A Sign...

The bewilder is shrinking. I won’t say to right sized because who knows what that is. I mean, maybe we’re supposed to carry dumbstruck around like a permanent satchel – the wonder of the universe and all that. Sometimes (maybe mostly?) we misapply it.

An exercise in something – how we imbue things with meaning that don’t. How swift the line is between something and nothing. How sadly silly this whole world can be sometimes.

There was a time last week, so lost in my moment, in that reaching to achieve, that I lost something. I reached out and touched the computer screen wondering if there was someone, somewhere, seeking contact too. I don’t mean through this virtual world. My grandmother would understand this, no doubt. She sat there long enough waiting too. Somehow I knew, deeply, the meaninglessness of what I was doing despite how impressed people can sometimes be with these kinds of efforts. This is because I know. This is because I’ve seen the face of hopelessness and there was truth in the murder of crows feet and knitted brow – that blank, abandoned stare on her face. Empty eyes. I wanted to take her face in both of my hands and kiss her passionately while she died.

But I didn’t (and neither did she.)

Hate With Me

The broader and deeper our capacity for love, so the breadth and depth of our capacity for hate. It’s like an expanding universe with two interdependent elements, each growing (and shrinking?) in direct proportional correlation.

An asshole on a mountain bike collided with Secret Agent Dog. He and people like him are the reason why responsible cyclist are now banned from using trails. He collided with her while riding his bike across a playing field. The incident occurred about ten feet from a posted sign saying that bikes are to be walked across the playing field. Bikes are to be walked across the field because dickheads like him don’t grasp the concept that they need to yield to people (and their pets, which ARE allowed to be off lead in this particular field.) The egotistical, materialist dickwad with his four thousand dollar mountain bike (because he needed to announce this several times – you know.. “I’m an asshole with warped priorities”) felt that while he saw the dog that the dog should have gone around him.

While blood spilled from her nose and nostrils, the jerk wants to chat about his bicycle and how wronged he felt… as he stood spitting distance from the sign instructing him to STOP and walk his bike. Everyone, hate him with me.

She moved off to the distance and sat with the patience of a saint while he complained. She waited her turn and when I finally left him chattering on about his four thousand dollar bike, she rolled on her back and cried, trying to scrunch her body into a ball and climb all fifty pounds of her into my lap. She’ll be okay. Everyone… hate with me. It’s because I love her so much that I’m able to hate this man so deeply, profoundly and fiercely.

No Amount Of Love Can Set It Right

Lisa is in Oregon at a job interview with the kids and the dog. I did a Haz Mat clean up on the yard so that we could perch up front and pass out Halloween candy to children and wine to adults. I picked up an entire kitchen trash bag of shit and I didn’t get it all. I was ready to call the humane society and CPS myself – it seems like there ought to be something reportable about it.

Halloween would have been quite fun had it not been for the mishap that left me distracted. It all began as an innocent walk in the park – as usual. Exactly what happened is a little unclear, though we all agree that she tried to jump up the cliff because the log in her mouth was too wide for the pass, which was flanked by the hillside and a tree, causing her to attempt an alternate route. There had been a sighting of paws on the ledge of the 12 foot rise - proof of a valiant attempt to achieve the impossible – and then she disappeared out of site. She reappeared at the bottom of the waterfall and without a peep or any sign of injury ran with grace and fury to rejoin us.

I was just being my doting self when in the clearing at the top of the hill, before the truly strenuous part of the hike commenced, I decided to check her from head to toe. That’s when I saw it - a gash, a chunk missing really, quite large on the left hind leg. At that point there wasn’t any blood – though by the time we walked the mile back to the car there was plenty of blood. She never limped and she’d never made even the slightly sight or sound of injury.

I think her heart stopped after I got home and I was in the shower – because suddenly she felt very far away and frightened and I was overcome with grief. But then she felt closer and I knew she’d be okay.

We were up most of the night tending to her after we brought her home from surgery. She was afraid and whimpering and not at all liking the cone she will wear for the next twelve days. She urinated on herself and the sofa in her delirium and she was afraid.

Today she woke up timid and disoriented but as the day wears on her eyes look clearer and sometimes she resembles herself. Ultimately she’ll be okay but these next two weeks don’t promise to be her most joyful. She has this look about her, as though she wonders what precisely she did to deserve this punishment. It feels like no amount of love can explain things to her and set it right.