A composite form that permits a larger discourse on the hybrid form. It's also a body that allows you to desire different things than you would do, normally. An invented construction, the humanimal is half you, half something else. Even an
angel can be feral. I want a dark
angel, and that is why I write books. That is why I expel the fur from the skin, so that the skinned body has a textured aura. If you touch it, it is yours. This is also a
definition of capture. The humanimal is a fundamentally undomesticated or untrained figure.
Vladimir Nabakov,
Brian Evenson, Rilke, Marguerite Duras, and so on. Their
books all have humanimals in them. You can tell because faces aren'
t quite clear, which implies incaution -- in terms of the contact between characters. I am not interested in the narrator. I am not interested in the writer. I am interested in the figure that is made, deep in writing. In this sense, writing is the forest I walk out of, drenched in the smell of animals. I'm serious. Once, in Dharamsala, a
monk ran past us on the steep
stone stairs going down to McCleod Ganj. He yelled: "Lion!" And so we turned, and ran, too.