Under Canine (outtakes)
I.
For under Canine is Carnivorous, which a dog always is.
For under Canine is Cantankerous, which more properly refers to the Lady during moments only a dog may observe.
For above Canine is Brain, referring in this instance to the Lady’s in question.
For immediately under Canine is Caninius Rebilus, C., Consul and Caesar for part of one day in December, 45 B.C., per an encyclopedia whose front matter was ripped off by a tornado in Arkansas in 1927, Editor-in-Chief, Isaac K. Funk, D.D., LL. D.
For under Canine are legs, one weak but improving.
For under Canine are paws, one pad healed.
For under Canine is squirrel, prey unachievable.
For under Canine is vole, prey achievable and toyed with and, grown quiet, discarded by doggy disinterest.
For with Canine is Dog.
Let the Dog be called Ramón; Pale Ramón Fernandez, thank you Wallace Stevens.
Although the dog Ramón is no cat Jeoffrey, on whom the vet was performing an explanatory operation, Jeoffrey having been bitten in the throat by a rat.
II.
Let the Lady consider her dog Ramón who, though not being Jeoffrey, is still for a dog worthy of encomium, as worthy of encomium as Love, as worthy of record as a feast attended by ancient Greeks in a symposium on the True, Good and Beautiful..
For the dog Ramón is True, Good, and Beautiful, and of The Divine, which is harder to say of the Lady.
The Lady digresses, which digression may be a symptom of mental disturbance, yet possibly treatable and not necessarily a moral failing, something biophysiological maybe, something not cancer.
For illness may be stronger than intention, may be mightier by far than a plea, may be yet more powerful than something like a prayer, for a prayer on behalf of oneself is not disinterested, and where illness does not stretch its hand to confuse, desire may do the job well enough, unless you have a craving for Jello.
III.
For Ramón is a better servant of the Living God than the Lady, lying next on her bed, close and up against, in full knowledge of the Goodness of communing with another with sighs too deep for words.
For at the Lady’s rising in winter, he is aware of the prevailing night and hews to the Master, a companion of noises too dear to call snoring.
For at the Lady’s rising in the approach of Spring, he serves the morning by greeting her below stairs with a voluntary lying down, which serves to request most politely a treat for his palate.
For at the Lady’s rising in the fullness of Spring, he takes up a guard outside the bathroom door with full discretion, for never will he push through a door with his nose.
For in the Spring morning all birdsong and chatter, he aches with a longing of both throat and feet to praise the Living God with his walking.
Let his patience be tried by the making of coffee, the reading of a newspaper, the Lady’s lazy perusal of a catalogue, desultory human occupations of the hours preceding a thing of much variety they still dignify with the name of Work.
Let his anticipation be aroused, quickened and known to be quickened by the pace of his roaming and the jingling of his tags, by the pace of his house-to-porch roaming as the Lady takes herself to the shower.
For Ramón is a reader of the signs of the hours.
Let the Master say on his rising, Good Morning Oh Dog of my Heart.
Let Ramón say Good Morning, Oh My Master, by tilting his head like a question and pushing forward his ears the better to hear with.
For he is wise in the Wisdom of dogs, and knows himself, and his Soul.
For dogs know that Love is the Beautiful, and that if they are Good, if they are very very Good, they will be in possession of the Beautiful biscuit, and if they are bad, they are disciplined by being consigned to the chair for thinking things over.
IV.
For he is like her shadow when the Lady comes from the shower, and his duties then are multifarious as he observes the human complication.
For firstly all naked she dries her hair as he protests the mechanical noise whose overtones only he can hear.
Let the Lady shut the bathroom door to dull the mechanical noise, but still let him protest with his barking, though he knows the signs of this hour, that its promise is walking in eschatological bliss.
For secondly she dresses and he gets under foot for his hope is for a quickened pace in her feet, and to go outside.
For thirdly she applies astringent and moisturizer and the odors to him are disagreeable.
For fourthly she flosses her teeth and he sniffs at the floss she keeps away from him, yet he knows his mouth is cleaner than hers.
For they say there are few things in the world as clean as a dog’s mouth, which bodes well for the moral integrity of his thinking.
For fifthly she makes another fuzzy coffee for herself and the Master, whom she loves for the man he is, for to Ramón he is the Master and to Ramón, she is the Lady, but to the Lady, the Master is the Beloved.
For they are neither of them Ramón’s Mommy or Daddy.
Let fifthly Ramón circle about her legs as she stands by the sink, then by the stove, then at the refrigerator, then by the stove, then by the sink, his head at her knees lowered with waiting, his tail at her backside, lowered but waiting, his throat rippling with vocables.
Let her say Such a good dog, what a good dog, such a what a good dog as her sister taught her.
For he is Ramón, and blessed is his rage for order, more blessed still his patience when his idea of order does not obtain yet.
For his patience is a lesson.
V.
Let his patience be a lesson in not becoming a patient.
For under Canine is possibly Cranial tumor, and among its orders might be both benign and malignant, and something might be signified by a CAT scan, were the Lady to think as she did once in college that she was really this kind of ill, though in college it wasn’t this kind of ill.
Let Ramón bark at the CAT scan.
Let Ramón make noises in his throat to remind her, to call her back to her duty of walking.
Let him flop in the falling of lying down for a biscuit.
Let his flop be more insistent than the clunk of his elbows on the wood floor, for his flopping speaks, and says Feed Me.
For he speaks his way beyond the genius of the ambient noises of the house.
For he speaks, but still guards the Lady’s secrets, and is a safer confessor than many a priest, and gentler in his penance.
VI.
For there were dogs under Jesus’s table, lying there, sighing, waiting for crumbs to fall, puppies, too, nippling their mothers.
For there is Dogberry, which is Much Ado.
For there is Dogwood, which young, is stingy of blossom.
For there is hair-of-the-dog, of much distillation and no remedy for cranial bruising.
For there is dog’s bane or wolfe grape or call it nightshade or fever twig, whose medicinal properties apply to the liver, and other glandular organs of which the brain is not one, and is said to be helpful in leprosy as a poultice, and taken internally will help you throw up.
Let Dog’s Tooth violet bloom in Iowa; let it there be called Deer’s Tongue because of its mottling, and bloom according to Golden’s Guide to Wildflowers from s. Ont. to Minn., s to Ga., Ky., Mo., Okla., and ne Tex (34).
Let there be Dog-fennel, or May Weed, cousin of Chamomile; let there be Dog Mint, Saturya vulgaris, with flowers in terminal heads subtended by a pair of leaves, inhabiting woods, open shores, like Ramón, fond of un-manicured places where may lurk the wicked possum, the vole, the toad, from Nfld to Man., s to Del., Ind., Wisc., and Minn., upland to N.D.; Colo. to Ariz. (228)
That Ramón ate the head off the Lady’s eight-year-old Parakeet who was flying that low because he was so old is a truth undeniable — there lay the small feathery carcass at his knee as he looked up as if smiling I’ve-done-a-good-thing? with whaps of his tail on the braided rug.
That Ramón has been a bad dog only makes him more human.
Let there be Mad Dogweed, call it Scullcap, maybe the Lady should wear one, Scutellaria, call it Blue Pimpernel, a nerve tonic, very quiet and soothing to the nerves of people who are easily excited, splendid to suppress undue sexual desire or wakefulness (Clss, 313; golden 220).
That his eyes are brown and above them are tan spots called eye spots only makes his face more expressive than many a human mask.
For like any rational creature, Ramón has certain prescience and self-determination.
For at rest his breath huffles his dewlaps, and he snuffles his breath for attention, calling to mind one’s obligations to dogs, for walking them.
For a lone jogger or walker with ears stuffed with a sound track is a profligacy of walking, for dogs are envious of movement along the grass.
VII.
At the lazy crinkling of the plastic bag, let his head rise from the floor.
At the jingle of keys in the pocket, let him stand with his wondering if, at last, the world revolves around him.
At the words Where’s the Leash? let him bolt to the porch with the exultation that springs from his tail and swings there saying At Last and At Last!
See with what happiness he puts his head through the chain, noosing himself for the sake of civic propriety.
Let the two of them exit the house, go about ten feet and pause as he reads the News of the Day with his nose on the ground.
See how, further on, he looks when the Lady says This way for he is a listener if not always capable.
See how his nose goes to the ground to espy the night lurking of the wicked possum.
Let the possum not be wicked in itself, though it transgresses Ramón’s sense of territory.
Look back at the porch and see the Master dancing!
For Ramón has taught of the happiness of movement, that movement is a Good, for the Wisdom it confers is a Wisdom of the body entuned with the Spirit of the morning, in harmony with the return of the day, the brief absences from the Beloved, the coming back from walking with discoveries of names like Curly Dock.
VIII.
For Ramón is a creature of God, and completely himself in his sniffing.
For the dog is a noble beast, and Gainsborough painted him.
For Ramón is a dog of the people and wears no stupid ribbons in his ears.
For Ramón is a guy and gives hickeys to poodles, and comports himself walking with the strut of John Travolta.
For if Ramón were a driver, he would drive with more measure than James Dean.
Let Ramón sniff the grass for chthonic pleasures, though he is generally a gentleman.
Let Ramón strain the leash after the squirrel, prey unachievable, who teases and runs up the cedar.
Let the Lady take the stance of a wrestler to discipline gross ambition with restraint.
For Ramón is nothing if not the eagerness of appetite, nothing if not the courtesy of sitting at the corner until the Lady okays him for safely crossing, nothing if not humble, for his flop on the grass when he greets his canine companions is more kindly than the shaking of hands, nothing if not generous, for he shares his bones, nothing if not patient, for his sniffing and snuffling is thorough, and by those means he follows the paths of his friends, nothing if not clean, for first he stands in the river, then lowers his belly to bathe it, and often as deep as his shoulders and coming out, he scatters with spray, and spatters the Lady’s jeans; he is nothing if not bursting, for when the Leash broke, he bolted.
I thank the Lord Jesus that Ramón stayed in the neighborhood and came back to the porch with exhaustion, for freedom is wearing.
And the freedom of a dog who won’t come when he’s called is the most of irritation for the Master.
For though he is a dog, he is not perfect in the ways of humans calling your name, though he is perfect in the ways of dogs, and Wise with the Wisdom of dogs, and beyond the genius of cats.
For outside a dog, according to Marx, a book is a person’s best friend, but inside a dog, it’s too dark to read.
I praise the Lord Jesus never to have seen the inside of Ramón except for the puncture of the stick and the slice of the pad, an injury bandaged with duct tape.
I thank the Lord Jesus that for the purpose of bandaging, Ramón put himself in a trance, the better to stand it.
For he has a star in Sirius, and his destiny is to frolic, which he is the God of, according to Beecher.
IX.
Let the Lady and Ramon be walking about the neighborhood; some greet them and say, ‘How’s his leg?’
I praise the Lord Jesus it is better, though not well, it is better, very slowly.
Let the Lady be as patient in healing, whatever it is might be wrong with her.
Let Ramón have no fear if she shaves her head, for ticks will no longer hide in her hair.
For he is not perfected in human virtue, yet he is not sinful, for only people were banished from the Garden of Eden.
For it is written that a living dog is better than a dead lion, but I say to you that otherwise the Hebrews are stingy of canine praises, perhaps on account of the doggy god Anubis, though he was a Jackal.
For Moses said to the people of Israel that not a dog should growl at them, for the Lord distinguishes between Egyptians and Hebrews.
For Goliath said to David as he drew near, ‘Am I a dog, that you come to me with sticks?’
Let Goliath have meant sticks for playing, not for beating dogs, as if that were common.
For when the Lord said to Gideon there are still too many people for making an army, to fight the Midianites, all the people were sent to drink from the Spring of Harod, where the Lord made a distinction between warriors and others, and warriors were those who lapped water with the tongue, as a dog laps.
For Gertrude Stein, of Hebrew extraction, said sentences are not emotional but paragraphs are … I said, she said, I found this out first in listening to Basket my dog drinking. And anybody listening to any dog’s drinking will see what I mean.
For she was right, for Gideon’s warriors were drinking, though the Lord was not listening but seeing.
But Ramón is a sloppy drinker, and makes puddles about his bowl. In this he washes his feet, cleaner beyond the genius of a cat.
For she has heard it said that the pain of the brain is mainly of the vein.
Let us make a paragraph of a sentence. His drinking, as a dog laps, widowed his wife and orphaned his children.
and another
When I asked to come back as a dog, I never thought about needing a license.
But to Italo Calvino these would be stories as complete as when he woke up and the dinosaur was still there.
X.
For though he is Ramón, he is categorically not Pale to any observer, but black and tan.
Although at the vet they call him Ramen, as in the noodles, or Raymond, as if they’d never heard of Chile, Mexico, Spain, that there were other names than Wallace, much less Stevens.
Let Ramon remind the Lady of horses, for he is lanky, if not learned, a mover and a shaker who stops short of a gallop, a maker more friendly than poets.
Let Ramón remind the Lady that he is a Blessed Creature of the Living God, no less an Incarnation than she, more holy than profane in all his doings, as Beautiful as a Good Dog on a day at the Dog Park, when dog frolic is the movement of heaven.
Let his Philosophy Canicular explain the dialectics of the Nose that celebrates the Good, that admires the Wise, that emulates the Beautiful, that prays to the Divine.
Let the Lady learn his dialectics, including with her nose, and learn to pray to the Divine and smell Beauty.
Let her lower her face to him and his sloppy tongue which calls her back to Immediacy, and communing with Nature.
For a dog’s tongue is a species of Anointing, and a Revelation.
Let her praise him.