The Significance of Death, Part I

I've tried changing my route. Going "to" seems to be worse than "from" which is at the end of the day when you might conjecture it would be worse. Changing the route seems to be the poultry way out in some sick way of thinking (often a way that I think). I chide myself that I should force myself to absorb the nastiness of the "caninus inocentus" incident in all its gory splendor. To rub each and every ounce of its disgust into my pores and let it percolate through so I can blend all of the implications into my world vision. Translate that unhappy moment into some sort of activism and action and development into a "better" person.

Conversely, it is just perverse that I strangle myself on the grotesquerie of it instead accepting my role as comforter, allowing the progrees of nature to be my solace and to know that I was instrumental in the gentle passing of a life. My focus and image should be of the transcendant light of transit and the transformation of being, the devastating gift of nature that runs both hot and cold. My place in the universe, and the universal flow. My place just there and then.

This is a struggle not just about the death of a small creature, but a physical representation of the signs of our times and of the forecasts of our futures. A time to sit on the haunches and think and chew the cud and smoke the pipe and maybe even trip the hallucinogen just to get a glimpse of the other inner side.

Helpless...

Horrible and revealing this morning on my way to work. Helpless, as that small puppy gaily flounced out into the road under that woman's tires. She heedlessly carried on - no brake light, no slowing, no acknowledgement at all. He wasn't mangled, but he wasn't unhurt. Grabbing the indian blanket that I keep in Colonel Plum for just such emergencies, I rushed to his side there in the street. He was very stunned, but I could see by the whiteness of his gums that he was already in shock. No outward signs of injury, but my fears ran deep that he would not be with me long.

Luckily a police officer happened by and waved off traffic as I tried to comfort the little pup. He sported a nice leather collar but no tags. His confusion subsided and I could tell that he was slipping away as his breathing shallowed. I cried there in the street in the humid morning, talking him through his last moments. The girl who hit him came back to justify her own indecency, and assuage her own ignorance. I waved her off. My little stranger began to gulp for air and I stroked him gently - it wouldn't be long now.

His blood was brilliant red, arterial and sparkling on the pavement - a testament to his short life. He took his last breaths and I gently lifted him to the curb. I asked the officer if he would look for the owners. They must live nearby. He seemed disaffected and distant, not wanting to even participate or offer the slightest consolation.

The welter of emotions will wait for another post, but I suffice it to comment that death is not nearly so dismal as indifference.