When I was a kid, the 100th issue of comic books was usually double-sized and had great artists and a good story line. Nothing important ever happened in the regular-sized, regular-priced 101st issue.

I’m still a little freaked out by yesterday’s attention. Appreciative, of course. But it’s a bit like dancing with my eyes closed and then, stealing a glimpse, noticing I’m being watched. Still, I thank everyone for all their kind words. No mosaic today. Today, the least I can do is keep a promise to a friend. My first image here was a self-portrait, not a self-portrait that the cops could ever get to stick, true, as with my one hundredth image. My second image was a photo of my Murphy; so it makes sense to follow yesterday’s image with Murphy.

When I work, Murphy sleeps on the couch beside me. Or, at my feet. Generally, I like that better in colder months. My feet get very warm in the summer when Murphy sleeps on them. But who can get mad at Murphy? When I do get mad at Murphy — say when she suddenly sprints after a squirrel I hadn’t seen and nearly pops my arm out of my shoulder socket or when she circles around behind me and comes out on the wrong side so that the leash has wrapped around behind me, especially when she’s done this four or five times in a row – when I get mad at Murphy it dissolves almost instantly. Like dawn’s sun burning away clouds. It’s a beautiful thing.

I wish all of my non-Murphy anger was the same way. It hits and passes over like a summer rainstorm where light and beauty and serenity are perfectly resurrected. When I’m working, Murphy is always beside me or at my feet. And, at night, usually in the middle of the night, when I shut my computer down, only then does Murphy retire to her kennel. It has happened just the same one thousand times but it makes me smile every time. Murph sleeps in the bed with me when I nap but for some reason, some odd doggy logic, she doesn’t sleep in the bed with me when it’s dark.

Murph runs in her dreams. I see her paws twitching, not all at once, but in running order. It’s positively adorable. Probably fields and fields of slow-stepping squirrels. She also has nightmares. Sleeping, eyes aflutter, whimpering through her nose. Giant fast squirrels? Lightning? Abandonment? An empty water bowl? I gently wake her up when she has nightmares.

Scientists report that fetuses dream. What do they dream? It would be a dream without language. Would it also be a dream without sight? Newborns, as I understand it, don’t open their eyes immediately. I imagine that their eyes must be closed in the womb. But then again, don’t the eyes develop before the eyelids? I wonder. I’ve read that the blind, or at least those blind people who were born sighted, see perfectly in their dreams. It’s likely that fetuses don’t dream images. I reckon even if they ever had sight, which seems unlikely, it would be something awful dark. A dream without language or image, then. A dream of feelings, of sensations only. Hhm? If fetuses dream, can they also have nightmares? What would a fetus be afraid of?

I’m rather all over the place.

SS