(no subject)
My dog is really sick. Always I'm coming home to some things (read: beings) that I really love,
always threatening to go away from me. I'm not sure what lessons I'm supposed to be learning here.
Worse yet (or maybe better), I'm not sure I'm supposed to be learning any lessons at all. Or rather:
there are only lessons, insofar as there are only survivors, and there is the option of stringing the
pieces together and making some sad, some happy, some true story -- all if you like.
It's difficult to sit by and not know what to do. I am thinking of death and time: what strikes the blow the most is the un-reprieve of the situation. The not-being-able-to-access the being in the future. The fact that the time at the end grows thick and permanent -- the only time. I remember last summer, when I was riding the train back across the country to see my grandpa, how it felt: sort of like singing into a shallow hole.
My impulse is to keep: to open my arms, to gather. There's this childlike urge in me that says hey, if I never leave your side then you'll never go away. My dog, for all her pain, did this funny thing on her walk the other day -- the same thing she always does. She wanted to keep going. She squared her legs off in the middle of the street and gave me this brown-eyed, reproachful look -- like she wanted to keep going forever and ever.
Now, it was cold, and I was cold. And I thought that I should be worrying for her. Didn't want to overwork her body. Didn't want her to collapse. But at the same time, I wonder if she was right -- there's something about this infinite expansion of moments, the beauty of getting lost in one gesture, that is its own long duree, its own continuance.
It's strange, too, thinking about this in this supposedly emptied time -- this scooped-out, bottomed-out time of projecting and not-knowing, of decision-making and waiting. Truth be told, this feels like some of the blindest times I have known. Blind, as in -- the days are blending, there are no lanterns of bold ambition to light the day, and everything's always at the mark of the noontide season: half-mast, half-gray, with snow already on the ground.
That's alright, I think. There's time for that. But -- I think alot about the unevenness of time. How we require these ridiculous, messianic spells, and then these self-infolding spells of processing. How time is so much more psychological -- how we KNOW it is so much more psychological -- than the hands on the wall could ever measure off.
I'm wondering what time I am in right now.
I am wondering about spirits, and who possesses them. I am wondering who makes or mints our own. Whether we are alone, or composite. Whether we go out into anything, like Bruce Springsteen says in "Terry's Song." And I am wondering -- worrying -- about the beauty of the body, about the strange glory of the personality, of the heart that cries out it's me, this time and this only! , and how maybe we pretend it doesn't matter at all because it's so damned beautiful what even would we do? It's like what Levinas said -- how you have an ethical obligation to anything with a face. Calling out to you with its ipseity. This one time, and me alone. What even would we do? Put our hands up in the air a lot more often. Sit down on the ground and cry.
I am thinking about the beauty of the body, and what gets done with it. I am haunted by the shape and coolness of my dog's feet; the way the fur curls around her elbows. The ears, the positions of the ears, the looks of her eye, the brush-flare of her tail. What happens to this? What is it for?
Mostly I am thinking of how true is that line from Fleetfoxes, in the song "Tiger Mountain Peasant Song":
Dear Shadow alive and well
How can the body burn?
I suppose these are the kind of lessons -- if they are to be made into lessons -- to which one must always return. We're always brought back; vague laundry-cycle of the spirit. And maybe it's like alchemy. Maybe it's like a key. And this cycle, these sufferings, these questions now, will open up some other thing in the future -- equal parts exciting and miserable.
I certainly haven't learned it yet. My father definitely said to me, on the ride back from the vet, It's the way life works. It's part of the cycle. You have to get used to it. And I definitely said, for right now, There's no way I'm comfortable with that.
But if you're the type who prays, or the type who scoffs at prayers, please send out a prayer for my dog. Her name is Chloe, and she is the best possible dog in the world, and is longsuffering, beautiful, tragic, forebearing, wise, and somewhere deep-down-inside, from wherever-her-unknown-beginnings, sad. And she is a wonderful dog. Nice as anything. Beautiful sleek-noble. And patient. She makes me feel like every thought we have with love or hate in it matters. Reigsters. She makes me wonder about all the time I spent pacing around, not being a being of love. She was there for me when I came back; when I was older. When I remembered that I had a dog. And she has this way of forgiving without forgetting. Or, both, but -- reminding us that everything matters. That everything leaves a trace. That we are bound up together, somehow. It's important to remember these things; and I don't know why it's this way or how anybody ever rigged it so, but we sometimes learn these things better from the critters who can't talk so well. Because talking ain't what it's ultimately about, I figure. And she is always teaching me all of the best true things, without ever opening her mouth.
So thank you for DOGS; and thank you for reflection; and please let my old fond dog-of-my-heart get better.
Amen.
always threatening to go away from me. I'm not sure what lessons I'm supposed to be learning here.
Worse yet (or maybe better), I'm not sure I'm supposed to be learning any lessons at all. Or rather:
there are only lessons, insofar as there are only survivors, and there is the option of stringing the
pieces together and making some sad, some happy, some true story -- all if you like.
It's difficult to sit by and not know what to do. I am thinking of death and time: what strikes the blow the most is the un-reprieve of the situation. The not-being-able-to-access the being in the future. The fact that the time at the end grows thick and permanent -- the only time. I remember last summer, when I was riding the train back across the country to see my grandpa, how it felt: sort of like singing into a shallow hole.
My impulse is to keep: to open my arms, to gather. There's this childlike urge in me that says hey, if I never leave your side then you'll never go away. My dog, for all her pain, did this funny thing on her walk the other day -- the same thing she always does. She wanted to keep going. She squared her legs off in the middle of the street and gave me this brown-eyed, reproachful look -- like she wanted to keep going forever and ever.
Now, it was cold, and I was cold. And I thought that I should be worrying for her. Didn't want to overwork her body. Didn't want her to collapse. But at the same time, I wonder if she was right -- there's something about this infinite expansion of moments, the beauty of getting lost in one gesture, that is its own long duree, its own continuance.
It's strange, too, thinking about this in this supposedly emptied time -- this scooped-out, bottomed-out time of projecting and not-knowing, of decision-making and waiting. Truth be told, this feels like some of the blindest times I have known. Blind, as in -- the days are blending, there are no lanterns of bold ambition to light the day, and everything's always at the mark of the noontide season: half-mast, half-gray, with snow already on the ground.
That's alright, I think. There's time for that. But -- I think alot about the unevenness of time. How we require these ridiculous, messianic spells, and then these self-infolding spells of processing. How time is so much more psychological -- how we KNOW it is so much more psychological -- than the hands on the wall could ever measure off.
I'm wondering what time I am in right now.
I am wondering about spirits, and who possesses them. I am wondering who makes or mints our own. Whether we are alone, or composite. Whether we go out into anything, like Bruce Springsteen says in "Terry's Song." And I am wondering -- worrying -- about the beauty of the body, about the strange glory of the personality, of the heart that cries out it's me, this time and this only! , and how maybe we pretend it doesn't matter at all because it's so damned beautiful what even would we do? It's like what Levinas said -- how you have an ethical obligation to anything with a face. Calling out to you with its ipseity. This one time, and me alone. What even would we do? Put our hands up in the air a lot more often. Sit down on the ground and cry.
I am thinking about the beauty of the body, and what gets done with it. I am haunted by the shape and coolness of my dog's feet; the way the fur curls around her elbows. The ears, the positions of the ears, the looks of her eye, the brush-flare of her tail. What happens to this? What is it for?
Mostly I am thinking of how true is that line from Fleetfoxes, in the song "Tiger Mountain Peasant Song":
Dear Shadow alive and well
How can the body burn?
I suppose these are the kind of lessons -- if they are to be made into lessons -- to which one must always return. We're always brought back; vague laundry-cycle of the spirit. And maybe it's like alchemy. Maybe it's like a key. And this cycle, these sufferings, these questions now, will open up some other thing in the future -- equal parts exciting and miserable.
I certainly haven't learned it yet. My father definitely said to me, on the ride back from the vet, It's the way life works. It's part of the cycle. You have to get used to it. And I definitely said, for right now, There's no way I'm comfortable with that.
But if you're the type who prays, or the type who scoffs at prayers, please send out a prayer for my dog. Her name is Chloe, and she is the best possible dog in the world, and is longsuffering, beautiful, tragic, forebearing, wise, and somewhere deep-down-inside, from wherever-her-unknown-beginnings, sad. And she is a wonderful dog. Nice as anything. Beautiful sleek-noble. And patient. She makes me feel like every thought we have with love or hate in it matters. Reigsters. She makes me wonder about all the time I spent pacing around, not being a being of love. She was there for me when I came back; when I was older. When I remembered that I had a dog. And she has this way of forgiving without forgetting. Or, both, but -- reminding us that everything matters. That everything leaves a trace. That we are bound up together, somehow. It's important to remember these things; and I don't know why it's this way or how anybody ever rigged it so, but we sometimes learn these things better from the critters who can't talk so well. Because talking ain't what it's ultimately about, I figure. And she is always teaching me all of the best true things, without ever opening her mouth.
So thank you for DOGS; and thank you for reflection; and please let my old fond dog-of-my-heart get better.
Amen.