Black Dog of the Concave Mind

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  3. Clever wordplay, amazing artwork. Reminded me of an old comic I found that someone had thrown away titled “The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers”, that I salvaged and wondered why on earth they threw it away!

    I’ve heard that someone close to Winston Churchill, said that his black dog was mostly kenneled after he got married. I play on being a black dog sometimes, my own worst enemy, chasing feline females, getting cat scratch fever. Sometimes I’m a Cheshire Cat being chased by feisty bitches too though. Like yin and yang, chasing each other.

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    1. Thank you for visiting my little corner of the blogosphere, Ryan. What a privilege to have you here! I hope the surrounds are to your liking. 🙂 I often wonder why people consider comics so disposable too, to be honest with you. I sometimes wish they weren’t treated as such.

      The black dog rarely plays fair, I’ve found, and can be a total chameleon. Sometimes she almost seems like my friend, and other times she can’t wait to tear my face off! “Capricious” is the word I would use which is why I would gladly be without her most days. Alas, this is one canine that cannot be left on the side of a remote road while you drive speedily away. She always finds her way back.

      Kind of like this short animation, only she’s not a cat. Same principle though. 😛

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      1. Lol, you said I pulled a page from your mind on my blog, and now you’ve pulled a page from mine. I present to you, the poem I was talking about:

        “Schemes of Cat Eyes, Skeins of Dreams”
        by Ry Hakari

        In a todaydream, I hath seen in me
        a skinny puppy long chasing Thee,
        with a soul stole of a curious kitty
        entangled persnickety in knitting

        I caught all it’s nine lives in knots
        of tales of naught, but not quitting,
        it fought me–the drifting black fog–
        As I stole over it, saving it’s ghost,
        it took me over with it’s curiosity
        taking the wheel, now driving me
        on punctilious pursuit of draughts
        with thoughts like dreadnoughts

        I hide in whippersnapper laughter–
        a scam masking a scamp’s whimper,
        as I traipse endless on the scent
        of a prescient “Happily Ever After”
        the wind thwarted ‘fore happening

        Trails I travail with fear, trembling,
        are well-worn, littered with letters
        written in green gooey tramplings–
        guts of creepy crawlies crushed
        by demon stampedes– and I hear
        their cantankerous caterwauling,
        singing enviously after the kitty
        I freed to it’s gloaming curiosity
        that guides windmountian-pup in
        word tornadoes written, read into
        gauntlet chase, passing slow over
        smiling ghoul’s cat’s-eye-catching
        shiny similitudes, before drifting
        on along the long ocean swirls of
        unfurled blue cloud-like fluff from
        Thou distantly uncoiling skein of
        thirteen reams of all the dreamed
        of weaves, unwinding as a ballad
        of supersymmetric string theories
        of our blue yarns spinning in seas
        spanning these seven’s in scenes
        from Lucania at 6:38, my mourning
        Sola Scriptura, played Shakespeare
        sprawling out long shaken spheres
        beyond measure for measuring She
        (an elusive imaginary–Thee Isabella,
        my Muse–reverie I lost in EverEve),
        for a dress-fitting, for a marryin’ me
        in blue silken bridal gown, it’s sheen
        brightest beaut, seven shes beneath,
        but Isabella I left Thee sadly without
        enough my dream to be eighth, see?

        Woebegone, damned cat curiosity–
        kill me already! Cease spilling parts
        of me in these buckets of miseries
        demolishing all my years building!

        I slew thee, curiosity–thee stole me
        Now I’m slayed slow, tossed to, fro
        in idle throes with ideal whims and
        women who, sadly are less-than’s

        In our winter’s furloughs, we froze
        but time didn’t, not then, nor when
        chasing closer spurious glitterings
        of less fancied fantasies than Thee,
        prettiest Lilac of thousand’s petals

        The kitten in me, my immortal shame,
        was easily smitten amongst gutless
        glowing greens of lesser beings in
        shades of Thee cast in paths abroad
        found in Thou younder Thee, in the
        longest lasting shadow of the truth
        beckoning beyond the lies that lay
        before Thee, and the little kitty tried
        following Thou blue train, but yet,
        distracted and impatient, guessed,
        (making an ass out of us): lies akin
        to rightness of rains, but nay–tears

        As it’s been said “all dogs traverse the heavens”
        and thus cats shit in hell–razed in it’s litter stink,
        shall I be forever-tied, with limbs taut in limbo?
        And cat’s eyes betwixt, mixed in with twilights–
        unsure if I exist more inside each dawn ascent,
        than I exist not outside it in each dusk descent?
        Am I lost surviving in death or here living a life?

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        1. Oh my god, how this imagery resonates… in both song and poem. This part really got under my skin for some reason…

          “In our winter’s furloughs, we froze
          but time didn’t, not then, nor when
          chasing closer spurious glitterings
          of less fancied fantasies than Thee,
          prettiest Lilac of thousand’s petals”

          I may be able to articulate why, given long enough to think about it. Hm…

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          1. Thanks, I’ll try not to give you too much to think about! I’ll try to explain a little bit of those lines briefly.

            I was partially talking about the Lilac King Rocket Larkspur wildflower design under the surface of Blue Fire Spinel stone of my high school class ring, playing on spur-ious/lark-spur and the glitterings of the stone in the ring. I had given it away to a girl at the time of writing the poem, and chased other girls that were closer to me, who I was interested in much less than her. Fancy Feast is a kid of cat food, and I played on that with “fancied fantasies”. There have really only been two women I really was interested, but there’s been 13 I’ve chased with any real length of time and seriousness, if you can call it seriousness 😦 It was a pretty subjective poem, but my stuff can be pretty objective too, as I’ve seen a lot of similarities in my writings, with a lot of the dead poets, like Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Rainer Maria Rilke.

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            1. Ah hah! The story behind the story! (There always is one.) Yes, I like to allude to things too, rather than always spelling them out. I find it gives room for the reader to make the words their own. It’s what I do with anything I’m attracted to, creatively speaking. Your words clearly come from a specific sphere of personal experience, but they also have a space and airiness about them that allows them to exist outside of that too. You wear your influences well. 🙂

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        2. Sorry to butt in, guys, but had to tell Ryan how much I love this piece. 🙂 Need to read it again again again to get all the juicy goodness out. Lovely, truly lovely. The way you play with words is mesmerising. Thanks.

          Right, as you were . . .

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  4. This is all so familiar to me… and in that way it is wonderful though all the pain is terrible. The more we all share the less we will feel alone. If I am still here so will you be and vice versa… Keep getting up again because I am loving your work..or just because it pisses that bitch right off….or so we can set up a self help book online book swap …ha!

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    1. Thank you for reading such rawness and not flinching, Kruti. It’s not easy to look at such things. I thought about this long and hard, and the script went through dozens and dozens of drafts before I was able to come to the final version you see now. In all, this took at least six months to grapple with. I need to not take so long about it next time! 😛

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  7. G’day Tony, I am REDdog, I found you over at Lorien’s WTF blog and wandered back for a squiz…my name could be Ernest, it seems. You know the Black Dog well, for such depth of understanding can never come by observation alone. Powerful stuff, therefore I shall proceed with as much caution as curiosity for she will use any door. Respect REDdog

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    1. Michael, that’s exactly who I based the design off of, and probably for much the reasons you’re thinking! You’re the first person to have noticed this so I feel like I should be giving you a prize or something! 😛

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        1. Thank you, good sir. As for the horsehead bookends, I’m afraid the best I could do would be two papier-mâché blobs! Working with hands has never been my strong suit. So, like you suggest, I’ll just keep doing my art instead. 😉

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