All Things Familar

I walked my dog today. It is October and as standard for this time, the leaves are falling and effusive people are talking about the color and shade outside. My dog and I walked one block outside: the paved streets of a more-country-than-suburban neighborhood; the large and gracious trees and their gifts of leaves; a consummate wind that touches everything at once; the political signs of hope, change and redundancy. It all looks familiar. So when I looked out the window, I thought of how beautiful everything was and how many thousands of times more I would see this exact picture. My dog, nervous and expectant after having his leash put on, ran out the door and waited by the electric fence line as I prepared for the cold.

In the open the cold is abrasive. All the dead leaves look fresh amongst the earth. I have to carry my dog across the fence line because he can’t understand that a human contraption dictates where he goes, much less that I changed his collar for a leash. A car passes, a man-made wind adds to the incessant displacement of leaves, and we walk out of the driveway to begin our route.

He waits, wags his tail, and looks but there isn’t any understanding in his mind. We turn onto South Ten Eyck and the road elongates. I can see for miles in this one street. There are thousands of leaves around that seem to call us to travel in the bright sympathetic Sun. But we, my dog and I, know that nature cannot supplant real affections. We ignore the Sun’s warmth as today it is clouded by thousands of miles of cold nebula. On my route I pull my dog as he pulls back. He runs sideways and as far into lawns as he can before I rein him in. We pass houses and wind and more leaves, all with distinct familiarity.

We turn left. My dog finally pulls to the side of the road and poops. As he does this, he shakes and looks pathetically small. This was the point of this walk. If he were not an animal and did not have certain needs then we would not have gone outside. If domesticated animals did not have to poop, humanity would encase them in walls, indefinitely. Humanity? It is the tool that tries to organize everything but cannot even organize itself. What is the value of this animal? Can it think one up and write one next to nature’s books of laws? My dog is known as it; like a thing that is bought and sold; like slavery; like humanity’s poor track-record. All of mankind believes in a religion of predestination except in a way that we think we are better than everything. As I watch my dog, I cannot think it reasonable for me to deprive him of his nature or that I am better than him. He lives inside, cold and alone, above the frailty of self-pity. With freewill I fall into innumerable pieces for no apparent reason everyday. And at this side of the road, where he shakes and is now peeing – scared as if some unseen hand will slap him as punishment – and watching around him, I look into his face and see all things familiar.

We take another left onto Linklane. My dog, mine, is happy to be leashed and to have his direction dictated in the open air, instead of in a fabricated home. His life is within walls made by his master. But he doesn’t actually have a master. He has walls and leashes and strings, as if a puppet who is ordered to perform in front of no audience for the rest of his life. I travel on whim: on a bight windy morning suitable for chores and freewill. I do what I please with only a few strings for an audience of parents, teachers and friends who all do what they please with similar strings attached. My dog (it), fully conscious and alive, sits on the couch with a leash in his mouth and waits to go on this familiar adventure one more time. Outside effusive people walk and talk with freewill amongst the familiar leaves, streets and sky. Inside my dog focuses hard, trying to figure out why everything seems so familiar.

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Merriam-Webster. Main Entry: Familiar
3: a spirit often embodied in an animal and held to attend and serve or guard a person
4 a: one who is well acquainted with something b: one who frequents a place
"familiar." Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. 2008.

Merriam-Webster Online. 23 October 2008