azureastra7

There is a foreign film by that name and quite a lovely lil flick it is.  This is not about that. As the title say's it is about "MY" life as a dog. In the middle '50's, two lives came into being. It was a random process of which I am told that I was the beneficiary. That was the statement of those that thought that because I was born the male human being that I was the more fortunate as that the other was both a female and a dog. They believed that I am sure. I have always wished that I were equally sure that they were right. In the Summer of Eisenhower's Presidency, we were both born. I breathed air and was cut from my birth mother in a place of Lights, Alcohol and Efficiency.  I was tested, washed, swaddled and Isolated in a box.  The other was squeezed out in a dim , warm place, licked clean and added to a pile of siblings and suckled. Fortunate Me. As I grew into mobility and began to explore the limits of my world with an expanding consciousness, I had no limits (my mother had 6 other sons and was exhausted.) It was random chance that led me into a situation that should have killed me at the age of 5.  I infringed on a males territory in the kennel  and he took me to task. His discipline would not have killed a puppy. But we are of softer stuff. I can't tell you of the chaos that ensued. I was bowled over by a killer. as I lay on my back I began to squeal in fear. (I know now that he was just disciplining a pup.) But suddenly there was a monster standing over me.  All of her muscles were rigid, teeth were bared to the gums and she was ready to dance. HomeBoy gets an attack of common sense and backs down with a few whimpers and his tail twixt his legs. The puppy that was born the same time as  me is a mature dog whereas I'm still a puppy. I remember starting to get up and the same monster that saved me suddenly turns on me. Ivory fangs snap at my face while snarls and growls thunder in my ears. Squealing in fear I curl into  fetal position and squall. I'm 5. I am  curled tight into a ball, I have no Idea what I am waiting for. Nothing happens. I peek through my arms and see the Monster, with with big brown eyes, wet nose and floppy ears looking at me I began to uncurl and there is a warning growl from my"Saviour".  I remember whimpering in fear. Without deliberation, She leans in and begins to lick my face. Later, my father told me that her name was "CoCo" That did not matter. She was "Mammadog and she taught me everything I needed to know.

Respect for structure.
It is always possible to go to the head of the pack.
Always care for children.
ALWAYS SNIFF SOMETHING INTERESTING.

Yeah? So what?  AIN'T NO GOD! AIN'T NO JESUS! Yeah, Okay and Okay. SO WHAT?  There is Christmas. I am hip deep and sinking in Christmas. I work retail and I know the bare bones economy of the retail end of  Xmas. But all of us that are engaged in earning a living wage and trying to pump out material goods to people that are trying to give STUFF to people and those that are trying to GIVE BACK stuff to people are missing something very important. The occasion is not about STUFF!   YOU-STUPID- BITCH! What is happening here is that your  Every-Day- Bear-In-The-Street has a reason to be NICE to each other.  It is this one time of year where we are least likely to kill each other and do something for nothing. This is the one time of the year when we are inclined to do charity to the unfortunate, assistance to the challenged, and good will to the rest of us. AIN'T NO SANTA Claus? Bull -Shit!  WE are each each and everyone Santa. WE just have to decide what we want to give.


Merry Christmas and may the Universe bless you with what you need

I did a thread  last year about being able to smell Halloween.  I was seriously dismayed by the number of people that took the issue so literally that they were talking about SMOG where they were. and how they could not smell anything except the physical . They were not at all able to contact the ephemeral and childlike part of the holiday. Despite of the beating I took last year. I still can smell it  the autumn air. There is  the bland smell of pumpkin guts and the candle heated  smell of their rinds  as they bake from the inside. Candy corn puts a sweet breeze in the air that is the breath of the last gasp of that which makes us children with our universe so broad that we are able to accept those, "Adult  Things" that are contrary to  common sense.

I will be an Adult when I must .

But please. Let me be a child as long as I may. Just, One more time.

My last(first)journal post was about me being full of me. Things change very swiftly in the course of a year or so. Time has the damnedest habit of drawing you down a river that you're barely aware of until it runs you up on a sandbar of... Well, Mortal awareness I guess. 10 years ago I adopted a little black and white cat. A funny,grumpy kitty that hated to be picked up, but demanded to be petted. She would reach out and grab my hand and pull it toward her ears. Bowing her head to make sure that I scratched in all of the correct places. She, like any other kind of child, would get a wild hair once in a while and from it brought home Babies. She developed from harum-scarum into an indulgent, then responsible parent. Filling her duties to teach her kits what they needed to know to be properly behaved and socially integrated. Currents wafted her (and I) forward into her matronage and then her seniority. Tonight, She left the river and time no longer moves her from her place in the sun. The salt from my loss will not affect the river at all. Floating in the flow, becoming worn increasingly more smooth, I can hope that when I leave the river for my own place in the sun that it will be with these little lives that have made my own journey down to the sea more bearable. Until then, The other little lives that accompany me are pulling my hand from here to the task of scratching in correct places.

Most journal entries are mundane, tedious, and dull. Mine would be no exception, if I were to harrow you with the day to day happenstance of my daily round as most of what actually happens to me IS mundane, tedious and dull. However, since earliest memory, I have been hagridden by this damnable urge to create. This insidious itch that refuses to let me subside into plebeian domestication and drives me into the company of Artists, Free-Thinkers, Poets and Others that believe that they can change reality with the sculptors tool, pen, pigment, and prose. In my youth, a pocketknife and a piece of wood were all that was necessary to fuel that belief that a squirrel would leap fully formed from my hands and scamper to the roof beam of my house. The next time it would be a fishing bait that would cause my father to say, "MY BOY made this! Ain't it fine?" Its all there in that need to take the world and make it "More", to create.
One tool and medium have given way to another, then another after that. This time it is pencil and paper.
The time before that was (Get Ready) a book. (Run!Run!) I will set you up about it on my next entry.