A Golden Retriever is holding a tennis ball in her mouth as she sits in the back of a car. At a red light she sticks her head out and the passengers in neighboring cars all laugh and point. The light turns green. The dog drops the ball. The car proceeds down the street. Five blocks later at another red light the dog is still hanging her head out of the window, looking down at where she dropped the ball. I find this so poignant. The ball is way gone yet she is staring at the ground where it should still be sitting. Certain it will reappear at any moment. But it won't. She can't reason that it's way back there. The poignancy? Dogs never look back? They live in the moment? The have no expectations? All of the above? Thing is, there's another tennis ball down the street, around the corner or under the couch at home. And when she finds it, all will be well with her. It's that simple. Not that all tennis balls are alike, just that there are many and, like pennies on the sidewalk, there will always be another one. Not the same one, but another one.
2 comments:
My wife explained the phenomenon to me. She'd been mopping up water that our two dogs had been slopping on the kitchen floor from their water bowl until she ordered them outside. They frazzled her nerves by repeatedly not acting human as they were supposed to. Doing things like shredding the screen door with their nails, knocking down old lady visitors by leaning on them, poking people in the crotch. "Dogs don't care," she said, forcefully capitalizing "CARE." And in fact they don't. A golden retriever will drop a tennis ball out of a moving care window and continue to stare at the long gone spot five miles down the road. The are not expecting it to reappear. They are not thinking, "Wow, that was a soul satifying experience." They simply don't care. Just look at the idiotic smile a golden retriever has on its face most of time. It is not hopeful or expectant. It is not a sort of philosophical che sera sera kind of resignation. It is, "I am switched off and life is good."
"I am switched off and life is good." Do they even have that thought? Isn't every thought, if they can be called that, so fleeting and timeless that nary a brain cell is activated? I watch a bee circle in front of my dog's snout and think the bee's the wise one here. We met a Boston terrier this morning whose Edward G. Robinson face was so lifelike, I almost offered him a cigar. The only thing he was interested in was my dog's butt.
Post a Comment