A Dog's Life (part one)

A Dog's Life
(c) Melina Magdalena (2006)

“…that’s a large part of what economics is – people arbitrarily, or as a matter of taste, assigning numerical values to non-numerical things. And then pretending that they haven’t just made the numbers up, which they have. Economics is like astrology in that sense, except that economics serves to justify the current power structure, and so it has a lot of fervent believers among the powerful.”
Red Mars, Kim Stanley Robinson , 1992, Voyager paperback, p.351-352

Dedicated to Benedict Cupid, my truly faithful and friendly canine companion, 1993-2005.With warm and loving thoughts also to the important Dog-Women in my life: my maternal grandmother, mother and niece.

2006, 1994, 1982, 1970, 1958, 1946, 1934, 1922 … all of these are Dog years. This has had an enormous impact on my life. I was born in 1970, my mother in 1946, and her mother in 1922. My whole life, I have been surrounded and supported by the tightly woven highly-strung realities from which Dogs construct their worlds. It’s impossible for me to imagine any other way of being, than to be treading water, balancing on the barrel of this spinning planet, juggling the complex network of relationships and associations, with the parameters, possibilities and variables constantly shifting so that I have to adjust, and re-adjust to the changing demands upon me. I am the only constant, but I myself am not an entirely stable force, so I play an ongoing starring role in the dance of my life. This means I must necessarily step outside myself from time to time – frequently, as it happens, and take a look from various vantage points around the constellation of my universe. I cannot assume, no matter how well I profess to know myself, that I will remain the same, anymore than I can assume that any one variable within the myriad mix of elements within my crazy quilt kaleidoscope is certain for longer than a moment.

And really – what better way to be? It means that Life is never boring!

All the Dogs I know are happiest when we’re working. The most-blessed Dogs are those who love most of what we do. These are the days when our long-term goals are appearing on the horizon, due to our ongoing efforts and concentration of our energies. These are the days when what we see in our mind’s eye begins to take form in our worlds. These are the days when we dodge every obstacle that pops onto our path or engage with those obstacles as challenges that simply serve to make our lives more interesting. Dogs always prefer optimism.

It’s no accident that one of the story books my mother most loved to read me when I was a toddler is about the little red caboose that conquers its challenges with the steady mantra “I think I can, I think I can!” Who wants to be up front, big-noting oneself and grabbing all the attention? Dogs know how to bring up the rear with aplomb, barking and snapping as bark and snap we must, and basking afterwards with a glowing sense of self-satisfaction in a job well done.

Most Dogs are self-motivated creatures, well-able to see what is needed in their worlds, and who begin to shepherd all the necessary elements into a cohesive flock, so that creation can begin, barking loudly, wagging their tails, panting for breath and scampering madly for the sheer joy of being part of that wonderful process.

The cursed Dog is she who doggedly continues to do what must be done simply for the fact that it must be done in order that the whole does not topple over and crush her, even while she begs secretly to be crushed so that she need not continue to do these things that are quelling her spirit and martyring her possibility of discovering joy in Life. Dark periods in a Dog’s life are filled with a corrosive and dangerous despair usually brought on by overwhelm or a heavy constellation of bad circumstances. It takes a great deal to bring down a Dog.

Note to reader: If a Dog in your world is suffering with this condition, you can do her an everlasting kindness to interrupt the flow by intercepting the loop of her self-destructive thoughts and actions with some kind of diversion that will jolt the unhappy Dog back into a new frenzy of positive action. Let her know how much you love and value her.