March 25, 2006

This morning I took the dog out and walked by the canal.

At the park it was a parade of babies, all walkers, who first stared at my dog and then chased her in clumbsy little steps. This is a real change from when Lola was a young dog and used toddlers as pylons in her own self-created obstacle course.

She makes a good old dog does Lola.

It's the first real day of spring here, and the grass was a dead brown pelt over thick mud. There were seagulls standing gingerly on the wet ice, which didn't crack so much as grow big dark holes that increased until only water shone by the locks.

I thought of this metaphor for life in which people are in the same position as those seagulls. Satisfaction with life being like fragile ice, and despair the cold brown water always hiding underneath. Unlike birds, we don't stand lightly and we don't have wings with which to get away. We land heavily on our contendedness, expecting it to bear all sorts of stresses and expectations. Than we are surprised when fissuresa appear, or a hole grows steadily in our peripheral vision, seemingly un-related to anything we've done to deserve it, but nevertheless totally deadly to our sense of well-being.

I want to learn to be like a bird on my own life. But it's hard not to stand heavily on the people and the hopes I care about the most.