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Dear Lonely Animal [Let’s have a collection competition]
- University of Illinois Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
54 Dear Lonely Animal, Let’s have a collection competition: I’ll bet you have key chains, coins, sea shells, stickers, postcards, stamps, photograph albums, stacks and stacks of books, matchbox cars, baseball cards, stuffed animals, cd s, dvds, those old Atari games, those old Nintendo games, board games, puzzles, mix tapes from long-ago lovers, letters from erstwhile penpals, sketch books, notebooks, diaries, garage sale vinyl records, ash trays, mugs, National Geographic magazines, Austrian crystal Āgurines, refrigerator magnets of the U.S. states, probably some enormous jar of buttons, probably wind-up toys and decks of playing cards from places like Niagara Falls, maybe even luggage locks and keys, magic tricks, maybe lost/pulled/impounded teeth hidden in a trophy in a row of trophies. Medals and ribbons from the athletic tournaments, bake-offs, and the farmhouse pageants. T-shirts from the varied places. Corked bottles of colored sand and flasks of essence, maybe basketfuls of hotel soaps, shampoos, and lotions. Maybe music boxes waiting to be wound— 55 But do you have shelves of chosen rocks and pebbles, certain shapely twigs? Pieces of broken porcelain, sea glass, scraps of fabric from the different summer dresses? Countless hand-dyed, blown-out eggs and safety pins with plastic beads? Single earrings? Torn sheets of handmade paper? Satin ribbons and the folded wrappings of old presents? Calendars from every year with scribbled details crowding all the squares and margins? Autumn leaves laid out on table surfaces, pressed beneath discarded panes of glass? A stack of rug samples to arrange in trails for leaping? Star charts, empty jars and bottles, microscopic slides and brine solutions, crystal-growing kits and Sun Print paper, almost Ānished latchhook grids, and sorted UPC symbols saved from Kellogg’s boxes— Have you dipped your bandaged paws in the river where you spread your father’s ashes? Have you crouched alone on piers to watch the crab-shapes quiver underwater? Have you caught them in a silver net to whisper words and let them go again? Animal, don’t look at me with those eyes. I can see from here the look you are giving me as you read this letter. You should know [3.239.59.193] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 13:27 GMT) 56 this competition is not about eyes, anyone could tell you that. All our eyes with the near-transparent callouses grown over them, the nictitating membranes sealing the other out. Dear Animal, is that your paw print here by my doorstep? I looked for you this morning in the snow, I thought perhaps you’d come to Ānd me, to be together here, but everybody kept trampling the tender damp depressions, bristling by with headphones on— ...