________ ________ ________
2023-12-25 / \/ \/ / \
/ __/ /_ _/
it's deep cat lore to know I've almost / _/ / /
always slept with a soft dolly or, at the \_______/_\___/____/\___/____/_
very least kept one near me for comfort. / \/ \/ / \
/ _/ /_ _/
when I was really young it was a grey /- / _/ /
rabbit named Hamlet, in my misspent, roller \________/\________/\___/____/
coaster young adulthood I found a pigtailed
girl who deserves her own story. later, when my wife was pregnant and through
those tough first six weeks there was a giraffe named Frederick and more
recently, in the collapse of my life in Australia and my journey to the United
States my wingman was an orangutan named Slider, and that's just to name a few
key players.
when I moved to the city in my late teens, through a heavy steel door and
down a frightening staircase, in a dusty concrete cellar was a goth record and
fashion store that I would come to haunt named Peril Underground. they'd burn
incense in Peril, partly for show and, I imagine, partly to mitigagte the
still air and the smell of the grimy alley above.
today, on my 45th birthday, knowing me better than anyone in this world
will ever know me, knowing the tremendous strain I am under, knowing the
weight I shoulder for her and others both now and in the oncoming year, my
wife Dani gifted me an inky black plush rabbit.
I didn't recognize the smell at first, and my wife told me we can wash it
out, but then in the evening, across a lifetime of memory the two connected
and so Peril will be her name and through whatever peril I face into in the
new year, be it from the back bedroom, the Web, Silicon Valley, Eastern Europe
or the Middle East, she will be my companion.
EOF