Day in the Life

01/04/12
I’ve been able to understand what they say for a while. I don’t always let on though because if I show them I understand then I can’t do what I want, and then they yell at me and call me a Bad Dog. I hate being a Bad Dog. I try so hard to be a Good Dog. I’m so happy when she runs her hands over my head and ears and calls me a Good, Good Dog. There is nothing better. The temptations are so great though. The smells, oh goodness the smells! Especially in the morning after the sky has rained and everything is wet. The smells are so clear and vivid, so very interesting.
We go out for a walk this morning in the hills. The feathered things fly about. They smell as if they would taste good and if one flies close enough, I will try to eat it. There are tiny furred four-legs scurrying away. They also smell good, like food. She is talking to me the whole time. I love her voice. Sometimes when I don’t quite understand I will tilt my head way to the side. Maybe the words will find their way into my head quicker and I will understand. We practice Come! And Heal!, but I get distracted with the lessons. Too much is going on around us. A Thought enters my mind: Sometimes, if I’ve been a Very Good Dog!, She will take off the rope. Ahh freedom! I begin to formulate a Plan. I’m still quite puppy minded, but if I think very hard, sometimes I can think up a Plan. This is how it goes: If I am Very Good, she will take the rope off, then, I will RUN. Even though I understand her, I will pretend that I can’t hear her and I will Run.
I am a Very Good Dog, and she takes the rope off. I start to trot, then jog, then I gallop, and then, then I RUN. For a brief minute running is all that there is. In this whole great world of feathered things and furred things, and people that I love and smell so good, there is only running. But then, then I hear her, way, way back there, calling for me. And I must. I must turn around and go to her. I know that when I get to her she will run her hands over my head and ears and call me a Good, Good Dog.

Bad Habit

01/06/12

The smell of burning food brought her back to the world. She had been staring out the window in her kitchen, but she was a thousand miles away, somewhere warm and sunny. She pulled the frying pan off the burner mumbling softly to herself, “oh, sorry, sorry, shoot, I’m sorry”. She had a real bad habit of saying sorry; she really should work on that. As she put the well-done food on the plate, and added the vegetables and potatoes, she thought she could remember a time when she wasn’t sorry. She remembered when she was young and confident, and felt like she had a place in the world. As she brought the plate of food into the dining room she sighed. Seems like these days she’s sorry for the air she breathing. Just as she is about to put the plate on the table her fat little dauchsand shot out from under the table, excited by the food smell, and got tangled in her feet. She went down hard, the plate flying from her hand in slow motion, like a Frisbee, stopping only as it hit his lap. Then it tumbled over itself twice before smashing against the wall.
“Oh! ‘She piped,’ I’m sorry! It was an accident I’m so sorry!”
Still lying on the floor she looked up at him with apprehension. She did not like what she saw. There was a storm brewing in his face. His eyebrows were low over his squinty eyes, his lips pulled back in a snarl.
He took a big breath and exploded, “Dammit Lila! Can’t you do anything right? All I wanted was a little bit of dinner. Is that too much for a man to ask for?”
He wiped the steak and potatoes off his lap then he picked up his beer and swigged down the last drop. Lila got up off the floor, punctuating his outburst with sorries, thinking the whole time,’ this is a really bad habit; I’ve got to stop apologizing’.
“Now, You go get me another beer, fix me another plate”, he said, ticking off items on his fingers, “ and dammit Lila! You apologize for ruining my dinner”
“Ok, sorry,’ She said,” I’m sorry for ruining your dinner!”.
To herself she thought, Bad habit, I need to stop apologizing. Then she felt something inside her break lose. The spilled dinner was just an accident after all, not really her fault. Lila was done apologizing. She went back into the kitchen and got a Coors out of the fridge. She popped the top and took a long pull. Then she went to the cookie jar and retrieved her gun from its depth. She smoothed its warm barrel against her cheek. The gun smelt faintly of chocolate chip cookies. Lila took another swig of the beer and sauntered into the dining room.
‘That didn’t take long’, He said, licking his lips as he saw the cold beer, “ Now Lila, where’s my dinner?”
Lila brought her arm from around her back and pointed the gun right at his forehead, and then she pulled the trigger. The dauschsand yelped in surprise. He looked surprised too. Now his eyebrows are peaked, eye wide open, his mouth a round little o of pure wonderment.
“Oh!”, Lila whispered’ “ Sorry! So sorry!”, and on the heels of that, ‘Dammit, that is a bad habit saying sorry like that I’ve got to stop it!”
Lila wiped the gun off and put it back in the cookie jar. She threw a few things into a bag, grabbed the dog, got in the truck and she headed south. To somewhere warm, where there was water, where she wouldn’t be sorry anymore.

01/28/12
Super Power

Before the world ended, people would do all sorts of crazy things to themselves, their children too. Momma’s would line up at the geneticists lab to order up what up kind of child they wanted, Ha! Everyone wound up looking alike in those last bad years. All those choices! Skin color, hair color, sex, height, weight, smarts; all those things could be ordered up like we used order pizzas in the old days. Everyone wanted tall skinny, blonde children though! No one cared much about ordering smarts, or musical proclivity, or common sense for that matter. Everyone sure was pretty though. I’ve made it to the grand old age of 125! No genetic cocktails for me, no. I’ve eaten mostly vegetables for the last 50 years, and I’ve always felt the need to be active. A glass or two of wine, when it was available, may have helped as well. Oh lordy , who knows? Towards the end, people were doing all kinds of crazy modifications. The ability to breath water, or become invisible! They were close to being able to modify people so they could fly! Imagine that…one injection and you could grow your own wings! Bad thing was though; people became so involved in themselves that they forgot about the rest of the world. Politics went out of fashion. People stopped caring about the poor and misfortunate, in their own countries and globally. Third world countries obtained the technology for nuclear weapons, and then BOOM! The end of the world….Well, I reckon if I’d had the notion to order up a super power, I would have had those geneticists tinker with my mind so that I would be able to understand another’s point of view. Culturally, philosophically, religiously, yes, that is it, universal understanding. Ha! Too bad it’s too late!

Wind Dream

01/28/12

In my dream I was the wind. I started out the last breath of a dying man. I combined with the summer breeze that ruffled the curtains and made the tree branches dance. I blew through the tall city buildings and then over and through the pine trees. I gained momentum from the heat of the earth and blew up into the cold mountains. I screamed down the slopes as I cooled, melding with a warm humid wind. I became angry and powerful and funneled myself into a tube. I tipped over trees and picked up trucks and let them drop. I blew over a vast grassy plain, then down through the canyon, so narrow that I whistled as I contoured the sandy tall narrows. I followed a mighty river to the sea. I blew the water into waves, tall and taller. I spent a long time blowing over the salty ocean. I was sucked into a whale’s blowhole, and jetted back out. I got caught in the crisp canvas of a sail, and then held a sea bird aloft as it drifted on my warm thermals. I blew back into land and I slowed and became calm and quiet. I blew through a geranium and became infused with its scent. I blew through an open door and tousled papers on a kitchen table. I drifted up some stairs and into a room. I was the very first breath of new born, bellowed out in the insult of life.