Sorting through our options

Allowing Boss to scratch my tummy, we sort through the final trickle of words he will seek to define for his book project. We are quietly rejecting things that sound too pretentious or academic or both. Boss has been unusually sad and reflective the past few days because, he explained, he had read a short, woeful novel about the last days of one of his favorite composers, MR. An amazing man, Sally, Boss tells me. Gifted beyond measure, cut down by a freak accident when barely in his 60s. I nod in recognition. Sometimes, when Boss plays his music, I can sense what Boss admires about him, the seeming simplicity set forth in an unconventional tonality that suggests MR may have had a dog or two in his life. Dogs do hear things differently. I also see Boss truly reaching out to make this project have much of himself in it, a gift as it were to persons he knew, knows now, and is yet to know. Nice, when you come to think of it.

All in a Day's Work

Boss has given me one of my favorite snacks, a lamb shank bone. Dogs particularly and cats at times are not known for exchanging tangible things. Being pack animals, we exchange presence and status rather than artifacts. We express ourselves by giving presence, by basking in the sense of pack. Boss has told me on numerous occasions that one of his favorite visions of me is of me, at somewhat of a distance from him, running toward him. He first noticed and recorded this impression some time back, when he began taking me with him to teach down below at USC. We were separated and I was hanging out with ENK, who then pointed him out to me, approaching from a distant building. I ran to greet him. He stood, arms outstretched, awaiting me, somehow in that gesture even taller than he is now. Over the years, we have reenacted this ritual many times, celebrating the sense of joining that is pack. Often, at night, when I have settled in on or near my bed and he in his, he will tell me how comforting it is to see me where I am. Groggy with settled-in sleep, I am aware of his voice. I understand from his tone that he has learned a thing or two about being a pack. We are a relatively small pack, but we get the work done.

Burying Almond Croissants

Boss is trying to juggle too many things at once.
The immediate effect of this is a diminution of tummy rubs.
It is one thing for him to become fantastically involved in a project, such as the book he's been working on, where he goes all abstracted and lost in what he calls nuances, pausing from time to time to try out a line or paragraph on me. And pause, he does, asking me for my reaction. But this is different.
I am working to get at the heart of it.

It is not easy. Things with dogs and people tend toward greater fucking complexity as age visits them. Dogs are famously said to be living in the now and if not living in the now, napping contentedly until the next now arrives, say Boss wanting a walk or a coffee or one of those impulsive trips to Chaucer's Books in the Loreto Plaza (which also has a Gelson's Market, which often reminds Boss to go hunting therein for my favorite snacks of duck, beef, and chicken jerky). I'll give Boss this, when he is not in the now, he is in the What If, the place he projects himself to write things. The things we have in common start, of course, with our bond; we are a pack and there is that pack interconnectedness that transcends our individuality to the place where we each through our pack-ness understand the individuality of the other. With the visitations of age and experience, lines are often blurred. I, for instance, have a wired-in instinct to bury things. Boss frequently gives me pieces of almond croissant to bury. Sometimes, looking for a place to bury the piece of croissant, I think to eat it instead, which is a bafflement to me and to Boss. Sometimes, when hanging out and Boss is swirling the dregs of his coffee, we silently marvel together at the complexity of things.

I think Boss is working on some new complexity. I am working to get at the heart of it so that I can help him decide where to dig.

Definitions

There are two kinds of smarts, street and cultural.

I have street smarts, which is to say wired in or, as Boss would put it, instinctive.

Boss has, as I would put it, cultural. He has some wired-in stuff, of course, but most of what he gets comes from reading, interacting with other humans, and experience. While I have on occasion seen him sniff when entering a place, I'm glad he has me to sniff for him and let him know something about the surrounding. People need dogs. Boss needs me. There are some people who need Boss, to balance out the equation. His students and clients. Of course his friends. Notably, among these is C. and W. and the Englishman, F., and that guy up at Westmont, C., whom the Boss first met at the Xanadu Coffee Shop.

Lately, Boss has been working furiously on a long, long project involving definitions. I was around when the idea for it began percolating. Students and clients began asking him questions about terms and ways that were appropriate for writing things, particularly for telling stories. He has been clarifying, providing definitions that a dog could follow as well as definitions a writer could understand (if the writer had a dog). I think this is all rather nice, particularly since somehow Boss managed to lose or otherwise let get away from him a sizable draft of the work. By my count, he has been carefully redoing the work since November of last year.

He has not, however, sought to define the word "change." You are surprised that a dog would know about quotation marks, I can see that, but from my years of listening to his classes and editorial discussions, I know a thing or two about quotation marks. I know that dogs do not need them, but humans do. If you're going to be around humans, you'd better get used to quotation marks.

Back to change.

We all do it. We all progress (I learned that word from Boss). Sometimes he says, "Sally, shall we progress to bed?" or "Sally, shall we progress to our walk?" Occasionally, when he is in a mood, he will say, "Sally, can we progress to the car and leave the sniffing for gophers to another time?") We move from place to place, we become more familiar with things, we adopt behaviors and their effects. Those of us who are dogs particularly enjoy a settled routine where we can spread out, become part of the surrounding and take in the joys of the surrounding. Some people--but never a dog--would call that approach taking things for granted. We do not take for granted. Our behavior is based on how much we have absorbed. This is our growth. We move into things and we become them.

This is largely what the Boss tries to get in his work and in his attempts at teaching others who want to do the kinds of work he does. This is what I do with Boss.

There is never enough time, and things have their own way of growing, sometimes away from us, sometimes even closer to us. Boss tries on occasion to tell me things about his regard for me, and they are good to hear. But my behavior is already based on my understanding of them, and I know of them as I know to herd animals and humans, and I know of them as I know I will sometimes find myself in the midst of some response, back into the present moment and doing.

We are all of us, humans too, growing toward places we have set our hearts upon. Being is a growing. We grow as long as there is being. Life without Boss is unthinkable and so I will stop thinking because that would get in the way of my being.

P.S. Epstein cannot be all that poorly off. He left some of his kibble uneaten, but to show him the order of things around here, I have eaten it.

Hospitals Suck

It is said of us--by humans, I might add--that we are short on long-term memory, interested only in such things as walks, treats, and such stratagems as will give our people status among their friends. As in, What a well-mannered dog. Or, worse, I wish my dog could do that trick!

Even though it was three and a quarter years ago, I remember when Boss was in a hospital, away from his job, away from me.

Now it is my turn and although the situation is reversed, I am away from my job and from Boss. There was something said about an IV drip to ease the pain and get me out of shock, which in a way reminds me of the story Boss told me on the occasion when an artist named Zoe Strauss didn't get a Guggenheim grant she'd applied for. Well told. In fact, fuck shock, hospitals, and IV drips. Fuck not being able to work, or have any sense of getting things done.

Some dogs apparently like this kind of life, the lay-about life. There was a dog at Peet's the other day who seemed to have a handle on things. Called itself a Therapy Dog. Goes around to hospitals and rehab centers, inspiring people to get off their sorry ass and out into the weather, where there are things to be sniffed, plans to be made.

I don't mind the occasional wait for Boss in his car, which he also refers to as my office. Mostly I go to class and faculty meetings with him and we work the writers together, so the occasional wait isn't too bad.

Waiting in a hospital, on the other hand,is simply against Nature. Dogs were not meant to wait in hospitals. Dogs are meant to get on with it, to get the job articulated, to get the job done.

Of all the places in the world to be, a hospital on the lower end of Milpas, even if it is across the street from The Habit, which does a pretty good burger, is no place for a dog. No place at all.

They have got me fucking drowsy, which may be from the meds, or it may be the result of this being one boring place. When I get a nap, I'm going to look for a way out of this. I think the term is AMA, against medical advice. Being a good patient is not in my job description. I am a dog. That is my job description.