Hello world.
I'm sorry this is late, I had to go out early yesterday and then ended up going out with the boys for the most of the day as well. By the time I got home I was absolutely shattered -- too tired to do *anything*!Welcome to the third edition of Monday Wonders! Please fav and comment so this feature reaches a wider audience and help get these pieces the attention they deserve!
As always, instead of just focusing on literature, I'll be featuring a selection of all kinds of art, based around a theme. I've tried to keep to pieces that aren't necessarily on the front page, so you should find at least one thing that's maybe new to you or often overlooked.
This week's theme is "canines/dogs" in honour of my doggy-day event I'm putting together offline with my support worker's help.
Since I really like dogs, this probably won't be the last doggy-focused feature you'll see, either. 
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CoalOne night, Alexander took me to the pound and he made me stare into the faces of all these shivering puppies, curled up in their cages.
"Take a good look, Alexandra," he said, standing with his hands on my hips. "These mutts are gonna die tomorrow."
I was crying after the first ten minutes. I want to reach into every cage and rescue every starving, abandoned, jailed creature. He didn't care much for my tears. He always said they were useless. "Give me something I can work with," he always said. He always said tears were the worst kind of foundation.
"Accept that no one will ever love these dogs, Alexandra. Accept that they will die tomorrow." What he was saying was, accept that the very same thing will happen to you.
He made me stick my fingers through the wire of every cage. He made me see which ones would cower. Which ones would bite me. And the one or two who would come forward, scrambling on their cramped feet to lick the salt off of my fingers.
"The ones that bite you, those are t
PetNever before had I met someone like him. He wasn't the type to enjoy jumping in puddles the way I did. He didn't enjoy running in the park, or throwing a ball. He was the type to read quietly or write when he had time. He enjoyed wearing a nice shirt and tie and was always upset when I came up to him after I had gone for a run, because I usually was dirty.
I cannot let a day go by without thinking how odd it is that he chose me. I am everything he isn't. I am fidgety while he can be as still as a marble column. I drive him insane with the way I run around and jump onto the furniture versus sitting down politely. I have dragged mud into the house a thousand times and I steal food off his plate when I think he isn't looking. He is organized, neat and doesn't like dirt.
I have bitten him. I have made him hurt so much, but he kept me. He looked at me with a mixture of sadness and anger when he finally said I either had to behave or be a stray. I haven't bitten h
Peanut ButterCurious, he poked his nose into the brown paper bag. It smelled familiar, but he couldn't quite place it... he stuck his snout farther in, nose twitching, almost knowing but not.
Just as he thought he may have placed the smell, he sneezed twice only to find the paper bag was now stuck determinedly over his head.
He sneezed a third time, just to be sure. It remained, clinging to his face with the same dedication that kept chewed gum stuck in hair. If that was the case, perhaps only peanut butter could free him from this crinkly brown prison.
He liked peanut butter. He liked it almost as much as he liked his rubber toy, but the toy was better because you could also eat peanut butter out of it. It was a very lovely concept, and he appreciated whoever had come up with it.
The paper bag was still on his face though, and he was appreciating that less and less the longer it stayed.
Oh yes, now he knew the smell. It was cat pee.
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Give some love to the artists, and don't forget to let me know which were your favourites and why!
(And please tell me something about dogs! Your favourite breeds, your own dogs, dogs you know, anything at all.
Or ask me about mine if you like!)
Any great work of art... revives and readapts time and space, and the measure of its success is the extent to which it makes you an inhabitant of that world - the extent to which it invites you in and lets you breathe its strange, special air.
~Leonard Bernstein, What Makes Opera Grand?
