My life as a mythic detective

           It starts and ends with dust. And how fitting that my mythic story would be demarcated by dust, for dust I am, and unto dust shall I return (Genesis 3:19). Prior to my inception, prior to my metaphorical death and rebirth, I was blind. Then I saw through a glass darkly, but now I see face to face (1 Corinthians 13:12). I have been baptized in dust, the doors of perception are cleansed, and I have scarcely begun to see things as they are (William Blake).

            Anyway, like I said, it started with dust. I can tell you the exact day in which it all began. It was January 17, 2013, and I can state this with confidence because I have the syllabus to prove it. The assigned reading that ushered me into my career as a mythic detective entailed a comparison of a passage from Book 18 of the Illiad with a poem by Christopher Logue found in his work titled War Music. I didn’t know it then, but this comparison follows the paradigm on which my mythic career is founded. This comparison expertly presents a displacement emulating the concept that myth “is the precedent behind every action, its invisible, ever-present lining (Robert Calluso). Both works deal with Achilles’ grief following the death of Patroclus. Both works deal with the dust that accompanies his grief. Whether presented by Homer—“In both hands he caught up the grimy dust, and poured it over his head and face, and fouled his handsome countenance, and the black ashes were scattered over his immortal tunic”— or Logue—“Down on your knees, Achilles, Farther down. / Now forward on your hands and put your face into the dirt, / And scrub it to and fro”— the dust is integral to the grievance. I did not see it then, but now I see with gross clarity the significance of this displacement. The world spoke to me, but I did not listen. I could not listen; I had not the faculties at the time. I could not discern the recursive structure. I could not see that the story in Logue’s story hinted at yet another story—my story. But the veil has been lifted and now I see.

It’s all so clear in retrospect. The clues begin to pile up. The real trick is recognizing those clues in the present, but we are slaves to the irreversible progress of time. Now, as the tide of time pushes me forward, a riptide brings me back. With 20/20 hindsight, I render the myth of Annabel Lee.

Over 9 years ago, I decided upon the name that sealed my dog’s fate. I derived her name from a poem in which one in her youth is unfairly robbed of life. Edgar Allan Poe understood the tragedy of a premature death, and he likely learned it from mythology. I know I learned it from mythology. In the future, I’ll be more cautious when deciding upon names. I’ll consider the weight of the name and the history it carries. I won’t make the same mistake.   

On January 14, “my dog heaved, the sound hauntingly guttural as if her insides were being wrenched from her body. Out came meat and bile and breath and life. Thrice my dog performed the ritual, staining my carpet with sallow fluid. What was the message? Was she possessed by the gods? And what were they trying to tell me with this purge? Even now, I contemplate the significance of this omen.” I posted these very words on my blog, and yet failed to realize their significance until just recently.

When Annabel started puking, I didn’t think much of it. I figured it was a minor illness, but the puking persisted. After a few more days of vomiting, I took her to the vet. Her temperature read 103.5 degrees Fahrenheit. Fever. “It’s probably just a virus,” Dr. Smart told me. “It could either be something really insignificant or something really bad. We’re going to put her on metranidazole, but if her condition doesn’t improve bring her back in.” Her condition didn’t improve, but then I saw what I perceived to be the light. At that point, I was experimenting with reading mythic clues, and I was certain I had uncovered something.

I was listening to My 103.5FM, and I heard John Tesh say, “Keep your animal away from raw fish. Many kinds of fish have a parasite that digs into the dog’s intestinal lining and causes vomiting, fever and inflames the lymph nodes. Vets call it ‘Fish Disease,’ and it can kill a dog within two weeks if left untreated.” Vomiting. Fever. And then the most amazing thing happened. I remembered Annabel eating raw salmon from Alaska a few weeks prior.

The clues were too clear, the synchronicity too telling. The vomiting, the fever, her temperature reading numerically equating to the radio station. I knew in that moment that she had salmon disease and that the illness would soon be behind us. After arranging for and administering her treatment, I found that her symptoms persisted.

Blind to the disease spreading through her body, I held on to mystic beliefs. I was certain her outcome depended on my attentiveness to the world’s message, certain that if I slowed down and listened, I would successfully interpret the omens surrounding her illness, but I prophesied poorly. I was blind like Tiresias without the compensatory prophetic ability.

Following the failed treatment, an ultrasound revealed the true affliction— black and white shadows of her insides and a darkness that didn’t belong. I wanted to search into the recesses of her body and find the wretch that assailed her. I wanted to cut it out. I wanted to reach inside and sever it from her liver. But like the hopeless prisoners in Plato’s cave, I was bound, fixed to a position in which I could only watch the shadows before me.

            Seeing her torment but helpless to alleviate it, I was struck by the illusion of proximity. I could place my hand against her flesh, practically clutch the cancer inside, and yet remain from it an un-traversable distance. Like Tantalous, relief from suffering was in sight, but reprieve remained an impossibility. The situation was fixed by the limitations of science. On the other hand, maybe science facilitated something that wasn’t meant to be. Maybe it allowed me to look upon that which was not meant to be looked upon akin to the myths of Semele and Zeus or Orpheus and Eurydice. But I looked, and I met suffering just the same.

            Aware of the cancer inside, the next step was surgery. I scheduled her surgery to take place the following day. That morning the doctor ran her bloodwork and found all the signs and symbols of cancer that were inexplicably absent in her previous bloodwork. The numbers told the story of my worst fears coming true. One of the counts read 66. It was her blood platelet count. One more repeating digit, and I may have had a revelation right there in the waiting room. I might have recognized the apocalypse of Annabel Lee. But I didn’t.  

            Even worse than my misinterpretation of that sign is the fact that I have a disease that causes my body to destroy my blood platelets. Because of this, I’ve visited the hospital countless times to monitor my blood platelet count. Having endured weekly visits to the phlebotomists, the suspense of waiting on bloodwork, and 2 blood transfusions, I know what constitutes normal range, and I know that 66 is far below normal. If only it were possible for one to be transplanted into my body at that instant—to be inside my head, looking through my eyes, feeling the years of my experience stamped upon me—only then could one begin to understand the impact of that number. It hit me, but not hard enough because€, although I knew the risk of internal bleeding, I failed to acknowledge it.  

            Annabel had to receive a blood transfusion prior to the surgery, a transmigratory fragment of a soul. The dog donating the blood was named Mud. I am forever grateful for that Mudblood. The blood dripped like sand in an hourglass, prolonging the moments I feared were our last. After the final drop, I had to go to the waiting room while her surgery commenced.

            In the waiting room, a blind cairn terrier was ushered in by her owners. The dog was straight out of The Wizard of Oz. I must have been even blinder than the dog to have missed the clue that followed. Because she was blind, her owners had her euthanized. That dog was the true Tiresias. That dog foretold the event that was soon to come. She moved the curtain, revealing that which is behind. And still, I failed to see.

            After Bel’s surgery, her vet brought me into her office to explain the hopelessness of the situation. I stared fixatedly as she scrolled through pictures of the surgery while medical jargon floated about the room. I knew the message before she said a word. I could see it in her glossy eyes. What interested me were the pictures of Bel’s insides. They looked like a sunset, hues of purple, red, and orange coalescing into a portrait of otherworldly beauty. I looked away and noticed something, the only clue that struck me at the time. It was a single peacock feather resting upright in a jar.

            I thought of Hera and her faithful guardian, Argos, and about how she was stripped of him against her will. And that thought quickly evolved into ruminating on the Odyssey. I thought about how Argos is also the name of Odysseus’s faithful hound. Argos awaits Odysseus’s return for 20 years, and only when he recognizes Odysseus’s arrival does he die. While gazing upon that peacock feather, Bel’s vet told me the following: “There is no explanation for why her blood work a couple weeks ago didn’t show anything. I’ve never seen this happen so fast before. My only explanation is that dogs, even more so than humans, compensate when they’re sick. They’ll compensate until they can’t anymore.”

            Annabel had to stay with the vet for hours after her surgery, but later that night, shortly after I picked her up, she began to bleed to death internally. I could literally witness the swelling of her stomach as the blood poured out uncontrollably. This again presented the illusion of proximity. I could see it and yet I was helpless to stop it. The blood hourglass was finally revealing that her time was up. I rushed her to the vet’s house and she euthanized her right there in her living room. I could see the life flicker and depart from her. My image reflected back at me, I saw the life depart from me.

I went home and I got to thinking. I thought about that peacock feather. I thought about how Bel began to bleed internally only a couple hours after we were reunited, and I began to wonder if she had been waiting for me, faithful until the end, hanging onto life until my return. I found solace in that thought. I find solace even now as I am writing this.

When I contemplated moving back to Bozeman, one of the most crucial factors I considered was the amount of time it would allow me to spend with Annabel Lee. I was working too much in San Diego, and I knew that in going to school, I would be allotted a lot more free time to give Annabel the life she deserved. When she died, this made me bitter. I thought about how unfair it was that she would be stripped away from me when I had only briefly been given the opportunity to make the most of our time together. Now I understand why I am here. If not for my immersion in mythic clues, I might not have developed this method of interpreting life differently. I may not have had the faculties to cope with the loss of something to which I had devoted myself wholeheartedly.

            Sometimes when the world is silent and I’m alone with my thoughts, all the pieces seem to line up. Synchronicity will strike so deeply that I will see all the convoluted intricacies of the world operating before for me with utter clarity. I will feel all of human history flowing through me, and I will realize that the world is bigger than me, that I am but a fragment comprising the big picture. Moments like this, I see Annabel and know that she too is a part of that big picture. Moments like this, I know I’ll see her again.

            I started reading “The Wasteland” by T.S. Eliot the other day. It’s a work wrought with mythic clues, too many for me to get into at the time of my reading, but the single thing that stood out to me was the following line: “I will show you fear in a handful of dust.” I keep Annabel’s ashes in a box on my nightstand. When I received them, I grabbed a handful and watched as the dust trickled and fell through my fingers. I beheld what she had become. But I know now that that isn’t her. I know now that in dying we are not merely consigned to dust. The dust no longer frightens me. She has transcended the material world and we will meet again.