My name is Will B. and I will be your writer today

...A dispatch from bewilderness

I am here today by invitation from J. She is my human and this is her stack. She brought me home from what she called “the pound” on April 23, 2018. The vets there said I seemed to be about 2 years old at that time, which would make me 9 now. But that’s not the point. The point is April 23. J says that was William Shakespeare’s birthday. As in Will B.

I’ve never written before, but I do think about the world and there are a few things that confuse me. For example, what humans have done to this planet. If they keep doing what they're doing and not doing what they're not doing, London will become a steamy jungle and Antarctica will revert to the state it was in around 34 million years ago. No ice. No forests.

A few points about living things who are not human. We don’t retreat into phones, tell lies, start wars, starve others, dismantle democracies or degrade the planet.

Here’s a secret. I can read. The other day I read about the oldest shipwreck yet discovered. It went down in about 1305 BCE, which is about 4,000 years ago and contained amber beads, tortoise shells, logs of ebony, hippopotamus teeth, arrowheads, daggers, almonds, figs, cumin, chisels, razors, gold. And pomegranates.

Sometimes I read about outer space. I’m into smells. But not into how outer space smells, which is like a mix of diesel fumes, gunpowder and barbecue. I’d like the barbecue, but given that mix, I’d way rather stay here. On earth.

Fyi, the smell comes from dying stars. I like stars. Sometimes I look at them with my human. When you look at stars, you’re looking back millions of years.

The Persea (PER-see-ah) tree is a wild laurel native to the Near East and Africa. The ancient Egyptians revered it as a celestial tree, believing the stars were its leaves and the sun rose from its branches. Maybe they do.

When stars explode or die, new elements are forged, including the calcium that makes up our bones and the oxygen that we breathe. That’s what Carl Sagan meant when he said, “We’re made of star stuff.” Here are a few things I know. Everything is a window if you look at it or into it or through it. You are the frame. You frame the way you look at it.