| Fido, naturally, was once a famous human-type author, but after being thrown into prison for "telling it like it was", and then dying or as they say today "disengaging from life", he decided he would never return to Earth again as a human being. It was just too stressful. So, while waiting to find out what would happen to him next, he struck up a bargain with those working in the Transfer Room between Earth and the Other Worlds. He would be permitted to return as an animal. This didn't always work very well, as he was trying, really, to find his true place in the Flow of Things. Eventually, he decided the best thing to reincarnate as would be a dog. And while he's been many things to many people (and other animals and life-forms - once, he was even a duck for a time!)... he made the distinction between dogs and other life-forms. Dogs were the way to go. And that's what he's been ever since - in varying shapes and breeds. Oh yes - you can see a pciture of me, by clicking: http://members.tripod.com/fido2001/fidodogstoevski.html What Happened During Some of My Lifetimes by F. Dogstoevski After being reborn as an ordinary mouse in 1920, again as an elephant seal in the late thirties, and then, after being harpooned and sold as husky food in the forties, the natural, karmic thing to do was to return as a dog, which I immediately did. You all know of my refusal to come back as anything else, and the difficult time I had at the Hall of Records, so there's no sense going into it here. Suffice to say I have inhabited the shells of many a canine since. Each time I pass through, they give me the same forms to fill out, and I always put an X through the part where I'm supposed to return in human form. But enough of that. Let me give you a short history of this century so far, seen through the eyes of - well, a few pairs of eyes: 1921: An American president named Harding made a plea for a "conscious civilization" to ban warfare. Apparently, no-one was listening - either that or he couldn't find a civilization that was conscious enough. I was only a year old, living in a ditch, but at least we had a civil society, except for owls, cats and other predators. We mice knew how to live. 1922: I seem to remember this Catholic pope called Benedict the 15th who was reported dead by the media, and he did pass on a few hours later. Whether or not it was due to reading his own obituary or not, I never did find out. 1923: In the United States, 158,000 miners in a place called Harrisburg were said to be satisfied with the offer of $5 a day for digging coal. How many suffered from respiratory ailments was not noted. 1924: Demise from life of Nikolai Lenin. The announcement was made via an interruption of the playing of the Soviet funeral march, although at the time no-one knew what was coming. And I think, we're still not very sure... 1925: A man named Byrd flew to the north pole and back, freezing his fingers and nose. If he'd been born a Doyg or Cayt, I'm sure he never would have made the flight. Also, in New York City that year, there were 333 reported homicides, an increase of 40 percent. I wonder what the stats are today? 1926: A Mr. A. Smith retired from active duty from a missing persons bureau after 25 years. Known as the "cop evangelist", he said he would continue searching for the lost regardless of official position, via a gospel mission. I was eaten by a hawk, and reborn in a litter of four a few days later. 1927: Two male humans were convicted of murder in the state of Massachusetts and sentenced to death after a six year legal battle. A governor refused to intervene, despite worldwide pleas for clemency; on the way to the electric chair, one of the men repeated a declaration of innocence, the warden could only speak in a whisper, and the other man cried "long live anarchy" - in what context he meant it was never very clear. 1928: Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly over the Atlantic ocean in a "lighter-than-air" machine. She said that while over Newfoundland she could see plenty of lakes and wanted to go trout fishing there sometime 1929: Commander Byrd flew to the south pole and back - this guy really liked travelling to out of the way places. In other news, some paper bricks fell out of a building on Wall Street, causing panic among the humans. 1930: I remember this vividly. We were camped beneath a newspaper one rainy day and I read this story over and over - a newspaper magnate (Wm. R. Hearst) was thrown out of France as his approach to journalism was not only viewed as being unfriendly but downright hostile toward the French. He commented, upon safely reaching England, the experience made him feel "quite important." I could never figure out why, but then, I was only a mouse. 1931: This was the year I drowned in a toilet. I'd accidentally fallen into the bowl and later woke up as my own nephew. It was a weird year anyway. A man in Spain quit his job as king to live in England where "much of his huge fortune" already was; and the prime minister of Canada had "nothing further to say on the matter" after proposing to maintain something called the gold standard. What later happened to it is relatively unknown. 1932: The opera "The Emperor Jones" opened in America and Germany, the Olympic Games made Los Angeles known as the "cosmopolitan capital of the world." A lot of other things happened that year, too, mostly bad. I lived in a barn and had to always be on the lookout for feline type creatures. 1933: Sunlight bounced from the moon to light the way for the Lindbergs as they flew across the South Atlantic; there was an assassination attempt on the person who presided over the country of the United States; and Nanking admitted defeat to whoever they were fighting. The Nazi party won a majority in what was described as a peaceful election. Mice, by the way, neither have presidents, elections or wars. 1934: Heat waves everywhere, disembodying hundreds of humans and (probably) even more mice. this was the year a man who was missing for a dozen years turned up dead and with a different name after a fire. I also seem to remember a baseball game being called off because of rain in Washington with the Senators losing 4-1 to the Yankees in the 5th inning... 1935: A human male collapsed after being sentenced to execution for the murder of a baby; a 20-year-old female jumped from the observation deck of the Empire State building clutching a purse with 83 cents and a tube of lipstick in it. She's had a disagreement with her fiance, then phoned to tell him her plan. My mother died in July after eating a poisoned graham cracker, presumably left for a rat. She was six. 1936: A psychiatrist, Prof. Cerebrus Cerebellum, diagnosed "campaignomania" as a disease afflicting patriots and others hoping to be elected to public office, noting there was no immunization; Roosevelt becomes president nonetheless. Perhaps there's a cure, though - Edward (the 8th, of England) abdicates in favour of his lady love; also, I remember there was a mailman who was saved after being in a mine for 8 days, where he worked after hours. 1937: Mrs. F. D. Roosevelt said housewives should be paid salaries like anyone else, and it rained while George VI was promising a "good reign" during a coronation ceremony in England. In Russia, the population voted unanimously (sorry, a bad pun just squeaked through!) for a Mr. J. Stalin... 1938: Things start to get very dicey in some parts of the world - all phone calls, for instance, made by the press in Vienna's Central Telegraph Room could only be made in the German language, and no-one wanted to go to Europe. In the USA, there were 369,000 new jobs opened in the space of a month. 1939: Nearing the end of my period as a mouse. In Paris, 20 workers rioted over a 60-hour workweek and a new automobile sold for $325. Its producers said it could get 50 miles to a gallon of gas. What happened, I wonder, to it? Virtually all news dispatches from Europe were subject to censorship. War was almost everywhere. I died sometime between 1939 and 1940, surfaced as an elephant seal, which is related to the harp seal which is related to the buglefish which is related to the trumpeter swan and a little known entity called the bottleneck guitar eel. Finding myself afloat in a sea of icebergs and harpoons, I didn't like it and decided to return as a dog and to remain that way forever and ever amen or until dust do us part once and for all... 1940: Seventeen humans were indicted for conspiring to overthrow the US government. The so-called Christian Front made bombs from beer cans and wanted, they said, to keep America out of a war. 1941: The US enters a war anyway. 1942: The editor/publisher of the Washington Post and the American Secretary of Commerce got into what was described as a "fistic encounter", during which a pair of eyeglasses fell to the floor and were smashed. And a horse called GOOD MORNING beat another one called TOO TIMELY by half a length in a war-relief race. 1943: I can't remember much, after falling off an ice floe and almost drowning. 1944: A greasy harpoon ended my time as elephant seal and I returned as a husky, vowing to work my way south if it took ten lifetimes. The Yankees, Giants and Dodgers played each other in June - final score was Brooklyn 5, Yankees 1, Giants 0. The humans' war is still on. 1945: Some brands of cigarettes are viewed as being overpriced at 21 cents a pack; an atomic bomb was tested in New Mexico, then dropped on Japan. After the test, people "embraced and shouted in glee" - this was the last year of that war. 1946: This year is totally blank. I fell in love with a lovely little Samoyed named Lucy. The next couple of years are pretty muddy too, though I seem to remember we had plenty of pups... 1949: Someone remarked: "Don't overplay it" as almost everyone denied an atomic blast occurred in the land of Russia. After this things became very distorted. There was a lot of materialism among humans and scattered wars. In 1967, someone put some LSD in my dogfood and I ran off a cliff chasing an imaginary sabre-toothed tiger. It was six inches tall and spoke in Dutch. I spent some time at Head Office and returned as an Old English sheep dog and began to realize for the first time I was a reincarnation of a famous human writer and changed my name from "Tangle" to what it is today. |
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