fourth letter
on dogs and guilt.
there is something so tragic about dogs. something that knocks my breath out when i see one and watch it pass me by, wagging its tail walking around. i think of its pure innocence, its mindless obedience, its unwavering trust. i think of how it bears a collar. i think of how it is owned. i think of how it loves its owner. i think of how it has no choice but to do so. i think of how a dog cannot have a tainted heart. i think of how i’m scared of dogs. of their sharp teeth. i think of how the dog knows.
i wonder whether a dog feels guilt when it doesn’t belong somewhere and when its only home is the cold dark street and it has no choice but to bite a head off to keep itself alive and the warm blood runs down its throat and i wonder if it thinks of wolves.
i wonder what it must be thinking. i wonder what the TRAGEDY OF A DOG BITING is.
THE TRAGEDY OF A DOG BITING A HEAD OFF. When all I can be is me, I'm the dog. I say: I'm the dog! I'm the endlessly exploding dog of true love. but I am not what I am at all. I'm not loving, I'm not love, I'm not tender. I am not who I am. I am vile and terrible, a predator. I look for myself in a puddle and I see something vicious. I wonder if the sheep I could be herding in another life would see me as friend or foe. I wonder if they are scared for or of me. I wonder if they walk in line because they fear my loud voice sounding like something wrathful, not because they know I mean well. I would throw myself at their feet like the dog I am. But at the end of the day I am all bark, all bite when it comes down to it. I get it, the fear, I really do. But I can't help myself. Should I believe myself? before this body falls apart? --- It's always "Go, dog, go!" but then I do and I return with this blood-smeared mouth and something strikes like lightning. Something like condemnation. --- I promise I am kind, I promise I am good, I don't know why I bite. I just have these teeth. These sharp, white teeth made for it. These godforsaken teeth I can't seem to lose, no matter what I do. I bite through everything, I just need them to get struck once, please, I beg. But I was born to kill and so I was given them to rip a throat, to leave bleeding, to always be the one to watch a last breath, to feast like a leech. It feels like my mother's last gift to me, or her first one. What was it again? Jesus can reject his father but he can't escape his mother's blood. So please forgive me if I bite. One must confuse instinct for desire sometimes. --- Sometimes I can't help but wonder where to put all that rage. I go blind with it. I strike. Or bite, maybe. I never know for sure. That is also my mother's gift, I inherited that anger. The pure bright anger flaring up like a flame, like the fireworks I'm so scared of. I explode with it, then: I bite a head off. Maybe I do remember, it's muscle memory. --- Grief is a dark clump of feathers in the grass sooted with blood. And it's never mine. --- My mother's blood shapes my fate. The stars never align as long as this heart keeps me alive with it's suffocatingly eternal quiver. I need a dog bigger than me, more vicious than me, more merciless than me to sink its teeth into my flesh. Into my throat and pull hard. So my veins can be emptied finally. Finally. And I can lay my mother down to rest. It is long overdue. And then, at last, someone, something – maybe that vicious bloodhound – can tell me where to put that anger. The soil? Now that I think about it, maybe there is nothing to tell. He shows me what to do and leaves me bleeding. Just like me. --- But I can't do anything about these rotten teeth, this rotten flesh. Rotten, rotten, rotten. I'm all rotten, inside out to my very core, to my heart pumping that rotten blood. Which worm is gnawing at me: Can't you see, the earth is ready to reclaim me. The soil awaits me with open arms, it has made a place for me to finish rotting in. And, so, I give in.
I think of this dog so very often, I think of how it suffers. Of how it can only bark or wince, beg for mercy. I think of how it can’t put itself out of its misery. I think of how the guilt rots him. I think of how dogs are used as metaphors.
I think of Theodore Decker and the people he describes.
“The old man was watching me with a gaze at once hopeful and hopeless, like a starved dog too weak to walk”
“His hand on my head, very gently, the way you’d rest your hand on the head of a dog you liked.”
“and for thirty seconds or so he panted like a dog, chest pumping frantically, up and down, up and down, his eyes fixed on something I couldn’t see and all the time gripping my hand like maybe if he held on tight enough he’d be okay".
“Others still ignored me, completely, as playful dogs will ignore an ill or injured dog in their midst: by refusing to look at me, by romping and frolicking around me in the hallways as if I weren’t there”
“I hadn’t felt a touch like that since my mother died—friendly, steadying in the midst of confusing events—and, like a stray dog hungry for affection, I felt some profound shift of allegiance, blood-deep, a sudden, humiliating, eyewatering conviction of ‘this place is good, this person is safe, I can trust him, nobody will hurt me here’.”
and i wonder whether the childlike-ness of dogs is what makes them so human.
—
i think of a dog chasing its tail and the snake comes to mind.
until next time,
your omar.