Buon Giorno.
Today is May 28th, the birth date of my dead Dalmatian, Rorschach. She died the day after her sixteenth birthday almost 15 years ago. Still, every May 28th I think of her. She’s the only pet’s birthday I remember.
Rorschach, like all my great loves, was very beautiful and very high maintenance. An unpredictable fear biter, she bit every girlfriend I had in the face. Unlike how they’re depicted in friendly cartoons, most Dalmatians are crazy. Fight me on this, Marissa Zappas! Rorschach slept in the bed, and if I accidentally brushed against her in the night, she’d violently lunge at me. I got a dog to mimic the cortisol cycles of my childhood.
Every year on her birthday, I celebrated by taking her on a non-consensual road trip; which later ended up being the basis for two book-length poems I wrote: The Beautifully Worthless and The Summer of Dead Birds. I loved this crazy dog. And she shaved years off my life. When she died, I was bereft.
But I had not learned my lesson. I hate to learn a lesson. I waited a month and tried to replace her with an even more insane rescue Dalmatian named Lavinia who tried to kill our cat. Lavinia was returned (with great tears,) and then I tried a deaf Dalmatian mix, Fritz, who had so much separation anxiety he also was returned, (with still greater tears), after consuming an entire shower curtain.
If you read old books, sometimes a human is referenced as a Dalmatian, because Croatia used to be called Dalmatia. The Dalmatian Coast. It always gives me a serial killer thrill to find people referenced as Dalmatians.
I would love to go to the Dalmatian Coast some day. I know it won’t really be packs of violent Dalmatians running rampant on the beach, but that’s how I like to imagine it.
Soon, I am going to Italy though. Therefore I’m re-watching My Brilliant Friend, the HBO series based on Elena Ferrante's novels. I’ve not read the books, (I know!) but I love the series so much. My grandparents and mother lived in Naples in the 60’s, but I’ve never been. I’m madly doing Duolingo so I can say: “Vorrei un cornetto é cappuccino, per favore.” If you don’t speak Italian that translates to, “I’d like a third wife, this time Italian, who owns ten Dalmatians, please.”
This post was not supposed to be about Dalmatians. I set out to write about saying goodbye to a painting. Recently, some people who bought a large painting of mine in the past, wanted to buy another. I sent them pictures of all the large paintings I had and they chose this one below.
I felt a pang of sadness that I would have to part with it, because I’d painted it after
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