Puppies on the Table
There are many reasons to love a small dog, not least of which is how you can put her on the table and watch to see what she’ll do next. Penny and I drove back out to the Street Fair last weekend, which meant a stop for a date shake in the morning. I would normally prefer to have a date shake after lunch or dinner, but that means running the risk of not getting back to Hadley’s before they close. I’m funny that way. I don’t like to have desert before the meal, or in the morning. I’ll eat a double chocolate muffin for breakfast, but not cake. Any kind of meat is for lunch or dinner, unless we’re talking about bacon or breakfast sausage. And cheese? I can’t stand it! On anything except pizza. Which is generally half Canadian bacon and pineapple, the other half pepperoni, mushrooms, and garlic. I enjoy my routines, doing certain things over and over, expecting consistent results.
I photographed Joe at the Street Fair a few weeks prior to this. He’s going through some post-Covid agony, including depression and weird electrical impulses inside his head that go on for several minutes. The doctors don’t know what it is, or how to stop it. That’s the problem with doctors. As smart and compassionate as they are, they’re dealing with mysteries beyond human comprehension. Things that, no matter how much we progress in our knowledge and technology, will forever remain beyond our control. There will always be horrific, incomprehensible illnesses that strike us down or leave us in a chronic state of pain and discomfort. The doctors can’t help, and time might not heal the wounds. What are we to do?
In the face of seemingly insurmountable pain, each of us has some sort of coping mechanism. Sometimes, it seems there’s no way to deal with all the troubles raining down on us. I could see it in Joe’s eyes, and all I could do was tell him I’d pray for him, which is all he asked for. Maybe there’s a doctor somewhere who knows what to do about electrical impulses in your head. Maybe they’ll go away as mysteriously as they appeared. Maybe Joe will live with these episodes and manage not to despair.
When you watch a puppy on the table, she takes you out of yourself. The world melts away into pure bliss, where doing the same thing over and over again might lead to different results. Or maybe just sitting, doing nothing, expecting nothing, wanting nothing. Was there something on your mind? Is it gone now?
