Intimations of muttality (original) (raw)
footpad exquisitely bittersweet
August 6 2008, 19:57
Taking a break from the work of the day, listening to fin de décennie rock,
Far away, away, Fading distant lights Leaving us all behind, Lost in a changing world And you know, That these are the days of our lives; Remember.
lying on my floor, stroking Mischa. He rolls onto his back, stretching out luxuriously and pressing his hind paw up against my chest while I run my fingers over and through his thick soft fur, shoulder to flank, shoulder to flank, shoulder to flank. He's so sweet and I do love him. Prompted by the music, I realise that he'll die one day, probably (hopefully) before I do, and for a while there will be nothing for me but sadness.
Sorrow will be my all, but on the scope of things my sorrow will be even less significant than the days of my life. We are all pathetically finite. Like mayflies in pine-resin as it hardens to amber, we are constrained to our lifespans on the face of this minute planet, each of us one creature among billions, on one planet among trillions, while the cosmos extends as though to eternity across the unfathomable deeps of space and time. This is the human condition: the ephemeral creature, forever yearning towards the Infinite. Don't you just wish, once in a while, that you could live forever, if only to see the great march of the galaxies, to watch the stars themselves grow old?
Oh well! Not gonna happen. You can dream of the infinite but, like Mischa himself, sometimes you just have to live in the moment. Right here, right now, I love my dog.