things to see where you are now and then never return. I’m finding I’m more of a cat than a dog. Person that is. I really don’t think I’ll follow you up with anyone.

  Yet. I now have around my waist a little dead dog. To think of walking you every day for almost seventeen years. To think of lifting you continually in that last year. Holding your butt up till your rear legs kicked in. Tiny little shaky little sticks. Standing in the piss thinking this is it, the end. I’ve been in physical therapy (PT to the cognoscenti) for tennis elbow incurred during any of the innumerable moves of the past year. Up and down stairs, into my office, up here in LA, all over the state of California. Helping my sister’s wife plant their garden in Western Mass. during the summer. But lifting one dog, you, in those last six months was definitely what pulled these tendons the most. You have to succumb to everything. That’s what I’ve learned. I get on a Styrofoam roll and fling my arms forward and back fifteen times a day. I do more and the breath comes back and I feel high and my right arm is getting better. But still I’m carrying that little dead dog. The new fat around my hips and waist is kind of you and how we don’t go on our walks anymore. I’m trying to be different—to do yoga to get over you. I go on walks and stand on the beach in the forest with no one. It feels sad and I remain a nervous person. Because when something’s gone from your life it’s like the hole a giant rock leaves when it hits a pond it doesn’t just go. It makes ripples and ripples from them and slowly the circles move out. I’ve been swaying in this all year. I know eventually I’ll be new without you. But meanwhile I feel sort of feminized by this loss. I feel fat.

  Here’s a sad poem I found in the box. I don’t think this is really the title but I enjoy it:

  ZIZEK/LOVE/CUB

  The inevitability

  that God

  would be a

  man the absence

  adding up

  to something

  and my plants

  brownly

  scrunching

  up to something

  cause they

  never die

  & neither

  does my

  dog

  & neither

  do I.

  YOUR RAINCOAT

  It smells like you. Is this the right place to say that my use of POV, perspective and pronouns is cumulative and historic, performative and not abstract. The raincoat is yellow and reversible. Meaning that I think of writing as a series of presents and the room of the writing is always new. Just as a camera has the capacity to go forward and back, rewind; project or establish depth likewise in writing you have a capacity to address in many ways in the same sentence. Because in fact reality does not occur in sentences and even words are hangers on I believe. Stabs in the dark night and day. We are living in fact in this pulsing film. Your coat smells like you. You are gone and the coat becomes you. Plunked down yellow, rumpled and smelly on a pillow which I stole from the round Holiday Inn in Long Beach I stayed at with Lesley & Jeffrey when we saw “The Ring.” It was “The Little Ring.” A miniature opera. I love this pillow. Brown with Arabic squiggles on it. I mean a pattern suggesting language though not mine. The background of the pillow is faded. A button dark brown at its center. It’s a brown square pillow with a nipple.

  So I’m deciding what lives in California and what comes to New York. I think the pillow stays west. The best line I ever wrote is:

  I long for a king’s progress

  from place to private place

  A king is always home and that’s what I want. And you always had it. We called you Prince Roseberg that fall when you wore the yellow reversible raincoat. Very Provincetown, very beach-y though I don’t know that any apparel was ever a hit with you. If it was cold out you were better off staying in. Though you loved the snow. You went wild in it. Dogs don’
t take showers but their ions change in this other way. I just have to say for once and for all time that you hated puppies. You never saw a puppy you didn’t want to kill. And you tried a few times. I was just contacted on MySpace by the owner of one of those puppies. Who was entirely forgiving and then told me he was trans. That’s great I said. I don’t care about babies either. It’s not that I don’t like kids. It’s just I don’t need them and they don’t need me. I believe that children are geniuses. And I hope they all have good parents who will let them be. For me it makes a lot more sense to have a dog. Just once in my life. I can imagine a million cats. You will be my dog star always. But a dog star’s a double. Isn’t that true?

  WARNING/SECURITY DOG

  I acquired this sign in New York during my presidential campaign. Jane King gave it to me “for Rosie” which I didn’t get since you were so kind. Certainly to adults like Jane. Look at this dog with raised maw and jagged killer teeth. The red “Warning” swoops over the dog’s head like a collapsed awning while radiating loud noise pain via the dog’s mouth. The sign’s so punk. It’s made out of metal. Jane had a loft and it was the sort of thing a person might have idly leaning against the wall. For several years (1999–2001) I had a loft in New York. Even had my 50th birthday party there. People told me later they thought I owned it. You were at the party of course rolling on everyone who was on the couch. This pit bull is really friendly. The sign wound up hanging on the front gate outside my house in San Diego. Once I discovered you were deaf (and not entirely disenchanted with me) I was afraid you would slip out and never get home. You’d be out there wandering and they would take you to the pound and you would die. Cause you were a pit bull. The sign was a boundary protecting your life. It frightened people so they wouldn’t dare open the gate and we were safe.

 

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