The Air Up There
To not be afraid so much. It is amazing, probably, the parallels between lives that could be drawn by fear and shame and guilt and all of those nasty little things hiding someplace down deep and dark, the parallels that we will never see nor admit to for fear of being exposed for the imperfect human beings that we are. Lives that will remain solitary and resolute. I will remember more readily not to mark the progress made by the number of boulders moved.
To be honest more quickly, even when you know that the advice which has been solicited is not really wanted. A no where a yes once lived without so much even as a second thought. An end to auto-pilot.
A goal is arrived at by a series of small steps. Anne and I sat on varnished oak under the late afternoon Athens sun streaming through floor to ceiling ballet studio windows when Shoshana said (how could I have ever taken anything from a woman with a name that preposterous?) sometimes you have to go down in order to go up.
It's late and he presses his nose into my sleeve, little paws grasping tugging holding. I wonder sometimes, especially when his eyes are closed and those little legs are working, do Tuna and Rex talk to him? Maybe he's seen Rugby. Sometimes he barks and looks and there's nothing there but the feeling of a friend and fuck if it's not too much to think about the possibility of seeing them again. If I could choose ten other people to ride out the rest of this existence with, half of them would be dogs. About a week after we lost Rex I had this dream about a tall office type building in the downtown area of a beautiful city. I didn't know why I was trying to get in there but I was pressing the buzzer like my life depended on it. They came out, both of them, and without speaking let me know that I couldn't come in because the place wasn't for me and that they had limited time but that they were OK and together and that they loved me. And I scritched their ears and rolled around on the ground with them and I woke up with tears on my face but knowing that my friend was there, just waiting. Just, to be the human who can live up to that. That they will hold the gate open when I get there.
To be honest more quickly, even when you know that the advice which has been solicited is not really wanted. A no where a yes once lived without so much even as a second thought. An end to auto-pilot.
A goal is arrived at by a series of small steps. Anne and I sat on varnished oak under the late afternoon Athens sun streaming through floor to ceiling ballet studio windows when Shoshana said (how could I have ever taken anything from a woman with a name that preposterous?) sometimes you have to go down in order to go up.
It's late and he presses his nose into my sleeve, little paws grasping tugging holding. I wonder sometimes, especially when his eyes are closed and those little legs are working, do Tuna and Rex talk to him? Maybe he's seen Rugby. Sometimes he barks and looks and there's nothing there but the feeling of a friend and fuck if it's not too much to think about the possibility of seeing them again. If I could choose ten other people to ride out the rest of this existence with, half of them would be dogs. About a week after we lost Rex I had this dream about a tall office type building in the downtown area of a beautiful city. I didn't know why I was trying to get in there but I was pressing the buzzer like my life depended on it. They came out, both of them, and without speaking let me know that I couldn't come in because the place wasn't for me and that they had limited time but that they were OK and together and that they loved me. And I scritched their ears and rolled around on the ground with them and I woke up with tears on my face but knowing that my friend was there, just waiting. Just, to be the human who can live up to that. That they will hold the gate open when I get there.
