There's a little magic in all of us

You have never known the joy of food until you are lunging at your friend to rip the best part of the chicken out of their hand, rolling around on the tarp, stuffing it in your face before they can retaliate, and you realize “holy shit did I just growl?” And then you realize they are doing it too.

“oh no!” screamed Little Red Riding Hood, “a thinly veiled metaphor for unrestrained sexuality! please don’t fuck me– I mean, please don’t eat me!”

the Wolf paused, “is that all I am to you? a cheap psychosexual pastiche?”

“well,”

A lucky capybara has given you a blessing! ✨ May it last the whole year and more!

When I was a kid, between six and fifteen, one of our Pyrenees would escort me, off-leash, between my grandmother's house and mine. I'd just have to call him, and he'd show up and walk me there, placing himself between me and anything he considered threatening- Cranky farm animals, holes in the ground, bodies of water, etc.

That same dog found a (unfortunately deceased) lamb my grandfather had buried a few hours earlier, dug it up, realized it was cold and not breathing, and carefully carried it to our barn, where he covered it neck-deep in straw and tried to cuddle it warm again to bring it back to life.

One of our older dogs, at about sixteen years old (keep in mind, this breed tends to average out at about 12 years max) had arthritis in his hips, a bad back, and a respiratory issue, was fucking ancient and essentially palliative, but would still go stock-still out of nowhere, let out one subtle "boof", and then set out at an awkward-yet-speedy bunny-hop sprint at the slightest whiff of a cougar, bear, or wolf. Like, grampa would jump fences. Gentle geriatric giant would kick up to 7k to protect the family, never mind the three other, much younger dogs already on the case.

When I was a baby, like a literal in-diapers infant, he would lay on the ground and let me dress him up as a wizard and crawl all over him with zero complaint.

His nephew was 100lbs and often alarmed visitors who mistook him for a bear, yet never so much as bumped into a person in his life and feared only string and kittens.

a Great Pyrenees is not Balto. A Great Pyrenees is Robert McCall, John Wick, and John McClain wrapped in Marry Poppins and a snuggly Mr. Rogers wool sweater.

They are not only the best dog, but I would argue that they are also the MOST dog.

With me she will lay on her back on the couch and plop her giant goofy fluff head in my lap and paw at me with her giant crime paws until I pet her gently, and then she will snuffle happily as I do so. She is very careful with the cats. She likes to nap sprawled on the floor like an inconvenient white shag carpet, preferably right over the air conditioning vent. She won't bite into an egg I give her unless I break the shell for her first. When I walk her past the neighbor's cows she has to sit and stare at them and the calves for a bit. When she was a stray she was chased out of several cattle barns because she kept trying to get in to sleep with the cattle and calves. Never tried to hurt one. She will also sit and stare at chickens for hours very happily. Won't hurt them, will just, you know. Keep an eye on things.

But they know that the kitchen has food. They know where the easily accessible cat food is. And obviously my sister and I are just Really Big Stupid Hairless cats.

my american lit professor went to this poe conference. like to be clear this is a man who has a doctorate in being a book nerd. he reads moby dick to his four-year-old son. and poe is one of the cornerstones of american literature, right, so this should be right up his alley?

wrong. apparently poe scholars are like, advanced. there is a branch of edgar allen poe scholarship that specifically looks for coded messages based on the number of words per line and letters per word poe uses. my professor, who has a phd in american literature, realizes he is totally out of his depth. but he already committed his day to this so he thinks fuck it! and goes to a panel on racism in poe’s works, because that’s relevant to his interests.

background info: edgar allen poe was a broke white alcoholic from virginia who wrote horror in the first half of the 19th century. rule 1 of Horror Academia is that horror reflects the cultural anxieties of its time (see: my other professor’s sermon abt how zombie stories are popular when people are scared of immigrants, or that purge movie that was literally abt the election). since poe’s shit is a product of 1800s white southern culture, you can safely assume it’s at least a little about race. but the racial subtext is very open to interpretation, and scholars believe all kinds of different things about what poe says about race (if he says anything), and the poe stans get extremely tense about it.

so my professor sits down to watch this panel and within like five minutes a bunch of crusty academics get super heated about poe’s theoretical racism. because it’s academia, though, this is limited to poorly concealed passive aggression and forceful tones of inside voice. one professor is like “this isn’t even about race!” and another professor is like “this proves he’s a racist!” people are interrupting each other. tensions are rising. a panelist starts saying that poe is like writing a critique of how racist society was, and the racist stuff is there to prove that racism is stupid, and that on a metaphorical level the racist philosophy always loses—

then my professor, perhaps in a bid to prove that he too is a smart literature person, loudly calls: “BUT WHAT ABOUT THE ORANGUTAN?”

some more background: in poe’s well-known short story “the murder in the rue morgue,” two single ladies—a lovely old woman and her lovely daughter who takes care of her, aka super vulnerable and respectable people—are violently killed. the murderer turns out to be not a person, but an orangutan brought back by a sailor who went to like burma or something. and it’s pretty goddamn racially coded, like they reeeeally focus on all this stuff about coarse hairs and big hands and superhuman strength and chattering that sounds like people talking but isn’t actually. if that’s intentional, then he’s literally written an analogy about how black people are a threat to vulnerable white women, which is classic white supremacist shit. BUT if he really only meant for it to be an orangutan, then it’s a whole other metaphor about how colonialism pillages other countries and brings their wealth back to europe and that’s REALLY gonna bite them in the ass one day. klansman or komrade? it all hangs on this.

so the place goes dead fucking silent as every giant ass poe stan in the room is immediately thrust into a series of war flashbacks: the orangutan argument, violently carried out over seminar tables, in literary journals, at graduate student house parties, the spittle flying, the wine and coffee spilled, the friendships torn—the red faces and bulging veins—curses thrown and teaching posts abandoned—panels just like this one fallen into chaos—distant sirens, skies falling, the dog-eared norton critical editions slicing through the air like sabres—the textual support! o, the quotes! they gaze at this madman in numb disbelief, but he could not have known. nay, he was a literary theorist, a 17th-century man, only a visitor to their haunted land. he had never heard the whistle of the mortars overhead. he had never felt the cold earth under his cheek as he prayed for god’s deliverance. and yet he would have broken their fragile peace and brought them all back into the trenches.

much later, when my professor told this story to a poe nerd friend, the guy said the orangutan thing was a one of the biggest landmines in their field. he said it was a reliable discussion ruiner that had started so many shouting matches that some conferences had an actual ban on bringing it up.

so my professor sits there for a second, still totally clueless. then out of the dead silence, the panel moderator stands up in his tweed jacket and yells, with the raw panic of a once-broken man: