A Moment

The last day of the year, after returning home from morning pickleball that had started in subfreezing weather, the old man goes out back, where the dog signifies that her ears need scratching. Bare feet on the cool concrete patio, body pleasantly fatigued, he sits in the sun and obliges. “Old man gets to pet old dog,” he says to her, then corrects himself: “That’s right, you’re probably not as old as I, but we both sure like chasing a ball around.” He does the math. A friend of his wife’s adopted the dog, years ago, age unknown, then when the friend fell ill in 2019, the dog came to live with them. If the dog is 8 or 9, that’s...

For countless months of meditation, countless monks have contemplated the koan, “Does a dog have Buddha nature?” He doesn’t ask. Those who know, do not speak, and those who claim to know are clueless. She looks at him with those huge, soft brown eyes that speak so clearly he sometimes imagines she might suddenly shed her dogness and explain everything.

The dog knows what she needs to know. She has people who love her, food when she’s hungry, and daily opportunities to run around getting the news through her nose. A soft bed and the occasional squeaky toy to chase and chew, and life’s complete.

The old man considers Whitman’s line about turning and living awhile with the animals, “they are so placid and self-contain’d; not one kneels to another, or to others of his kind that lived thousands of years ago.” Possibly Whitman didn’t hang with dogs much. While kneeling would be physically challenging, they do concede their secondary status to the pack leader. Still, dogs do not cheat on contracts, or elect fraudulent leaders.

“How’s my favorite dog ever?” he hears himself ask. He falls silent, recalling Nick, the black mongrel he raised from a puppy, whose home for his first three months was a big green school bus that moved a few hundred miles every few days. If he’d been a witch, Nick would have been his familiar, they were so close for so long. “I wish you could have known Nick,” he tells her.

Love and Trust

She is really his wife’s dog. He and the dog both figure his wife hung the moon, and everyone else aspires to second-place. But he has hands for throwing a ball, massaging her neck, and scratching those ears.

He would wish her Happy New Year, but for her there is no year, new or old. No seconds, minutes, hours. Only the now. She has mastered Dogen’s wisdom, that each moment is everything. Later they will walk in the graveyard, listening to the ravens.

Birds, puffed up against the cold, flutter around the feeders his wife keeps full. Cold weather and the trees’ bare limbs seem to inspire in them an especially desperate hunger. Basking in morning sun, the gargoyle he bought in a secondhand shop in Oakland and Georjeanna Feltha’s marvelous sculpture, Sheba, watch silently.

He recalls from his youth two dogs playing on a fourth-story roof in Manhattan. Sebastian fell to the street. Alfie looked down at the body, then upward. (Watching Seb’s spirit rise?)

Tomorrow morning, 1 January, the old man will rise before the sun, write, then play ball. Afterward, in the garden, he will pet the dog and speak nonsense to her.

                                                           - 30 -

 [The above column appeared this morning, Sunday, 3 January 2021, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on on the newspaper's website and on KRWG's website. A related radio commentary will air during the week on KRWG (90.7) and KTAL-LP. (101.5 – http://www.lccommunityradio.org/), and will be available on demand on KRWG’s site. The dog has refused to read it.]

[ Sheba is the creation of local artist Georjeanna Feltha. ]

 [all images © PeterGoodman]

 

Sheba