Afterglow_a dog memoir

by Eileen Myles

  Imagine this chapter as a tapestry. Seriously, because a dog going on a journey sounds like a kid’s book. Cartoon, most likely, and a couple of celebrities will be doing both of our voices and you won’t have any control over that so my advice Eileen is for you to step back a little … go to the 19th century which you love or even the 14th which was really the day the hey day of tapestry. Tapestry is absolutely the way to go for this chapter. It’s a literature I’d like to rub up against. Any dog would. Tapestry is toney it will absorb what we give it. I’d like to pee on this chapter frankly. I would like to tear it to shreds. A tapestry is bumpy and nubby even stinky like a couch and a dog loves a couch. I’m thinking of course of the purple one you have had in storage for eight years. It could have been in the chapter where you listed my stuff. Because it was my couch. I simply loved it, it was us.

  The couch was the place where you finally fought back. It was so cool and so modern even you couldn’t accept I had torn it to shreds. It was your California couch. So after my attack you had it covered in lavender marine quality fabric so I could no longer open it. We hit rock.

  But back to our tapestry. Or r-r-r-rugs. I know you were mulling the idea of a wraparound. Not a skirt but something cozy you know like a narrator at the top of each chapter so it’d be palatable for the sophisticated reader. They’d feel comfortable since it wasn’t for them. People are always happier with someone else’s shit—kitsch is that way. They feel smart peeping over somebody else’s shoulder—kids always. So nice they have this good show. So a smart dog book for kids makes a lot more sense than a stupid dog book for adults. But you know Jethro (if I may?) your work already has a YA quality because of how you like it to be readable which is a bit like chewable … and that’s good. But a kid tone won’t work, then. See, cause you’re already there.

  I have one more thought which is dog ghostwriting. Think of it. Funny to ghostwrite for a dog. And a course then you can be all snarky about rock stars with ghostwriters. Not Kim but you know the other ones. You liked being my ghostwriter. And you were always that. But, as you pointed out to that Irish writer, Dave, when he brilliantly proposed he write a chick lit book—uh Dave all men’s books are chick lit. Every woman in literature is some guy’s notion of how women think. Men invented the genre (calling it literature) yet when women write books they get cordoned off as chick lit. Where is dick lit I ask? I’m female too Jethro. I get all this.

  “Dog ghostwriting”—great language, funny idea, but honestly aren’t all dog books dog ghostwriting. No dog writes a book, no dog wants a book written no dog reads a book and the only part that might be interesting is the idea that all writers are ghosts. Look at you! The writer spends her life reducing her own existence to that of a ghost. All the vitality floods onto the page while her own existence grows wanner and thinner. Writers are pale, spooks so to speak. Your time is winnowing to a close and you’ve spent a great chunk of it sequestered in rooms creating your double. To this dog, Rosie Myles, your life was a dream. Mine wasn’t!! So let’s finish this baby and wake up.

  I mean the point is to dissolve categories. Ideas hold things up. Eileen—just write. It’s that simple. I will. Look at that tree moving out there. All that bobbing, all that bird song. It’s paradise. Work with me.

  A tapestry is a great way to describe my journey inside and out because it’s easy. You must first make a cartoon then the weaver fills it in. That’s you. You’re the weaver. I’m the cartoonist. Moi and Raphael. Nice company. I think this tapestry is what you’ve had in mind for a very long time. It’s a deep emotive process. And fortunately you’ve even got weavers in the family, in Ireland, which is to say you come from a line of receptive people, thank God.

  In Arlington when your father came falling off the roof … when he hung so stilly in the air as if he was held aloft by threads … well he was. Dog tapestry! When life sends pictures you can’t digest quickly enough you convert them to a cartoon mechanism so that the colors become very hard and strong. Very clear so you can abide them. Think of the work of Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Heavy shit. Same deal. Always each image leans on the other held abreast by wefts and warps so the shock of reality really gets caught. Held. On this tapestry your dad (who is kind of me) is still hanging in the air over your head. That tarot card feeling you had about his death was true! And here’s me, my dog self, down there low and central & bursting out of my mother’s insides. A little splatter actually looks good on a tapestry. Feel the texture. Right at the bottom of the carpet. And there I am dying in the vet’s office on University in the very sleeping bag which you carried me in. I kind of knew something was about to happen but I kept chewing. I felt weak. Food is like a good book. That body was done.

  Everybody’s life is just this kind of picture. People get dogs to help them construct it. Feel it Eileen. Heart to heart. The energy bounces—becomes apparent. So this is the template of our relationship, exposed, right here. Like a poem and waaay better than a movie or a kid’s book. Because this story, the dog’s journey, I cannot say often enough, is true.

  I notice that you’ve been sleeping in it, in that sleeping bag for inspiration. That’s good. We can reproduce that slimy royal blue fabric. And, here. The brown. I’m eating some very tasty carne asada out of Anna Joy’s hand; not yet dead. The weft is like this. Discontinuous. And here’s Ali’s big beautiful face looming over the spectacle of my dying. Ali looks good on a tapestry doesn’t she. Some people were born for this medium. She would look good on a mosaic too. Has any dog’s death been honored this way before. I feel like a funeral director. Lot of funeral directors are dogs. The Grannan family in Arlington. Remember them. I think they were mainly terriers. Anyhow. I knew their son. I don’t want to get distracted. We’ll stop and we’ll start. We’ve got a lot of territory to cover but I promise you we will nail it by the end. Will Hank end the show? (Exhales.) I just don’t know. Stuff changes …

  Right now I’m thinking he should come earlier. I think he will slow things down if we put him in right here. Yip yip yip. I saw that little bubby in action.

  The pit bull walks over to the carpet on the wall. She gets up on her hind legs and she pushes up the edge of the tapestry a little bit. The underside shows.

  It’s a maze of pulled threads, colours. This is what I mean. In terms of story, the front of the carpet, we’re taking moments and we’re freezing them. An entire existence. Right to the tiniest stitch. Yet the whole thing is mobile. She gives the thing a shove and it shakes and buckles. Look. Everything does.

  Eileen: Wow.

  [Nods, knowingly] Good I’m glad you’re speaking up. I don’t want you feel silenced by this chapter and I certainly don’t want you sliding stuff in later on because you felt silenced. [Shrug.] It’s totally what the little monks did when they were copying the bible. More history! The 14th century when the tapestry (aka rug) came into prominence was a time full of trauma. The plague (in Europe) and no one could read and the church kept sending out all these dire images of heaven and hell. Inside of the church. For the rich it was mainly in private spaces. Lot of these tapestries were from the New Testament and “The Hunt” was also a big one. Most famously “The Hunt of the Unicorn.” Which was totally about policing gender. They used a young virgin with braided hair to trap the pansexual unicorn. I can’t even stand to look at those tapestries. It hurts.

  The king had many houses. And look out the window—yeah where you are is fine. There’s always a lot of houses. Up the hills. Lot of apartments. A lot of worlds. Capisch? Any tapestry is made to be peeled off the wall like a dream and carried someplace else and opened up there. Henry VIII had like two hundred and fifty tapestries which to me seems vulgar. He didn’t have that many hearts. He didn’t have that many minds. But that’s a king. It looks like he did. And the tapestry finally does contain the soul of the weaver and the cartoonist and the king. That’s the miracle.

  OK back to my birth. This little dog face peeping out. Right there. That’s me getting born. But Lucy’s
cunt was not a movie theater. It was more of a fundus. You know. It’s like uh … a stomach and you’re in the back and then you gotta imagine there’s like an opening on the opposite side. That’s us. Right here where we’re standing. We’re in the world. This is a picture. A deep illusionistic one.

  OK so here’s a little later on … I’m in a litter on a city sidewalk. East 3rd Street. We’ll put an actual street sign in. Make it real. I’ll just stick a toothpick in for now. I’m with my brothers, my one little sister and I’m literally woven to Lucy. That’s my mom. A beautiful dog. A big white dog right [pounds] in the middle of the carpet. Those soft faded black spots. Just a few. Excuse me. I’m tearing up. I was born on a sidewalk. Maybe I was born on the roof. I don’t know. I’m fatherless of course. It’s what all of you increasingly have in common with us. Think about it. Fatherless boys! And so many of them wind up in prison. Boys in gangs. And the masculine women walking their pit bulls in the 90s when I came around. Such a lesbian moment for dogs. None of you had dads. You became them. Somebody had to do it.

  Here’s a new location. Young dog standing in a marketplace examining pair of purple shoes with turned-up toes. Shoes being extended to him. It’s a gift. Dog looks out a window at a train station in Spain. The sign says Jerez. Sherry! Dog pulls at her collar which is tightening. Choked up. She doesn’t know why. Barcelona. She’s sitting at a lunch counter—greasy churros which she dips into her coffee. Oil dancing on the surface of her coffee in the morning light. Opens her notebook but she’s got nothing to say. It’s just a gleaming hole in the day. A dog can’t write. No one knows she is here. Though silent she is quietly thrilled by her position in the world. A dog can do this. Look here. A dog has a bunk on a boat. When he closes his eyes the sea rocks and he knows he will sleep so deeply with the world swaying this way and that. There are sounds, there are tiny sounds, clunks out there, there are no sights. And there is a place for that. For the darkness is the darkness of the dog inside the womb which is the boat. Let me say that again: For the darkness is the darkness of the dog inside the womb which is the boat. Which is all the little doggies jostling into each other in the womb. No dog is born alone. A dog does not come into the room by herself. Nods. Lot of shaking going on. We love boats. The young man opens his eyes and it is Sicily rising like a cake in the air. No maybe it’s Naples. The boat is landing. He better get up.

  He is sitting on a boat in the harbor in Provincetown. He is drinking a cup of coffee with the crew. And those dogs wear woolen caps and have dark blue sweaters on. He would like one. A boy is drowning in Provincetown. The dog stands on the beach. He sees the boy’s white hand raising above the waters and then he is gone. A girl kisses her dead mother’s cheek. The coffin is shut. She will tell her puppies this same story again and again. The puppies go brrr. That’s what a mother is. She tells the same story. She writes inside you. A woman is loaded on a chair into the back of a van. They could be gassing her. It’s like a dog mother. For years this mother will tell the attendants all the people around her who will keep changing for years. She tells every one of them.

  I want to go home,

  I want to go home.

  Eileen: You know I was just in Ireland and I was thinking why didn’t they send her there. They could have just sent her back.

  Rosie: I don’t think they had money Eileen. May I continue.

  Eileen: Sure.

  A woman cries in her winged back chair and her puppy walks up and says Mommy I’m here. The woman sobs even harder. A small dog is loaded into a tiny room with other dogs who are all smashed together a big pile of them scared half to death up onto the side of the room altogether and then the gas starts pouring in. A dreaming dog cries. When you see a dog doing that paddling and the woo woo people say look she’s dreaming, she’s hunting. No she is fleeing the mass extermination of dogs. You think they don’t all know it. Feel it. This happens thousands and thousands of times a day.

  And the mother says there were just so many …

  A dog runs and runs in a meadow surrounded by prancing deer bounding in and out of the woods. The dog spins around, young, not knowing which way to turn first. The strongest smell on the beach is a bell. It rings and rings. I feel it wants me to throw myself down and roll in it even though I know I can’t get that rich stinky smell inside of me that way. I want it all over me. My fur is covered with mouths and noses. The smell is so cheesy and loud. It is a flag to all dogs. We love death. We love death death death. That’s our song. It’s our seasoning.

  Here’s a row of us with our mouths opened wide singing up along the upper left corner of the carpet. Mille chiots. A thousand puppies. And we sing the smell of dead birds. The smell of rats. A good dead mouth. I mean mouse. The pond is long. It should be … here.

  Rosie makes a circle with her paw, hitting and thumping the carpet. Blue pond. No, no—brown pond. Brown pond. I walk around it all day. My brother and I run ahead, there’s Hoover. Remember Hoover racing up and down the dunes up and down until he tore his little rear legs. He was the craziest puppy! Yet always he and I would stop and turn back to see if you were still there. Like two dog princes looking back at you and all the windows of Provincetown were pink. That’s dusk. Is it sad. It’s a thick stitch. Which is why we remember. Lot’s wife turned into a picture in our heads not a pillar of salt. Sodom and Gomorrah. Pee yew. Those were happy dogs. People did just what they wanted there. It smelled very good. I know some Roman dogs too. Not the famous pair. I know Luca, you know the guy on the floor in Pompeii. He was leaping for a ball when the thing hit. He’s a very good guy. Lives now in Cambridge, Mass. Professor, I think.

  I’m in the barnyard now. Yeah, Pennsylvania. Baby chick in my mouth and I’m circling. I killed her accidentally. Everyone was mad. I had her in my mouth. You made me so nervous. The sky wide open. The sky is cool. The whole top of the carpet is sky. The stars are warm the closer you get but right here where you can’t ever catch them they almost squeak and my paw falls into the hole of one and I’m turning around. I’m stuck but I’m turning and I’m the oldest dog up here, I am the only one. There’s lots of holes in the tapestry. Cigarette burns. Those old kings were pigs. They would throw their old chicken bones at the tapestry. Nuts.

  Here I am surfing on the wing of a plane and I have a bone in my mouth. I am total pornography. I am dog. And the stars sprout strands of wheat, weeds and flowers, the whole thing becomes day, wild tall grasses and my fur is itchy and rubbed so slightly by everything that’s in the wild grass and I fall on the ground and sniff. I start to dig and I look and sniff again and I dig and now I hear someone calling. Look at this. Look at that dog. It’s me.

  Rosie’s upright at a table in a nice wool suit. He’s wearing a black silky tie jacket he has a striped shirt on and an untouched scone and butter sits in front of him on the table. And some glistening bacon he’d actually prefer. Goosh. Push the old muzzle right into the bacon and eat it all. Oh boy does he want to slobber. He sips his tea and smiles like he is sooo grateful but really he wants to howl and bark and go out into the yard and play. Wants to tear off the man clothes and bite the leg of the woman across from him smiling. I want to sniff up her skirt. I can smell her from here. That’s gooood. She smells like the sea. I like the darkness down there. Her eyes are crazy. She has bright white hair and she is smiling and smiling because everything’s hers. I know what I want. I’m a dog. Is this a dream. I’m a certain kind of husband. And there are hundreds of these men. Will we wait our whole lives to get out of this terrible joke. Life is a terrible terrible joke. Indeed. And every dog knows this. And hey-y-y-y-y. Watch the little curling vine lead right there. Here.

  The whole ship is shaking. The panel lights flashing, numbers flipping, vanishing. My co-pilot turns and grins at me. Here we go. This is not what I imagined. Just sitting here watching it happen. I feel like a guinea pig. A pet. I have my work-suit on. A onesie with lots of pockets. I’m under this woman’s sink and I think I can see where the leak is coming from. Got my
paw on it. I can feel it then she stoops down next to me and asks how’s it going. She’s a little close. It’s good I shout at the pipe. Let her think I’m crazy. It’s all dark under there and the pipe is peeling. You want a beer she goes. What I yell. Not now, she says. I’m okay I yell. Do you mind if I use the toilet she asks. Uh (that’s weird) go ahead. I won’t look. I can hear her peeing I can even smell her pee and I can feel her smiling. She drops her hand down by my butt. Ok what’s going on. She is squeezing my balls. She is so totally squeezing them. This is out of control. The spiral falls and I’m moving into the grey and green landscape with Jethro. You look depressed.

  Jethro: I was.

  Rosie: The beach down there is black I understand but it’s also cold out. The water’s cold. I don’t like rain either. My nose gets cold and I wait. I rub my shoulder against your leg to tell you I’m here. My pads are chapped. Even the little sacs on the sides of my butthole are all filled from the stress. It collects. I tighten my ass in the cold. Oh yeah and I’m dead. Big deal. I rub against your familiar hand. This is beautiful. This looks so good. Iceland was a place you wanted to return. Right. This is your heart. The whole area. It’s one of your dying places. All black and salty.

  Is this ghostwriting.

  Yeah it actually is … cause dog is travelling through you. I’m dead but you’re going to be dead. The tapestry is like an advance memory. The weave knows. We feel every bump in the road, and I suppose every stitch has a smell. Otherwise I wouldn’t know which way to go. It’s a feeling thing. If a volcano’s about to explode the weave expands. Something’s so ready to tear it all open but it hasn’t happened yet. Count to ninety it’s gone.

  Everything. We’re very reliant on patterning. The strong dark line. The tone l-i-t-e-r-a-l-l-y holds the unicorn up. It’s how she survives. Enables the mille fleurs. And a course mille chiots. The thousand puppies hold her up. And she is every gender. The famous unicorn tapestry suggests that dogs helped to kill her. A gang of skinny white dogs with hate in their eyes. It’s not true. [Looks up.] We uphold her beauty. So it’s an example of … political dishonesty. The pit bull shrugs.