Afterglow_a dog memoir

by Eileen Myles

  “Dog’s Journey” is mainly written in Ireland. (dogsjourney.com) It began in a monastery. It had a silent start. Many fine dogs walk in Ireland. It’s true. I would go to dinner and she would wait for me outside and sometimes she was gone. I would sit at the table and look out and several others joined my watching and waiting and even agreed if her owner could not be found they would “take her.” This relieved me as I was in a passage of foreign travel though I liked the dog very much. And though she was not allowed to be at the estate where I was staying she petitioned to enter my home intermittently for three days and nights. I felt she was mine especially since we slept together her with that small guilty look on her face and ducking into the covers and suddenly looking up as if she had somewhere else to be which for some reason she did not return to. Each night I would go to the dining area and it was known I was bringing food home to her and I would feed her. I would often be given stale bread and milk for her and it seemed strange to me that a young dog could be expected to live on this. Does a dog love bread. She would eat whatever I gave. And I walked around with her and sometimes with another going to the various homes close by where it was suspected she lived and no one claimed her. I was beginning to take her for my own and I named her Peggy and I put her face on social media and the decision was applauded. But then it transpired through the kitchen, through the women who work here: Esther and Lavinia and Teresa who live in this town.21 Through Esther it was discovered that a man with two sons who had recently separated from his wife had gotten Peggy for one of the boys in hopes the boy would now stay with him and I understood the ploy had not worked but his youngest son, an autistic boy it was told had claimed the dog for his own and called her Mandy. And the dog had another friend who was a lamb and the two, dog and lamb, could often be seen sitting in the middle of the street together just a dirt road not much traffic and even sitting in the field in friendship during the day while the boy was at school and the two chums kept each other company. And were referred to as the wee dog and the wee lamb. The boy at school would come home and he would be known as the wee boy and had no other name and he wanted to keep her I was told. And that would be the end except that Esther tells me that Peggy is at her door every day and she feeds the dog and at home there is no one feeding Peggy. And a man who also lives and works here (at the estate where I am staying22) adds delightedly that he sees the dog and the lamb sitting in the field all day as if they are happy. And the dog is small. I ask him. The dog is larger now but not so large. And through Esther I asked again if I could take Peggy home with me (to America) and the boy’s older brother said no. He is my brother’s dog. But he does not feed her Esther said. The older brother said that is my brother’s responsibility. I have told this story only to hold Peggy longer and look at her picture which is by now almost two months old.

  And by the way, Peggy, I’m fairly certain, is Nellie.

  Can that be true.

  Yes, the dog you so badly wanted, who crawled in your bed, was in fact your paternal grandmother, Nellie O’Riordan. You needed an Irish guide. All the women in the kitchen said you should just take her because that would be the Irish way. But there’s no right way or wrong way, Eileen. I’ve watched you spend so much time at the crossroads thinking this or that. Because of the absence of one very clear and important idea which I will now share with you: longing is not direction. It’s okay to feel very sad that this dog is not in your life and you thought she would be.

  To be a deep and constant well of sadness is a very real thing but it does not mean that you should go either right or left. It just means you are a well. You need to go on and especially now you need to go fast. Because you want to cover some land in the time you’ve got left. I need to finish this tapestry, be done with your book and resume my own travelling. Your grandmother entered into Peggy because that’s what people do all the time. Become dogs. And dogs become human that way and this transmigration of souls is a very Irish thing, remarked upon persistently in literature. But it’s wider than Irish or American. More ancient. And we will continue now with our weaving. Which I think you understand now is an intuition. A dog talking inside of your head. Listen closely. And carry this message to the world. I’ve been other dogs. And I’ve been people other than your father.

  I’ve been Mani. In fact that’s why you keep getting stuck at the crossroads. Your father was stuck and so he just died, crumpled, but you, you kind of pause and scribble a bit. Or a lot. Your favorite moment in literature is when Frank O’Hara paused (did he pause) and thought I could just make a phone call. It was a dog thought. Robert Johnson paused. You once had a car accident listening to Robert Johnson. He is very important for you. He made a deal with the darkness at the crossroads. It is how he got so great. Like lightning hit those fingers. Give it to me he said to the devil and that’s what he got. He got it by standing there in between and welcoming the darkness in. You think it’s evil. It’s something else. It’s what’s in between.

  Claim it. Own it.

  You’ve heard of Manichaeism. It’s the struggle between light and dark and it’s very empathetic. It’s very thoughtful about the pain of the light particles trapped in all things. The light just wants to get out.

  I’m Mani. I painted my teachings because if you show a story it’s in the day. It’s not trapped in the secret place. I mean you can barely prove what I said but I had influence. In fact people generally know more about me as an anti-belief than a belief. That’s okay. I take space. I take space over power any day. My pictures had power and travelled all over the world for about five hundred years. I was bigger after I was dead which I think is kind of my way. And I was trapped in a cell and I died there.

  What’s lost has more power than what is saved. Known to be lost. And that tragedy fell within. And was felt within the followers. Your mother received a letter from a woman who was on your father’s route (no. 411) in Harvard Square and after he died she wrote your mother to say what a wonderful man your father was. Do you remember this story?

  No need to reply. I’m taking this right to the end. All of it. I’ll introduce people, I might sing a song but I’m taking it home. I am. Here we go. You’ve thought about that letter so much because your mother lost it. She never gave it a second. It was the way she survived. She stood there wavering on a bit of scar tissue. It was a proud stand. That was her crossroads and she made a sound an umph and then she just threw it out. That letter about him. All his letters. He’s entirely gone because she needed to keep moving or she would have spent her life at the crossroads. And she built him up as an enormous invisible man. A letter carrier. A monument your dad. As someone you needed to see. You have such figures all over your family tree. Dogs and letter carriers. Do you know why? I will tell you. To carry the sky. Here we go. There’s a particular blue, a kind of vibrating denim that was adopted by the US postal service in the early twentieth century and it is technically described as “blue mixed cadet cloth.” The postal uniform is one of my favorite colours, (I Mani, I Rosie, I Terrence) being illuminated exactly as much and precisely as little as a night sky in winter. In that struggle of night and dark this is the exact fabric that depicts a frozen moment, a snowflake moment of colour and crystallization that all dogs and precisely calibrated spiritual beings would recognize. Visually there are colors that are also tones. That’s the kind of painter Mani was. He used this color sparingly. Just a woof of it. I’m not making a dog joke. I’m making a dog joke. It’s an Iranian painter term and I was born in Persia, I spoke Syriac Aramaic but let’s be Frank. I ran. I was an Iranian holy dog. My book of paintings was called the Arzhang. Once I was no longer seated on the holy throne in churches because I was dead the Arzhang would be placed there on the highest seat. It was venerated. It was open. I’m telling you this because in our time you must make a holy book. A book full of holes about time along the shapes that grace this tapestry.

  Can I be Frank again. This rug.

  It’s a magic rug. And I am a mailman. Your father
was a mailman. Your grandmother’s brother Tim O’Riordan from Knocknagoun, Rylane, Cork: mailman. On the Myles side, your grandfather’s younger brother came to be known as Barney from Dunmakenna, Litton, Monaghan: mailman. It is a shame, Eileen, that you are not a mailman. The dog smiles. Perhaps you are.

  But the United States as we know is a very evil and accidentally spiritual country. It is a Manichean country. So accidentally pyramids speak on its money and so accidently the cadet blue of Persia a vibrating speaking color is the uniform of the common US mailman. And your father Terrence was one. Terrence meaning tender. It’s no accident. Am I still Rosie? Perhaps you should go and look out the window and see the mixed cadet blue sky. It’s a magical time and a thief’s time. It’s little wonder that mailmen world-wide do not simply destroy the mail. In the same way that a chorus of dogs will surely defile and piss on this rug when we are done the mailman wants nothing better than to do destroy the mail. Why? All these men and woman who are carrying these bags and carriages through the streets of the world, all of them are dogs. Does this not give you a different and a better feeling about the US postal service. It was enough for you to learn that there have been mailmen going back in your family’s history for as long as there was mail. As long as there was writing. The sky is full of pictures tonight. Cadet blue is made up of millions of pinpoints of light coming through from the other side. Other side of what you might ask. The holes in the tapestry and the holes in the sky are of the same ilk. It is for the purpose of reproduction. No of course there is not just one night like tonight. It has a copy. And that has a copy. It is out there somewhere. The universe is doubled.23 I, Mani, was given prophesy by my twin. Also if you look long at the double sky, the double universe posing as one establishes a massaging effect on your optic nerve will open a sea of images which is destiny and time. It is open tonight and tonight the night after Christmas all the messages that were ever sent, will ever be sent are written in the sky. Why are the postal workers angry? It’s not enough to know that they are dogs. Just last night I was told, on Christmas of all time, a sad tale. Of course Christmas is the saddest day of all for me because Jesus was my other. What day was Mani born? We do not know. No copy of his book the Arzhang exists. We hope this book will be that copy. We know that it sat on a chair and it was revered. The dogs who work for the US postal service are sending false messages and it breaks their hearts. The sad story I heard last night was that a dog (outside of the service) had been killed, had been “put down” for biting a mailman. This is a slow religious war. The dogs who have taken the bodies of mailmen either from birth or after the time of the age of 13 when a body of one with a weak nature may be intuited are the natural prey of the dogs-in-body who are loyal to the picture not the script. You would think then that dogs would hate writers but it is not so. Each writer is required to tell a dog’s story and so dogs attach themselves to writers to spur on the ghostwriting and a writer might worry that too many dog books are being written and no one will be interested in reading hers and buying it and (obviously Mary Oliver has written a dog book) writing a dog book is hard because the writer is in servitude to the dog most clearly now.24 The dog has been serving the writer for years, opening up her life and getting her out into the air and onto the beaches and even bringing attractive people into the unattractive life of the writer who often never goes out. And now once she/he, the writer succumbs the dog gives pictures to the writer which the writer transcribes and we are seeing it here, most particularly in the chapters x, xx, xxx, xxxx also potentially entitled transcript or Rosie at 15 now we think that it shall be untitled and it shall be strewn25 and that is wisdom now in particular when Eileen lays herself down horizontal like a dog so Rosie can have her say. Peggy has spoken and even the little dethroned one, Hank, he will have his say too. Perhaps on a website. Eileen has a dog soul and it is Rosie. Eileen had a dog soul and it was Taffy and Taffy died. Eileen had a dog soul and it was Walter and she gave the Walter away and let him be renamed the hideous Nike. She stood on the road like Mani and she stood too long and finally even Walter said let me go. Let’s put that one right on the tapestry [paws thumping it.] Eileen, right up here because it was a very sad moment. You were laying on the floor by the door and you were looking in Walter’s eyes and you were praying. And Walter put his paw out and he simply meant Eileen decide and you thought he meant go Eileen. You were not a free soul then, Eileen but you are free soul now and this is why you are doing this great work for us, for me, Eileen. And all dogs. I want to return to the mailman and the letter. What is a letter, Eileen. As your father is floating over the house and the child with curly hair (with an permanent, ha!) is agonizingly writing the words I will not talk in the corridors, I will not talk in the corridors you were beginning your weaving Eileen.

  Gertrude Stein is a very great weaver. All writers who use the sonic mode in writing are returning the fruits to the cave.

  We watched you smash a red clay pineapple one day in your farmhouse in Ireland, Eileen. I hoped by now you would see the meaning of it. In your windswept 18th c. summer (2013) in Italy and Ireland the pineapple was following you. The pineapple is Ganesh. I, Mani, brought Ganesh into not Christianity or whatever you call the thing I was glowing in. (Jesus was one ball and I, Mani, was the other. Jesus was my brother.) The pineapple of course is a gift.

  Why were you so hurriedly moving the pineapple off the windowsill one day in Ireland. Getting ready to go again I think. Once upon a time pineapples adorned your brother’s bedposts. Your brother was wealthy, Eileen. It seemed that way to you as a child because he had a paper route. You do not need a man’s wealth. Mani does not need Jesus Christ’s fame. People say the pineapple means “WELCOME” but it also screams riche. Grown elsewhere; brought here by magic the pineapple is a voluminous kind of mail. It will always be delivered. The mail will find you. Whose house are you in now, Eileen. No matter. I think you linked your fate to the road in that shattered moment. You broke finally with history and its satisfied welcome. There is only comfort now in working closely with me and all the dogs tracing a path like a Johnny Appleseed of blue fruits and sonorities across the sky. But what is it about letters. For we want to tell the truth at last and not spread the same stale jokes about dogs and mailmen. You have mailmen in your family and they were dogs and all mailmen are dogs, some born and some late intuited. We call them impregnated mailmen. Letters are the cave turned inside out. Letters are the magic hidden. Am I against writing. Am I against the text. I am against the pineapple (smash. I did it.) and I am against the letter too. When they say he goes postal he is exploding from the pressure of carrying the letter for years. Often he is a soldier, sometimes they are women too in fact the post office is the single greatest employer of women in the US government. Women quickly shinny up this pole of power. The pressure of the letter is great. The last great thing about letter writing was cursive and it is gone. Cursive was a photograph of the nerves of the writer. So though the load of the letter was great the flying hand like a bird told the inside of the cave of the writer. It is abstracted stuff. The pressure of the light particles is great inside matter. Imagine when there are no pictures. Each letter rolls in front of a cave and shuts out the light. What else does it do. The last great thing was the typewritten letter. The weight of the body on the tap tap tapping machine. The choice of paper. Often usually the hand has written the address on the outside of the envelope. Often the body has moistened the stamp and has stuck it on. Less involved we tear a piece away and we stick it on now. Possibly a hair may get caught in the pressure of that. A dirty person will leave something if not spit. But how is the mailman against the letter itself. He carries the world. Women too. The US post office is the most gender-neutral division of the US government. She carries the compacted dreams. The language implodes each time.

  I have sent her thirty-six letters of my love towards the end of a century.

  My wildest love never before offered in print.

  I wrote it carefully on light
blue paper in India. In another year or two in a fit of rage I sent all her letters back. And she burned them all she said. Did she. My love and hers commingled in a pile of ash in her driveway. Another time a man took all of my young poet letters I wrote him in the 80s and piled them in his sink and burned them. These people are sad demons, lovers turned un-lovers. These tragedies released the news from itself and somewhere a postal worker’s burden was lightened. The letter does not stop. You write a letter and it goes somewhere and someone reads it and the letter goes back and forth multitudinously. A letter will never die. It must be burned I say to be returned to light. The post office needs to walk in the blue uniform of time, the mixed cadet, and be seen knowing your messages are being sent by his footsteps and by your thought the ancient method. Dogs should wander freely and so should the postal workers. Fed Ex is evil because it is faster. The post office could be faster still in the Neanderthal way of no trace. Not the toxic electronic light of the internet. What is the internet. The observed letter. The un-private mind. The mind will be open soon enough. The white man came in the middle of the night and clubbed and axed the children and the women to death. He is not worth the dogs he has working and living with him. Each wounded space should hold a party and it will. A letter is like a dream of a thought.

  We mourn the loss of the letter but dogs mourn the loss of the thought.

  The postal uniforms could grow softer, longer and looser more like tunics. And the post offices could each be decorated by a tapestry such as this made by idle postal women and men no longer on a particular route but wandering aimlessly being the beautiful letters of our time. To be a season of postal workers wandering in their lightweight gossamer mixed cadet blue shirts and pants and gowns. In the winter the fine blue wool coats reflecting the sky and when a snowflake falls on the arm of a postal worker he will stop and smile and gesture to all around him and they will look at what has landed on him and what is falling in the skies because he is a dog and dogs love snow. There is no burden anymore. Neither snow nor sleet nor rain shall be considered anything but colors and not problems at all. What the sky is doing that I am continuous with and look at what has fallen on my arm. The hats of the worker will grow lush. Wide brimmed in summer with flowers and fruits beginning to grow off them and in winter tall feathers to communicate with the birds flying south or staying around. Slowly the hats will fall and drape the bodies of the postal workers and the clothes will begin to fall away and the hair will grow wild and curly. The women will be models for all of the other humans. Wild strong mammalian women of the US Postal service carrying nothing but a strong and passionate attitude and a message for everyone which is their own bouncing back and forth among them all for eternity or infinity or today. Time in the hands of the postal worker will become slowly unlabeled. Fed Ex and UPS will continue rushing around but increasingly they will not be carrying anything except speed itself and eventually they will begin bumping into each other and only each other because the proper refuge will have occurred and everyone will be beginning to live slowly in the right time with themselves. Because there is no kingdom now and the end is only when the road has invited us to leave. Are we ready?