My life has been forever altered
People that know me well, or at least talk to me on a frequent basis, know that the only thing I have really been talking about for the last month is my dog, Beau. I talk about Beau a lot because he is a big part of my life now (literally) and I spend most of my free moments of time worrying about him, spending time with him, training him, or just loving on him.
Yesterday was the perfect day with him. I was watching a PBS special on the history of the dog (which I ordered on DVD) and he was snoozing on the bed with me. Not just on the foot of the bed, or near me on the bed, but he had is head on my stomach and his front legs all tangled up with his back legs because he simply couldn’t get any closer to me. He was perfectly content to just lie there forever, I am sure, as I scratched his head and rubbed the nape of his neck (apparently dogs find massaging this area very soothing and mother-like).
He is the perfect dog. Sure, he’s afraid of most everything (including the new bed I spent hours making for him) and he’s got some strange quirks and annoying habits (like drooling all over the floor when drinking water) - but essentially, he is the dog I have always dreamed of having. He’s an 85-pound galump/moose that thinks he weighs about 15 pounds and has an endless desire to be with me. He is the perfect gentleman (to me at least) and is patient and devoted. I know he’s a dog and I am attributing all these human qualities to him - but it is exactly some of his human-like characteristics that make him so perfect.
James Herriot said it best - “If having a soul means being able to feel love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans.”
old stuff | Comment (1)Fog is kinda creepy
I remember as a little girl in elementary school (when I lived in California) the best months were between November and February because the likelihood of having a fog delay or complete cancellation of school was inherently inevitable. I remember how the fog would be so thick that you could barely see your fingers in front of you and how isolating and mysterious it was walking around in this white cloud blanket smothering the world around you. We called it “tulee” fog, and I thought this was a proper meteorological word for this dense kind of precipitation, but came to find out a few years later in middle school (while living in Texas) that no such term existed. “Tulee” apparently refers to some marsh or some kind of reed that makes a whistling sound when the fog rolls in down the Grapevine (or wherever it rolled in from) that was a unique flora to Bakersfield, California.
This morning I had those nostalgic feelings of childhood come flooding back to me on my morning walk with Beau (and about 1000 spiders we collected along the way as he dragged me through every spider web in the park). Fog is such a strangely isolating natural phenomena and probably one of my favorites. You can disappear into an open field like you are walking through a never ending series of curtains, and when you look over the ridge where you can normally see the cars zooming along 2818 - nothing is there. The whole world just drops off and the only reminder that there is a highway down there is the sounds of the airplane propellers from Easterwood and the occasional swish of a passing car on its way to church.
I like how dead the world seems too when it’s foggy like that outside. It’s as if Beau and I are the only two beings beyond the trees and the egrets walking stork-like in the ponds. Beau loves the egrets, I think he finds them comical - he can just stare at them intently, his tail stiff as a board, not moving a muscle, just breathing slowly until they spook and fly away ghost-like into the distance. I watched a movie on Sylvia Plath, one of my favorite authors, last night, and this weird foggy world we were walking in reminded me of that movie. All that crazy nonsense that just flooded out of her brain about death and dying and isolation and all the damnable things in the world that rejected her everytime she tried to kill herself. And yet the walk wasn’t solemn or dissatisfying like her life was, but rather a solidification of purpose and intent.
I like feeling nostalgic sometimes, usually around this time of year, and especially this year, because it’s nice to look back on the past to see where you came from, as long as you don’t forget where you are going. Certainly you cannot live in the past, you cannot hope for things from your past - you must always look to the future while living in the present. Right now I am all about just enjoying the moment - each sunrise, each sunset, each rain, each foggy quiet morning. I am going to go the aviary in a bit and spend my four hours working there, doing my duty for the birds I have become attached to over these past months. I won’t be working there this summer, but rather at something different but not unfamiliar.
I can’t believe college is almost over. Just a week and a half and I will have completed the latest segment of my life. And yet, as nostalgic as I am at the moment, I can only look forward to August when the last years of my formal education will begin, when at last I feel like I have found who I am and can accept things in this world for what they are.
I prefer to remain optimistic, thank you.
old stuff | Comment (0)What I do instead of what I am supposed to be doing
I cook. Tonight it was fried catfish with steamed broccoli.
And play with my doggy, aka the love of my life.
