Unless we were very saintly children (which I was most decidedly NOT), we all remember our own particular variation of "The dog ate my homework." And so it is here. Over a year ago, and quite unexpectedly, we added a puppy to our household, and I can state with some certainty that "The puppy ate this blog."
She has been, and continues to be at the age of 22 months, a joy and a delight. We named her "Jiva," which is the Sanskrit word for the Elemental Life Force [जीव], of which she is possessed in abundance. (In her early days, some people mis-heard her name and, having seen her in action, thought we had named her "Shiva," the Deity also called "The Destroyer" in the Hindu tradition.) As our own grasp on the elemental life force seems to be a bit feeble at the moment, she has been just the tonic we have needed. But I regret that she has been such an effective excuse for months of inattention to my writing.
The other regretful thing that has effectively stopped me writing has been the incessant pounding of the 2016 political campaign and its aftermath, which seems to have begun sometime back in the Jurassic Period. This is no place to air my particular political proclivities. But as the culmination of a trend toward the diminishment of civility (and even to the diminishment of any conviction that civility is a virtue), the presidential campaign absorbed a great deal of my mental and emotional energy.
As a result, I decided to take a 'media sabbatical,' which lasted longer than I expected.
But puppies -- now even mostly grown-up puppies -- are good for the soul, and after this unexpected hiatus I have returned to this forum.
The other things that puppies are good for is nursing.
In November I fell on the ice on our front steps early in the morning and broke my leg in three places. Jiva barked and barked from inside the house, and The Spouse repeatedly told her to 'Shut up' and went back to sleep. After 40 minutes, someone on a neighboring street heard me calling and came to my rescue. The Spouse felt (and continues to feel) terrible.
All is (mainly) mended now, but I realized in the healing process how necessary a dog is to my general well-being.
Sometime in the winter someone gave me a copy of Mary Oliver's Dog Songs (Penguin, 2013). It was a healing gift -- and I had so many healing gifts last winter as I recovered -- and since then I've been giving it to everyone with very little excuse.
So, in honor of puppies, and of the Bright Succession of our old dogs now gone to their eternal rest, I finish with Oliver's hymn to her dog Luke:
LUKE
I had a dog
who loved flowers.
Briskly she went
through the fields,
yet paused
for the honeysuckle
or the rose,
her dark head
and her wet nose
touching
the face
of every one
with its petals
of silk,
with its fragrance
rising
into the air
where the bees,
their bodies
heavy with pollen,
hovered—
and easily
she adored
every blossom,
not in the serious,
careful way
that we choose
this blossom or that blossom—
the way we praise or don’t praise—
the way we love
or don’t love—
but the way
we long to be—
that happy
in the heaven of earth—
that wild, that loving.
She has been, and continues to be at the age of 22 months, a joy and a delight. We named her "Jiva," which is the Sanskrit word for the Elemental Life Force [जीव], of which she is possessed in abundance. (In her early days, some people mis-heard her name and, having seen her in action, thought we had named her "Shiva," the Deity also called "The Destroyer" in the Hindu tradition.) As our own grasp on the elemental life force seems to be a bit feeble at the moment, she has been just the tonic we have needed. But I regret that she has been such an effective excuse for months of inattention to my writing.
The other regretful thing that has effectively stopped me writing has been the incessant pounding of the 2016 political campaign and its aftermath, which seems to have begun sometime back in the Jurassic Period. This is no place to air my particular political proclivities. But as the culmination of a trend toward the diminishment of civility (and even to the diminishment of any conviction that civility is a virtue), the presidential campaign absorbed a great deal of my mental and emotional energy.
As a result, I decided to take a 'media sabbatical,' which lasted longer than I expected.
But puppies -- now even mostly grown-up puppies -- are good for the soul, and after this unexpected hiatus I have returned to this forum.
The other things that puppies are good for is nursing.
In November I fell on the ice on our front steps early in the morning and broke my leg in three places. Jiva barked and barked from inside the house, and The Spouse repeatedly told her to 'Shut up' and went back to sleep. After 40 minutes, someone on a neighboring street heard me calling and came to my rescue. The Spouse felt (and continues to feel) terrible.
All is (mainly) mended now, but I realized in the healing process how necessary a dog is to my general well-being.
Sometime in the winter someone gave me a copy of Mary Oliver's Dog Songs (Penguin, 2013). It was a healing gift -- and I had so many healing gifts last winter as I recovered -- and since then I've been giving it to everyone with very little excuse.
So, in honor of puppies, and of the Bright Succession of our old dogs now gone to their eternal rest, I finish with Oliver's hymn to her dog Luke:
LUKE
I had a dog
who loved flowers.
Briskly she went
through the fields,
yet paused
for the honeysuckle
or the rose,
her dark head
and her wet nose
touching
the face
of every one
with its petals
of silk,
with its fragrance
rising
into the air
where the bees,
their bodies
heavy with pollen,
hovered—
and easily
she adored
every blossom,
not in the serious,
careful way
that we choose
this blossom or that blossom—
the way we praise or don’t praise—
the way we love
or don’t love—
but the way
we long to be—
that happy
in the heaven of earth—
that wild, that loving.
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