Watch This Video of a Stray Dog Fed by a Subway Sandwich Employee and Tell Me How It Makes You Feel

Cute Feel-Good-About-Humans-Doing-Good Videos  
I like cute videos. Like this one. I’m happy. When I watch it. I think it’s the expectant face of the dog. They looks so forlorn yet satisfied. A Homo sapiens will feed it. They are sure. And as a watcher on the scene, my tummy is filled by witnessing the showcase of sliced deli meat and tidbits - I’m reminded of a parable. Even the dogs feed from the scraps of the master’s table. And then I’m reminded of a Rembrandt painting hanging in the Hermitage inspired by that same parable - a father’s hand on his beloved son once prodigal.
Maybe it’s because I’ve come to peace with my own need for a father. It’s primal. To want the love of a parent. And at the same time, it’s powerful to exert oneself in the world as a child without the need of one. Father. Mother. Caregiver. Licking one’s wounds grows wearisome. Feeling sorry for oneself is a bit pathetic. That’s why I like the canine in this scene. Not pathetic or stupid. Just expectant. For a bit of meat. Chosen from the master’s table.

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Why I Write Better When I am Homeless

Writing is probably good for you.
Even with a due date.

When homeless I am uprooted. But I have money in my pocket.
Why do I write better? Because it is something to do to fill in the emptiness. When Maslow's needs are met I think we are less prone to be creative. It is the pang of hunger and thirst that spurs us on to aesthetic heights.

The hungry artist is the short-lived artist but his art is intense. I think Arthur Rimbaud was such an artist. He wrote until he exhausted himself. He wrote first then ate later. Even then it was not so much as a need but visceral. A part of creativity. His eating became his aesthetic.

I cannot be an Arthur Rimbaud. I enjoy creature comforts. Take-out. Lunch on a subway bench. A gin and tonic after work.
They do not make me more creative. I could say something pretentious like the life of the middle class intellectual deadens my creative sense. But that sounds wrong. I am a creator because I am a middle class intellectual. And I am not even sure if that label fits me. A lost boy is perhaps a better descriptor. A stranger in a strange land. A man who happens to have a degree who happens to teach Plato, Aristotle, Virginia Woolf and Camus to community college students in Brooklyn, New York.

I am a man who loves the color of apples. But I like stiletto heels as well. I like the religious ritual of going to the movie theater on a Thursday evening after work. I eat lightly buttered popcorn with the same laconic motivation of receiving the holy eucharist on my tongue. The darkened theater and the womb-like cavity of stadium seating — where there is always less people and more space feels like an experience of daily Mass.

The pig people: urban legend or fact?

They live under interstate highways. In New Orleans, they call them the "pig people." The locals say they're cannibals and their noses are upturned, like a pig. At least that's what was told to me on Carrollton and Tulane the other night. At about two in the morning. I just had coffee with Danita and I took the streetcar back to school. But I had to transfer to a bus. The bus wasn't coming anytime soon, so I figured I might as well walk.

The pig people purportedly live under the interstate in New Orleans 

Home was only five blocks away. But I was afraid of walking underneath the overpass at night. The interstate loomed before me like a badly placed skateboard park. From my room at Notre Dame, the blinking lights of vehicles communicate to me during REM sleep, the balustrades to commerce, concrete effigies that simultaneously (concurrently) hold up the little modules of despair, racing through our fair country, while harboring pig people down below in her concrete bosom.

So I decided not to risk an encounter so I waited for the last bus.

At the bus stop, I asked about the pig people to some wearied travelers.

Here is what they sang:
In her concrete bosom, the pig people sleep.
the pig people live and eat.
the pig people, the loup garoux, the boogey man,
the monster in the closet, the fear out to get ya, man.

boom, hear that, y’all?

yeah, bitch, she's keen on your hide,
her nose upturned like a pig snake, like a pig,
like a celluloid freak from the comic pages of your friendly horror page;

an immaculate mother, slouching to Bethlehem --

Urban legend?

Maybe. But no. It's not a legend. I have never seen a pig person, but I am sure they exist because I have seen their shadows lurking behind the balustrades of the interstate and I can give you a considerable amount of witnesses who can attest to their existence.

Next time you are around the interstate at night (or even by day) please let me know if you encounter the pig people.

Update: I heard a rumor that Master P is doing a horror flick based on the pig people legend in New Orleans.

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