Relaxing Music for Dogs

by Iain Allan Mills

We were motoring north on the 1 in a functional, comforting if impoverished ‘94 Silver Lexus LS400. Gas stations were accepting hope as currency again and both commodities were tumbling into the green ocean now. Seaweed was trading and tracking three pips higher than silver regularly and pain was at an all-time high – again. It was hot, desert hot, it was always hot. I fare better in jungle hot, the wet hot. Not this dustbowl flamethrower hot. The roads were clear and very dry, and the mycelium-based brake pads were mostly making good work of consuming and processing the particles that north facing travel throws up around the wheelbase. Occasionally we had to stop and encourage the brake’s participation in the movement process by singing nursery rhymes in Italian slang – not all mycelium is as acquiescent to mechanical movement as the once famed Brake- Through Motor Brand. But that’s how it was, you made a deal, sang a song and they came back to life, coughed out the gak and soaked up the UV, fed the engine and in ten minutes or so you could travel again.

Snow had begun vacationing in Ojai, a boon for the gas markets as the promise of lower temperatures signalled change beneath the crust, but usually we all settled for viewing the brass crowned hill tops from a distance, spiritually prostrating ourselves and accepting that peace would likely never truly reach the mainland’s eroding coast now. Each day we spent existing we were becoming more like glass pebbles and pearl dirt. On occasion there were games offering yardage as part of the land’s edge competition. The elephant seals were encroaching every year, but their incursion was a peaceful sleep, a cosmic dream on the West side of the luminous highways. The Zebras, on the East with their speed, camouflage, stamina, lenses, and teeth, less so socially comely. Long gone were the days of horse breeds as boot high prey for the now extinct apex or as 15 hand high travel facilitators for humans. As long promised by our heart, this prey was now finally hunting in herds and the destiny vacant hopeless rebellion only ever resulted in increases to the dried valerian flower stink of regret emanating from the SLO men’s colony. We did not envisage any joy in that radiation chamber.

Rantum-Scootum and the Trash Pandas were playing on the car stereo, another hit single from the record they hadn’t written yet, they always blew my mind, and drank my rum.

Shiva was in the passenger seat, Confucius asleep in the trunk and Zhuang Zhu strapped, as always, to the roof, facing the sky, boots to the exhaust, generally ecstatic.

Looking out through the grassy screen there was a beautiful, desperate, landscape. The ’94 Silver Lexus rolled on with dreams of revolution and a crush on a 1977 Black Ford Mustang. Dreams were still in the possession of the human and inanimate – soul was the one common thing left in the wilderness, unowned, without bridle, unseen usually, like a bear or patience.

“Hungry?”
“No, but I’ll eat” “Madonna?” “Sure”

We crossed the highway at the elevated turnpike roundabout, drifted down the off ramp, pulled up, took the bags of sand out the back seat and lifted the ‘94 Silver Lexus LS400 onto the parking platform. It’d be happy for an hour steeped in relative peace and drowned in the de-salination bath. Walking to the Madonna I noticed some gaps open and close without notice in the paving. Through

these gaps original sight reached a few meters into the surface soil. It was unhelpful for walking but very cool to look at – there were remains of dogs, parakeets, sarsaparilla, and liquorice root mites from the forgotten seasons and even some silver burns all mixed in with the earthworms, which are getting bigger and bigger. Juveniles were only a couple of meters long and remained pretty fat on a diet of carcass and trapped oxygen, but the mature, smart ones had worked it all out a long time ago – they were 17 or 18m long, translucent to avoid harvesting by the fast-food houses, and they were really fast when they perceived almost human tremor coming.

“it’s a crazy world...” I whispered into the wind.

There was no echo today.

“Media-Meta, Happy Holidays, what can I get ‘Cha?” the doorbell sang, in perfect English. The sound presented as a broken Horse head, but it was sweet enough against the ear ringing of the Trash Pandas. Clean teeth, good stink, polite eyes but perhaps a little too afraid of a bad review; poor guy was maybe one star away from a knacker’s yard decommissioning. He’d get a pool there, sure, but it’d be filled with blue glue and used in moonlight by the desert bums. Decommissioning was no way to live, post-audio presence.

“2 Cherry Pie, 1 Pecan Pie and Three yards of Tar, please”
“Comin at ‘cha - hop up, switch off, take a seat, and give me 27.8 seconds” “...Sure thing”

Sustenance arrived, spun around on the lacquered marble top diner bar that curved across the high shag carpet, seemingly keeping something solid between the animals on one side and us and the infinite chasm of indecision above and below. I had to piss but I always found it rude to take a piss when food was on the table, I don’t know why. Sanitation left a lot to be desired and there was a lot of desire for lack of sanitation back in the L.A. alleyways – easier to score with disgust in your eye see, and proclivity taste scales have been tumbling of late. I recalled the bourgeois propriety of Guy De Maupassant, via an old gel script I’d inhaled cliff side after a flagon of cheap red wine, and the impossible romance that intoxicated my mind as I harnessed a real time vision of the sea washing out to the horizon one summer’s early evening. But now it was just “piss in my ear” and “eat my feet, after they’ve trampled in shit” all along the neon floored alleys and all in exchange for a little hope and less than flagrant compliments. I guess some people still gotta’ breathe, with or without inspiration. The conclusion cloaked me; there is less more unappealing than the self-denial of depravations’ pompous anarchy. I mean, fuck me, do what you like, but when the candle is gone don’t try and fuck the flame. Logic and desire never were good bedfellows. Perhaps I wasn’t yet over the exit of the summer season. I still can’t believe it gave up.

I let myself down from the marble bar, and took a stroll to the sanistation. It was down some polished stone steps, a rare and welcome feature, and through some sand doors. Whoever owned the place now had done a job to provide comfort where possible. There was half a John Coopers’ barrel for pissing, a crumbling tin trough for shitting and a grass glass dispensary for disinfectant. Those dispensaries were usually stolen by the bums and sold for dignity, or a little hope if they were empty, a high prize indeed. But I was no longer a thief or a bum. I had hope, and a threat of dignity.

I took a piss, cleaned up and looked at the old western pictures as I side stepped my way back up the polished stones to meet Shiva. Breezing through the saloon doors, I saw that Confucius had awoken and come through his mist to join us.

“Do we have a plan?”

“no”

“We need a plan”.

“Do we? Have you looked around lately”.

“. doesn’t matter, we need a plan, how are we going to forage if we don’t have a plan” – Confucius was never one for uncertainty.

“I’ll think of something,” said Shiva. “First though – I need to eat this pie...hold my Trident”.

We all necked the pie and the tar. It was good quality tar. I’m partial to Mexican tar, in paper cups, a little bitter and likely with saliva, but this was Indonesian, original, ornate and with superior steam shapes. We couldn’t afford it, but Shiva would see to that.

“How’zzZZZ your pie, friends?” – the Horse head was back on his rounds, poor guy. Once so proud, powerful, and revered after the rise from prey to companion, to equal, to master, to ruin, to collapse, to servitude, to abysmally veiled prey. Being a sound under this guise was arguably a less promising existence than simply being shot in the head or eaten by a Big Cat.

You, ZZ, Confucius, and I knew this signalled time to reap the tax and began the long walk back to the ‘94 Lexus, avoiding the gaps in the paving.

Shiva was finished inhaling the steam shapes. It took a deep breath, lifted her head, dropped his shoulder and levelled the whole place with their Trident. It wasn’t terribly hard work for her, he didn’t need to try really. But they were tired of it, the destroying. You could tell the heart was gone. The colour drained out the space for a moment, we observed the vacuum, then presence returned as a gold and crimson shattering of fragile China bone shards. By the look on your face, you weren’t very sure what to make of this but Confucius, Zhuang Zhu and I had seen it too many times to report anything other than our comparative scores; 8, 8.5, 8.

Shiva emerged from the settling curtains of dust and bone as a cloud of butterflies and entered the Lexus through the gasless air conditioning channels. Reformed and absolved they coalesced into one of us again.

“Start the engine, I have the plan.”

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Iain Allan Mills is a writer of Scottish origin, Scottish, Irish and English extraction, living in Wales with animal allies.