________  ________  ________   
   2023-12-25                                   /        \/        \/    /   \  
                                               /       __/         /_       _/ 
   it's deep  cat lore to  know  I've almost  /        _/         /         / 
always  slept with a soft  dolly or, at  the  \_______/_\___/____/\___/____/_
very least kept one near me for comfort.        /        \/        \/    /   \
                                               /        _/         /_       _/
   when  I was  really  young it was a  grey  /-        /        _/         /
rabbit named Hamlet,  in my misspent, roller  \________/\________/\___/____/
coaster young adulthood  I found a pigtailed
girl who deserves her own story.  later, when my wife was pregnant and through
those  tough  first  six  weeks there was a giraffe named  Frederick  and more
recently, in the collapse of my life in Australia and my journey to the United
States my wingman was an orangutan named Slider, and that's just to name a few
key players.

   when I moved to the city  in my late teens,  through a heavy steel door and
down a frightening staircase, in a dusty concrete cellar was a goth record and
fashion store that I would come to haunt named Peril Underground.  they'd burn
incense  in  Peril,  partly for show and,  I imagine,  partly to mitigagte the
still air and the smell of the grimy alley above.

   today, on my  45th birthday,  knowing me  better than  anyone in this world
will  ever  know  me,  knowing the tremendous  strain I am under,  knowing the
weight I shoulder  for her and others  both now and in the oncoming  year,  my
wife Dani gifted me an inky black plush rabbit.

   I didn't recognize  the smell at first, and my  wife told me we can wash it
out, but then  in the evening,  across a lifetime of  memory the two connected
and so Peril will be her  name and through  whatever  peril I face into in the
new year, be it from the back bedroom, the Web, Silicon Valley, Eastern Europe
or the Middle East, she will be my companion.



EOF