the valley below

(by the window, plush elephant withheld)

leash-lady: play dead.

dog: what a world! what a world.

leash-lady: no, for real. play dead.

(dog reads Shakespeare)

leash-lady: so?

dog: i wrote a poem.

leash-lady: uh-oh. whats it called?

dog: “a sonnet grows askant the brook”

(leash-lady snorts, un-lady-like)

dog: (clears throat)

Our juggled heads as dog and bone,
Ophelias hair and Hamlets one;
Keep Sycorax far from Prospero,
For Mirandas mobile merciful;
My tears, lit years, rage Lears at me,
For Gloucester sees me feelingly;
His daughters blew askant the brook,
His book mere nook til soul partook;
But theres one king, be Yorrick, we,
Dissolves mine-own got-sovereignty.

We run as we run into poetry,
We run as we run through the willow.

(waits indefinitely for applause)

leash-lady: dont you dare make me say it.

dog: (proudly) doggerel!

leash-lady: (painting her nails) im going to need
more of a conceptual diagram.

dog: no.

leash-lady: (with stern look) but no
one else will. no one
else will.

dog: (puzzled) where have i heard that line before . . .
(begins speaking as an aside) and how
is she so good at this? how does she
know to do all of this? and why
is everybody looking at me,
when shes always been
far more interesting
and beautiful
than i?

leash-lady: (rolls her eyes) draw.

(she hands a piece of chalk to dog, who,
after much protestation, reluctantly in-
stantiates a blackboard.)

dog: okay. (takes a deep breath, narrows
eyes, retrieves scent-memory) as we
discover, we being irreducible —

(dog draws a big circle on the board.)

leash-lady: thats they, not we.

(leash-lady goes to the board and draws
two dots.)

dog: (wide-eyed and paws in the air) o indeed are we
suspended here, in a moment of separation.
and i imagine, i imagine, o in my imagination,
the purpose, our purpose, here might be,
to show the impossibility of egoistic
or abstracted or formulaic or activity-
independent explanation or even
any non-relational, un-
adaptive, a-
temporal
mode
or method
of expression.

leash-lady: explanation of what?

dog: us.

leash-lady: so anyway. here we are, two
dots, and the world, or chaos, on the out-
side, is here. right? “no exit”, like Sartre.

dog: i, at least, dont think thats the worst
analogy, but our performance feels text-
urally different from a play? like, more
chewy? more of a chew-toy?

leash-lady: hence the drool.

(dog looks sheepish)

leash-lady: nevermind. so about the pharmakon,
is this like, we party while the world
is burning? drugs and booze?
and opiates . . . wouldnt be
the worst thing.

dog: (whimpers, glances askant)

leash-lady: ah yes, the elephant in the room.

(dog howls)

leash-lady: come on, spit it out.

(dog paws face)

leash-lady: or youll never see your precious
little elephant again! at the blackboard! go!

dog: (sighs deeply, erases dots) okay. forget
the dots.

leash-lady: thats too bad. the dots seemed happy.

dog: well, appearances can be deceiving. no,
the dots were just high. on a different drug.
thats not the kind of drug we have.
i mean, that we are.

leash-lady: wait, how can we be the drug?
i never agreed to that!

dog: (depressed) i hate existentialism. really
i do.

leash-lady: draw, dog!

dog: (takes up chalk dutifully) so heres
a circle, imagine its a sphere. let this, we,
be we.

leash-lady: all smooth and even like that, huh?

dog: (looks at circle, which has been unevenly
drawn) well, what do you expect from a dog?

leash-lady: continue.

dog: (defensively) im just a dog, not
an elephant, or even
an elephant expert.

leash-lady: (aside) clearly. (out-
loud) draw!

dog: so at the moment, we are testing the limits
of the elephant. we are, as you indicate, pretty
bipolar.

leash-lady: okay. so the imaginary sphere
has poles. arent those
like dots?

dog: we being the poles, of a spherical field —

leash-lady: a field, like of grass?

dog: not like a meadow field. like a magnetic
field, like Faraday. we are meaning, like
a magnetic field.

leash-lady: so?

dog: its just, like, kaleidoscopic, like (sniffs
the air) correspondances,

leash-lady: not now, with the french. not
now, with the Baudelaire.

(dog in feelings)

leash-lady: sober up, dog. draw more.

dog: okay. right now, we are suspended from the act.
and time, without activity, loses its field of relation. so,
were a little stuck. you versus i, master versus slave,
but like, a friendlier version. i hope.
have you ever read Hegel?

leash-lady: (face in hands) why is this my life . . .

dog: yes, sorry, sorry, sorry. dont read Hegel.
please, go take a very long nap instead.
(aside) an ex used to say she had Plato
gefühl. he was a Hegelian.

leash-lady: (sternly) i can hear you. and how
is that relevant?

dog: because it brings up, like vomit — have you
noticed that occasional feeling of nausea
we have?

leash-lady: yes, and? have you been eating beach-
poo again?

dog: (sighs) i miss the beach.

leash-lady: im about to close the ipad screen.
draw!

dog: yes, where was i . . . oh, the memory. and
the remembering. its relevant because all
of this evokes in me a very strange
mixture
of feelings.

leash-lady: feelings? (frowns) is this just
about feelings? is this —
a kissing book?

dog: yes, and —

leash-lady: is it just a distraction, just
a feel-good movie, just
to pass the time, soft
and comfy-like,
amidst
(gestures out the window)
this chaos?

dog: (tired) not quite, i imagine, judging by what
weve undergone, so far, at least. to me, it feels
kind of like . . . some kind of animal
exercise . . . (trails off, wags tail)

leash-lady: wait. you mean you don’t know?

dog: of course not!

leash-lady: (exasperated) then why on earth
would you be dragging us
through all of this?

dog: (puppy-dog eyes)

leash-lady: what does it feel like then?

dog: oh, so so much. hope, then terror, then joy,
then grief, then wonder, then joy, then funny,
then grief, then terror, then pain,
then wonder, then sorrow,
then hope . . .

(dog chases own tail)

leash-lady: it seems awfully ego-gratifying
for supposedly being ego-death.

(dog barks)

leash-lady: bad dog.

dog: yes, well. funny you should say that. ive
not gotten here by being very clever, you see.

leash-lady: again, with the all-about-you. what
about we? spit it out!

dog: (adjusts glasses) okay. my current theory, if
you forced me, would be that we are some kind
of cosmic
heart
muscle.

(cringes all-around)

dog: youre the one who made me draw a diagram!

leash-lady: im not, actually.

dog: then who —

leash-lady: dont yell at me.

dog: okay. im sorry, ill try not to.

leash-lady: thank you. anyway, what does it,
what do they, as we, do?

dog: we do, like this —

(dog waves paws around the blackboard
in a very un-doglike manner, wags
tail and whines
like a dog)

leash-lady: clarifying absolutely nothing. ok,
quick, cause this is getting very long, and i can tell
you could go on forever. if were bi-
polar, what are our poles?

dog: well, heres the not-so-easy part. my sense is
we-will-worker-bees through many situationships.
and we have many things yet to learn about us.

leash-lady: there seems to be a great deal
of repetition. will there be more
of that? repetition?

dog: probably. but some of the grand
patterns seem to be something like,
death versus insanity?
despair versus mania?
tragedy versus comedy?
love versus grief?

leash-lady: that sounds very dark. are you
okay?

(dog labels the circle with polarities,
triangles, vectors, and other notation.)

leash-lady: wheres the chaos, didnt
you say you were
a chaotician?

dog: (looks up, tilts head) geometrician. im
a geometrician. (barks in Koine Greek)

leash-lady: who deals with the chaos, then?

dog: (shrugs) dunno, maybe cats.

leash-lady: but those things you wrote,
about love and death, et cetera, they
seem mostly like antagonisms.
i thought dog was mans best friend.

dog: yes. and like everybody in Hamlet,
they, or we, remain terribly resolved, solips-
sismuses, abysmal ones, destined —

leash-lady: doomed?

dog: yes —

leash-lady: tragic?

dog: — at least, until we —

leash-lady: if we, you mean.

dog: yes! if and until we, as whoever we are,
enact and express them —

leash-lady: which are, psychic-cosmic abysms?
dog: — yes, through our own
relation. dialectical mediation,
if you will.

leash-lady: Hegel again?

dog: (frowns) more OG than that.

leash-lady: meaning?

(dog jumps through the circle on the black-
board, which has caught on fire, as if
it were a hoop)

(leash-lady waits)

(dog jumps back out)

leash-lady: and you wont find it in a text-
book — why?

dog: no. yes. because the plushie (points nose
at elephant) was made to be un-chewable, or
inedible, in any other way than by how we
are partaking of it, or really, partaking
through it, if we were being we,
not you and i, as we seem
to be being
now.

leash-lady: you mean to say . . . it can only
be read as a we?

dog: (dreamily) my plushie can only be chewed by love.

leash-lady: that strikes me as —

dog: fuck the patriarchy!

leash-lady: — as astoundingly unlikely.

dog: (rolls over)

leash-lady: that seems almost . . . post-modern.
almost avant garde . . . or is it
a religious thing?

dog: (tongue out) were classics now, baby!

leash-lady: (winces) okay dog, continue.

dog: but im scared. (whines)

leash-lady: well, i believe in you.
and i believe you can do it.
because ive seen you do it.
and it doesnt have to be perfect,
but it does have to be you. so,
dog,
do.

dog: (after receiving much encouragement) okay.
only as we, can the plushie, and so it seems,
the entire elephant corpus, be sniffed-out
and un-dug —

leash-lady: and eaten?

dog: well i, at least, try
to eat everything i find.

leash-lady: aha. but tell me, why
would an elephant be made
in this way, as strange
to eat, as this one?

dog: survival.

leash-lady: but why is it a plush elephant, at all?

dog: i dunno, being neither elephant, nor plushie.
but being a dog, i suppose it wants to be a good
guardian. maybe, the plushie protects itself
from self-serve, self-serving eating.

leash-lady: intriguing. almost like how
an elephant wouldnt wish
to be eaten.

dog: well, its not potatoes!

leash-lady: (laughs) but i am questions
inside questions . . .

dog: also, maybe it protects the souls of dogs
by never letting we-dogs get stuck in soliloquy.

leash-lady: like Hamlet?

dog: (frowns) or graveyard clowns . . .

leash-lady: dont get discouraged. draw.

(dog motions at the flaming circle on the board)

dog: so, if it-we pulls us-two out of madnesses
that wait at either of our two poles, then
even as were bipolar, we even us out.

leash-lady: in our relational field.

dog: and because it binds us with each-
other, it also becomes, so-
to-speak, a poetry-self-
guardian — or even,
a guard dog. like
dog-school, but
like poetry,
for we.

leash-lady: ironic.

dog: whats irony?

leash-lady: that im here guarding
the guardian plushie
from the guard dog.

(puppy-dog eyes)

leash-lady: now let me guess. none of this drawn-out
explanation, which wasnt altogether un-
enlightening, could really be any kind
of replacement, neither for the parts,
nor for the whole, of the previous
or any of the subsequent
wordless moments
upon which we
have built
ourself . . .

dog: my queen! (walking on hind-legs)

leash-lady: laying it on thick, are we?

(dog plays dead)

leash-lady: uh-huh. methinks the puppy doth pro-
test too much. already. again.

dog: (risen) theres one more thing id like to say

leash-lady: of course.

dog: one little word can carry a lot of baggage.

leash-lady: indeed. so can one dogs nose.

dog: so i was trying to write a soliloquy
about that, to go here.

leash-lady: uh-huh.

dog: (with fanfare) but then,
i cut it —
snip!

(applause)

leash-lady: this changes everything, and yet,
this changes nothing at all.

(oohs and aahs)

dog: and then the formatting really boggled
my indie-web blog, and my dog-brain too.

(laughter)

leash-lady: you know, dog, you dont have to write it
down all at once. sometimes, you can just
put the work down gently, at the end
of a long day. self-care,
other-care,
we-care,
it-care.

(silence)

dog: it cares! it cares!

leash-lady: i didnt say that —

dog: so, can we please have
our elephant back now?

leash-lady: beg

(dog begs)


κἀγὼ