One of the whorled knots on the side of the cheap unfinished bookcase next to my reading chair resembles a small brown galaxy, a kind of wee chocolate galaxy, which occupied my thoughts for a short while, not long. Maybe a little longer than a short while. I'm not stoned. As if! I'm not sure what I mean by as if right there. Or a swirl of fondue, chocolate fondue. A few other suggestions were made, not out loud, apparently by me because who else is in here. An ear, a galaxy, some others. I wonder how long a dog could stare at such a Rorschach-like knot, even a stoned dog. Assuming the dog isn't simply a little nuts, or just stupid. According to a book I read, mental illness is extremely rare in the animal kingdom, apparently, or maybe even unheard of. I'm not talking about mad cows or pets driven crazy by their owners. Of course, hold on a sec, what do I even mean by mental illness. Let's not get carried away. Anyway, I'm not a stupid or stoned dog but neither am I mentally ill. I really shouldn't speak for even one animal, much less all animals. I am an animal, of course, but not the kind who never suffers mental illness, by that definition. The human animal, for whom insanity is a clear possibility at all times and in all situations, such is our mental superiority. So you've got animals on the one hand, unquestionably sane, all or very nearly all, according to some definition I haven't thought about yet but which is probably pretty basic and uncontroversial, but maybe a little stupid (the animals not the definition, although it could be), and on the other you've got disturbed people, crazy people, people with quote unquote trouble in the head realm. In between these two groups we see crowded together all the sane people and all the plants, some happy people and plants and some sad examples of both (ficus drops leaves no matter what you do), and some neither happy nor sad people and plants but just sort of medium, but all certainly not mentally ill, as if plants could even be mentally ill, clearly absurd, and that's life. Everything covered, as far as that goes. There are categories you can have fun with, play around with, with your Uni-Ball Gel Impact in your spiffy new Moleskine notebook. I like moving things from one column to another, just to see how they look, it's a pastime. What of it? I like to notate myself into the inside of a circle that intersects other circles a little, with the area of overlap shaded or crosshatched. I like dashed lines and arrows that point to areas too small to have words such as my name written inside them.