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160 pages, Paperback
First published May 29, 2009
A fighting dog is a dog that has no choice. He learned what his owner chose to teach him ever since he was a puppy. He's recognizable by his short or amputated ears, scars, stitches, and lacerations. He's had no choices in life. That's exactly how it's been for Edgar Wilson who was trained at a young age to kill rabbits and frogs. He has some scars beneath his arms, and on his neck and chest. There are so many lines and sutures on his skin he doesn't remember where he got half of them. However, scars of violence and resistance to death on other animals have never dulled the glint in his eye while he contemplates a big sky. Night and day, he spends a good deal of time looking up. Maybe he expects something to happen in the sky or with the sky.. maybe he'd like to cut up some clouds with his big knife.
Despite having been raised like a fighting dog, he knows it's better than being a pig. That's because pigs can't look up at the sky. They just can't. Anatomically, pigs were made basically to look at the ground and to feed on whatever they found there.
Edgar knows that he's a fighting dog raised to kill pigs, rabbits, and men. However, every bit of a pig is relished. Rabbits can be eaten with green olives and almonds. Men are often given a mass. As an excuse to light a candle and pray.
Sad days can be cold or hot, gray or blue. And shadows contour souls, desires, and thoughts. These shadows belong to no one, they can come from anywhere: from a wall nearby, an ocean wave, an expanded wing in the sky. Sometimes, even the stars seem to make shadows. Though they're dead, they overshadow with their insistent glimpse of infinity. And in thinking of stars, sometimes he wishes for a stairway to the sky. So he can blow them out.