buried alive in the things we own

I think about rebooting the ole blog all the time, but then I pull back thinking: why add clutter to an already cluttered web? It reminds me of a dream I had recently:

In those days I only pretending to sleep in order to not move anything.

All around me there was death, decay, or the imminent itching feeling that it was just around the corner.  The letters had not stopped coming in the mail; well-wishing and cheerful cards, whose indiscriminate font and washed out palette only made the graying landscape of those days seem all the more real.

My dog had been in the backyard for weeks poking about.  The trash had piled up so high now that the government had declared us all compostable and had mandated that only the lucrative recyclables would be picked up from now on.  He didn’t mind the backyard’s new smells, most of which he had only dreamed of after sitting by the window watching us cook and eat our food.  Now he was king of it all.  He was soon to be carrion, and was proud to lord over this olfactory feast.

The truth was he had gone mostly blind over the last few years, and while the experience had sharpened his ears, he felt less and less inclined to actually listen to anything humans told him.  He let the fur mat over his fleshy ears and only perked up in those early autumn mornings when the usual cereal would be topped with rich and meaty gravy.

I was too concerned with my issues at the time to think about him.  I knew he had a dog’s dignity and a king’s name.  I didn’t feel that way for my family.  They were piling up refuse and choking slowly as they breathed heavier and faster watching their homes fill with biodegradables.  We would all soon be one.

I had taken notes with a stenographer’s grace, skipping over the tears and the half-hearted prattle, delivering only the content of each message.  Even the words as I wrote them seemed to pile up and cling to the air.  Nearly every movement I made sent ripples through space that froze and faded much slower than they had in the past.  Still, I knew my Grandma would want to know the names and thoughts of everyone who called or wrote, as if denying that their sentiments weren’t lingering in the stale, cluttered air over our heads.  It seemed as though the one thing that didn’t cause this cascading spatial filling was the hummingbird engines of our minds.

I thought I found my dog dead one day.  He had stopped moving from this one spot, and so I placed him lovingly on a mound of dirt and coffee grounds.  He offered no resistance, and his body felt pliable and room temperature.  Everywhere was room temperature now.  I left him there, placed a little bit of food and water by him, and went back inside to answer the ringing phone.  More procedures, more tests, more condolences, more advice, more incessant talk of feelings and memories and days past..

It rained all night: a heavy, black sludge. A relentless flurry of needles that drooped and expanded as they fell, hitting the ground with snare hits that became a dull throng as the echoing resounded in the night and filled the sky with their din.  I tried to sleep, comforting myself with simplicity:  a sleeping bag and my teddy bear.  I kept my glasses next to me in my right hand just in case the roof fell in again.

There was no morning, there was only the end of the rain.  I went outside barefoot to deliver fresh food and water.  The mud and organic matter squished between my toes, a sensation that I had learned to accept and enjoy, preferring it to fighting to keep my shoes on only to have to attempt to clean them afterwards.  

The pile of dirt where I had laid my dog to rest was slightly larger than it had been the day before. The food in his bowl had swollen from the rain and spilled out over the sides.  The bedding inside his house shivered and filled itself with the nervous energy of our small dog, who I had thought passed away years before and who I knew for a fact had never spent a night outside, let alone in the room temperature rain.

I examined the mound.  The topmost layer seemed newer, fresh, but still wet from the rain.  I leaned down to touch it, expecting the matted cocker spaniel fleece and a still sigh.  It was only debris: coffee grounds, dirt, scraps of newspaper and eggshells.  It stirred and lifted underneath my touch, as my dog poked his head out from his bed and shuffled slowly towards the new food bowl.

I did the math before going back inside and wondered how many years I had been doing this same ritual, re-examining a king’s death instead of celebrating his life.