Door dogs

Last night I saw a black flash run down my hallway. I haven't found any rodents, so I think it was a door dog. Normally they only show up around 3AM when I'm really tired, and are only visible out of the corner of my eye, but I almost saw this one clearly and it was only around 9PM. I'm surprised I couldn't find much about door dogs on Google, but Google Books does have an excerpt from The Western Lands by William S. Burroughs, who was the first person to give a name to the creatures.

Speaking of Burroughs, I think The Western Lands was the first book of his that I read. I actually read most of his books in reverse order, following The Western Lands with The Place of Dead Roads and Cities of the Red Night, next reading some other stuff including The Wild Boys, then the "cut-up" books, and ending with Naked Lunch and Junky. That actually wasn't a bad way to do it. It's been a while, so maybe I should read them again in chronological order and fill in the gaps.

I even have the Giorno Poetry Systems The Best Of William Burroughs CD box set that I haven't listened to in a while. In fact I'm not really sure where it is -- ah, it's filed away with the LPs. My favorite is still Dead City Radio, though. I notice that most of the Burroughs CDs on Amazon date from the early '90s, which corresponds with when I was buying them and also when I was in college. I think the whole thing was probably started by Material's Hallucination Engine album, which featured Burroughs, since I was a big fan of Bill Laswell at the time. I remember anxiously awaiting the release of Seven Souls and the remix album The Road to the Western Lands, which focused solely on Burroughs's work. I'm not sure if I waited until then to read his book, since Seven Souls was actually originally recorded in 1989 and only re-released in 1997, but that explains why I started with The Western Lands.

Anyway, just like my reverse reading of Burroughs, this post is kind of a reverse chronology of my interest in him, which started in college, continued while I was living in Japan, and popped up again last night when I saw the door dog, which since then has remained invisible. Maybe if I pop in a CD, it'll make another appearance. Then again, maybe I should be glad it's gone, because as WSB said, "Door dogs are not guarders but crossers of thresholds. They bring Death with them."