Barrio Tales and Other Stories

Barrio

An Era of Dogs





Pardon me, but this can get very very confusing....

There are two roads in my town:

First, the road to the Dogs.

In my little town Dogs are famous for Accusations : the first Dog will be accused of drug-dealing and smuggling and gambling by a second Dog and the first accused Dog will accuse the accusing second Dog of instigating all these accusations against it and the accusing second Dog will throw tantrums of "fouls", accusing the first accused Dog of avoiding the accusations against it by counter-accusing (again!) the second Dog who accused the first accused Dog in the first place . Now after being accused, the friend of the first Dog is retaliating by accusing the friend of the accusing second Dog. So this time the accuser is the accused and the original accused the accuser. Etcetera. My town is really confused. Imagine, they pay billions of tax money so as to be confused!!! Nowadays, they know neither the accused nor the accuser.

The confusion was so severe one time that a Muslim Dog in the South thought there was a war. So it called all its impoverished dogs and made them shoot all over without warnings. After more than a hundred of them idiots got killed - really, they didn't even know they had opponents, the Muslim Dog realized the folly of its confusion and it escaped.

When I asked Simatutina Kulangot the reason for this confusion in my town she said,

"It is because dogs eat dogs. Don't be confounded by their character - sniffing, sniffing for some shit anywhere they can find shit and when they find shit, they eat and digest the whole thing and release it to feed the public. The worst thing in this doggy town is how the public gobble every shit without checking for germs or whatnots. "

Oh they love so much shit in my doggy-town.

Everything here is nothing but dog shit and dog meat and dog eaters and dog-sniffers.

Like any other dog, (but lately scientists found the bulldogs have better brains), most of them really don't know what closure is - no Dog has been charged because instead of investigating the truth, they dig out shit, to release shit and more shit to feed the public. And when one brand of shit is done another one will be released. And then everything about the shit will die down, trapped in some thick smelly booger. Still, they don't close the shit even when it is dead.

They are like openers of cans full of worms - and that's it, they just open cans of worms. That is all the dogs can do anyway. They don't have brains. (But lately, dog scientists have discovered the mongrel can think better than them. Combined!).

They only bark. Bark. Bark. Bark.

That is the road of the dogs.

However if you take the yellow brick road you'll still find humans in my town.

The humans who walk here are so quiet you won't hear anything but the rustling of their pants or skirts against their very fertile grounds. The greatest thing they worry about nowadays is how to preserve their harvests that annually grow beyond their expectations. Because they have to analyze and think and read and research and find the best options on life-matters, you hardly hear them talk. But you must see the volumes of their writings! You must see the time they spend reading books. You must see their Christian idealism and Patriotism! They have a different concept of happiness which they achieve internally, not externally. They are protective of their privacy. They hide behind masks because "The Self" is temporary and unnecessary to search for happiness. Like any true Christian, their happiness depends on the happiness they give to their brother or sister or their country. "Everyone comes first before self" is their silent motto. And because of their humanity they are the most blessed people in the land. Yet,

You rarely see them in my town because they have been so disgusted by the dogs since long long time ago and they chose to be confined in their houses.

And their silence is the only hope of my town against the prevailing barks of dogs. And they ask me to speak no more about them because they don't want the Dogs to find another reason to sniff shit.

Afterall, they know the Nature of Dogs better than the Dogs themselves.

The dogs age seven times the age of humans.

Someday, these dogs will devour each other.

They will kill one another.

Humans can't wait to see that.

Only because when the barking is over, reading books written by humans is such a pleasurable experience.



Alex Maskara

Barrio Tales