and your love is ferried here on a black dog, black turning eyes...
Thursday night, my last night at Warren Wilson, I ended up talking and dancing with about every person in the creative writing department who I can actually be bothered to both respect and like down in Rex and Ilinca's room. We were drinking noxious cocktails that looked like they ought to be sizzling in beakers in some B-movie mad scientist's lab, so I am not totally sure how this particular segue happened, but I ended up having an extremely long conversation with just Rex, because it was 1 AM and everyone else had either left or fallen asleep. (Lightweights.) Anyway, after a lot of heavy confessiontime! I-wouldn't-be-telling-you-this-if-I-were-sober stuff that does not need to be recapped here, we ended up talking about saints, and sort of having saints that we like or consider "ours" even though neither of us is religious. He's into Saint Joan (of Arc, naturally. She is cool). Me? I like Saint Christopher. I was reminded of him when I read this book finally, post- finals. He's the patron of epileptics and travelers and, oddly, bookbinders (among like five zillion other things). He protects against lightning strikes and drowning and seizures and storms. Water and electricity. I think the main reason I like him, though, is that he's often depicted with the head of a dog. According to our old friend Professor Wikipedia:
The German bishop and poet Walter of Speyer portrayed St. Christopher as a giant of a cynocephalic species in the land of the Chananeans (the "canines" of Canaan in the New Testament) who ate human flesh and barked. Eventually, Christopher met the Christ child, regretted his former behavior, and received baptism.
Obviously, that is awesome. In my weird little myth-soaked brain, I identify him with psychopomps, which are often dogs or dog-shaped things; I can imagine* a being that guides you into the afterlife or carries you across the Styx being a dog. A giant black swimming dog, like my aunt and uncle's dog, and you ride on its back with your hands tangled in its long, coarse fur.
* When you are practicing (fall on the floor let the light take you go under don't fight it don't breathe don't breathe let it carry you away let it carry you)-- when I was a child and I wasn't scared and I practiced all the time-- I imagine the teeth of a dog pulling gently at neck and shirt collar, pulling the body back to life and it wasn't serious, see, it was never anything serious your daughter is going to be fine, ma'am. That's my own addition to the mythology-- I figure if psychopomps can lead a person into death, they can also protect her from it. Or maybe it'd be the other way around.