Physiognomy of a Dog
It’s come to my attention that a rumor, of which I am the sole authority to its verity, has been pinging through the halls of our fine institution. He, the normal student, M—, enrolled in a program that would take at least one hundred years to complete—this being the exception, established by the Exceptional Student—supposedly reported to me that were it not for the existence of such an exception his “anxieties and pains” may have been relieved; the dream of graduation in just 99 years would not have evaporated. Red-rashed, he’d said, according to the halls, the normal student rushed a letter to the Advisory, only to be told to consult the framed statement on the wall that details the circumstances of this particular exception; he’d see it on his way to the Advisory, near the door to the infirmary, which often doubles as our morgue.—Before I continue, the Advisory, the governing body pro-tem, now entering its seventh century, having caught wind of this normal student’s experience, would have me preface this with the acknowledgment of said student’s discomforts, and their, let’s say, profound effects. They would have me make sure to remind you that M—’s symptoms are aleatory to the affliction common to most students, the much whispered “Irritable Bowel Syndrome,” whose symptoms are said to include the internal discomforts one expects from such a disorder which, upon autopsy, are routinely deduced to be directly linked to the implosion of stomachs and/or large intestinal tracts into the unorganized spaces of the body, in addition to a trove of relatively minor losses, not limited to the thinning of hair and skin, and little else, to be sure, the Advisory would remind me. Whether these are psychically or physically induced, however, the Advisory awaits the report of the medical team. As such, the Advisory would remind me, studies remain inconclusive without sufficient evidence, and the truth can only be ascertained from what is observed.—Though it bears little significance to the rumor, I need not remind you that I, a Poet, once a student of this very school himself, had been appointed to look on after the normal student’s study upon his entrance into the fiftieth year of residence, the beginning of his first serious study of poetry, in what normally transpires to be a more or less administrative capacity. The work submitted hitherto was quite remarkable indeed (stunning, really) and, as such, I had M— moved down the hall from me, where the Exceptional Gesture, the gestalt of the Exceptional Student, hangs near his room. Each time he began to work, supposedly, he seemed to only arrive at visions of the Exceptional Gesture, which is not so unusual, but this seemed to reproduce the symptoms of the plague in the normal student nonetheless. Only seemed to reproduce, I hurried to advise, rest assured that you do not have the plague, for the plague is only confirmed upon autopsy of the dead. Even with this small reassurance M— began to burp less, the fluid from his cuticles hardened and flaked away. I recommended that, after a week, he purposefully expose himself to the Gesture in effort to learn to live with its effects, as one is wont to do. I did not hear from the normal student for some time.—Of course no original, so to speak, exists of the Exceptional Student, as it is my responsibility to oversee all representations of the Exceptional Gesture. He, in his tortoise-shelled glasses, poised in a red chair, modest and arrogantly detached, in his utmost and applicable intelligence, is never to be taken seriously as a person before the goal: note the posture, the control of the lips. How breathlessly poetic! Effortlessly true! Only through exceptional modes of study can such a physiognomy be attained, a posture that even I continue to chase and perfect, as one is wont to do. Despite a taste for suits befitting only the most confident young scholars, a wrinkle here and a dash of silver there do him well, but he insists that his posture and lips maintain their youthful air. Though, I worry. It seems the Gesture decides more wrinkles are necessary with every decade; such wrinkles may mire the Gesture, as if it wanted to die. —Some decades later, they say, at my desk, years after I submitted my initial review of the normal student’s monograph, hundreds of extensions on his oral exam later, I happened to glance past my door and catch M—’s shadow through a slit of light; his face and neck stretched over my desk’s drawer, buttressed against his flattened body on the floor, dissipating away from my feet. Rather, I will remind you, it was his shadow that dragged along the floor. He let himself in, mumbling to himself, white bits flecking his collar, that he didn’t know why he was even here, what did it matter, but what I would note will be quite remarkable, pointless as it was. He asked me if I had ever noticed the “incredible” look on dogs’ faces while they “deposited” their “shit,” their “incredible look of shame.” He sat in the red chair, oblivious to whether or not I would’ve liked it, but I was, remarkably, so unhinged by M—’s wet, fleshy fingernails, the droplets of skin rowing down his thumb that I did not even notice for some time. … So they say. “The dog reared its head,” M— continued, “but continued to deposit. I kept looking and it too kept looking, from over its shoulder, and when it finished and shivered, Professor, it trotted off behind a tree across the street, not far from the exit. Without as much as a shiver for me, without as much as an apology, Professor! I stood over the dog’s deposits, and noted how its stooped shoulders were not unlike my own,” he says, “but slumped over in study. Yet I had nothing in common with this dog, it is merely a dog, Professor, but I could not help but study the deposits, as if they were ends of a Turkish coffee. I could not help the crushing sense of inferiority, Professor, I thought the dog brave. Dignified, even”—Here, supposedly, M— runs a hand through his hair, and even with this most infinitesimal gesture his fingernails catch at the hairline, blood pussing from his cuticles in thick rivulets. I looked away, and thought I saw another figure in the light slit which, quite suddenly, appeared to be my Cissy, who had quite suddenly left me centuries ago, whose not quite wonderful but competent study lay somewhere underneath my papers. To be sure, the study flourishes in brilliance, but only flourishes, I had advised him, be aware that flourishes do not take you beyond what is at the heart of the matter, which is, well, of the utmost importance to your future here.—“but I knew it would make me feel better if I could not see them,” M— continued, “but the dog would not feel better if I picked up his deposits, I thought, it would only make me feel better, but why did I want to make the dog feel better?—all the while, the dog: peeking and hiding. I peeked, it peeked right. It peeked left when I went right, on and on and, after about an hour, the dog approached me, looking both ways, like a child. I know your look, it said, it is of a most despicable gene, not unlike my own—you see what it has done—one that all students of this school have: hope! Graduation. I’ll tell you, it said, I studied here for nearly 1,000 years, in and out of that school for centuries, in and out of that room for centuries…just as I was to meet the Advisory, I rushed for my room to sit and re-finish—or begin, it is hard to tell now—my study, and got as far that hall, that floor, only to see that ghastly portrait. Pointless! I cry. All of it pointless… I walked out of the school, and returned, etc… This year, I am certain I will see the Advisory! If not this year, then next … The dog fled, and I chased after it, grabbed after it. We lapped around the tree. “But I’ve just finished my study,” I called after it. “I’ve just finished!”—An exaggeration, to be sure, and undoubtedly we should fault the rumor, for a dog would not deliberately run laps around M— about a tree, especially if it is indeed one of our students, especially if it is so close to meeting the Advisory, whose mere arrival promised the renovation in our once stodgy policies, which must be more deeply mired than they had expected. But, I thought, what could the dog know, this creature who is ashamed of its necessary function, M— said, I thought, who is unable to help its necessary function must live in a state of perpetual shame, I thought: for it shits and does not escape admission of shame, but when it is finished, it goes about as if it were never ashamed; we are completely fooled, M— said, into believing that looking down is, in fact, looking up, which, of course, must depend on the possibility that down is not up, and vice versa. Where have you, and the Advisory, really led me, have you led me at all. Pick me up, if you have led me anywhere. … The bravery of the dog outweighs its shame; a brave ashamed creature, the dog; yet my shame has enabled me here and here I am ashamed in a wholly different yet totally identical way. If I have to be here for 1,000 years I would prefer death. But life likewise is at the desk, waiting for our shames to transcend.
And when I have looked over my shoulder, I am still surprised not to see Cissy there. Yet, perhaps, his shadow only begins in its dissipation—but shadows are only possible when light outlines what should not be seen, a source of light is still required for any absence to be perceived. We choose to not see what shadows are: a body in negative, a leaving body; for the years after our meeting, I’ve found myself working through this—what could one call it—a paradox, a problem, aporia—a pneuma? But “pneuma,” to be sure, does not begin with the percussive and plosive “P” sound, it is itself gestalt, and cannot be concretized outside of the gesture: I mean to say: here, when I say pneuma, you must surely know that…that a pneuma cannot be truly heard, except askew – words belie their lives in the way when one looks into the mouth-breather on the other side of a window, I acknowledge the fog as breath, a death on arrival or, a becoming-death, a perpetuity… and still, I sit and have sat here, trying, in spite of the normal student, truly in spite of him, for all of these centuries…My condition has indelibly prevented any further work on my own studies, which have already been mired for some time, already on its second extension from the Advisory, for I only return to this memory, to my leaking lumbar, my stony mouth, trying to arrest that breath. I reclined, and am still reclining, thinking about the normal student shushing his feet out of my office, spools of skin trailing behind him, how I badly wanted to chase after him only to fall out of the chair and curse my long-gone feet. How my shame was exceptional after these many years, the others I’ve failed and continue to fail and, above all, how it could except any achievements I’ve made as I await the Advisory.
Ryan Chang’s work has previously appeared in Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Everyday Genius and elsewhere. He recorded this story on an episode of the podcast The Catapult. He can be found on Twitter @avantbored, and contributes to the blog biblioklept.
