Spirit Dog
Spirit Dog wakes with a grin on his face. He slept on the Puerto Rican’s porch again last night and watches for the Puerto Rican’s daughter to open the back door. She’s fat. Spirit Dog likes fat two legged ones. The Puerto Rican’s daughter also is kind and usually will feed him if she sees him on the porch. Yesterday she gave him cold rice and eggs. Spirit Dog will eat anything that the two legged ones offer, even if he doesn’t like what is being offered. He was taught to be grateful by the red eyed dog he considers his mother.
The door opens and Spirit Dog hears the heavy footsteps of the Puerto Rican’s daughter. She is singing a song that Spirit Dog doesn’t understand, a song that sounds sad to his white and red ears, but could just as easily be a love song or a hymn to the great BRK. The music of the two leggeds confuses Spirit Dog. Their music is always playing and it can sometimes hurt his head. She stops singing and bends down with a plate in her hand. Cold platanos and left over tamales from the Mexican grocery around the corner.
Spirit Dog grins at her in gratitude. He is thankful for her kindness, for her consideration, for the fact that she will feed him and not chase him away. However, if he encountered cold platanos on his journeys he would run the other way as fast as his red and white legs could carry him. He loathes cold platanos, he loathes hot platanos. Dogs were never meant to eat platanos.
When the world was barked into existence the great BRK must have been grinning a lot. Spirit Dog considers the existence of platanos and thinks that the great BRK must have a huge sense of humor to have created so many obviously strange things like plantanos and lima beans, catnip and rhubarb. He thinks all this as he muzzles his way across the plate of platanos. The big fat two legged girl offered them to him out of kindness and he must eat them as a means of showing his respect. He hopes that if he shows enough two leggeds respect that they might all come to their senses and shutoff their televisions and radios and smartphones and Ipods and fall down on their funny long legs and bark in thankfulness to the great BRK.
He gulps down the plantanos and tamales. The sauce from the tamales help the platanos go down easier. He licks the plate and grins up at the fat one. She smiles back and bends down to scratch him behind his right ear. Ah, he thinks, there is nothing better than to have a full belly and your ears scratched. His red eyed mother told him and his brothers and sisters that this is what happens when the wheels squeal, that you go to a place the great BRK has prepared for all good dogs, where two leggeds are always ready with the best foods and are always waiting to scratch behind the ears. He grins up at the fat two legged girl. She smiles back and he wishes that this day could continue on forever and ever and ever.
“Anna”, screams the Puerto Rican, “leave that mangy dog alone and get your fat ass back in the house right now”. Spirit Dog tries to think a good thought about the angry voice he hears coming from inside the house, but it is not easy. He wishes that it would go back to what it was doing in silence so that the fat one could continue her ministrations. It is not to be.
“Vaya, pobrecito”, the fat one says and turns to go back inside the house. Spirit Dog watches as she moves slowly back inside the house, sure that he will dream about her sometime today. He knows that in his dreams he will make her life more bearable. In his dreams there will be no angry noises coming from inside her house. She will be fatter, and her hair will shine. She will walk on four legs and they will run together. This is Spirit Dog’s prayer for all the two leggeds that he likes, that they might one day walk on four legs and be happy in the sun, that they might sing praises to the great BRK’s bright eye in the night sky. He will dream that the angry voice will smooth itself out and discover it’s true self, that it will be kind to the fat one and scratch her behind her ears and feed her good things.
Some dogs think that Spirit Dog is crazy. They think that two leggeds will never be tamed, that they can never know the beauty of the great BRK’s voice. Some dogs are content just to sleep and dream useless dreams. Spirit Dog chooses to use his dreams for a purpose. He knows that his dreams can change his little part of the world. He has tried teaching others this knowledge but they refuse to listen. Most just want to play, while others want only to escape their world by sleeping, and others want to fight or piss on trees or sniff each other’s asses. Few want to learn anything of value, so Spirit Dog chooses to walk alone.
Spirit Dog is a lonely dog at times. He longs for the fellowship of the pack. There are times when he thinks his life would be better if he just played dumb and started chasing his tail for the amusement of the two legged ones and their dog companions. He once tried chasing his tail and discovered that there are things that can be learned from this practice.
Once when he chased his tail, the earth spun out from beneath his feet and his body disintegrated. He felt that he had become part of the great howling that had first created all that is important to dogs. He felt that he had flown into the center of the great BRK’s bright autumn eye and that he could see every dog at once, in that one moment he felt the joy of every dog and simultaneously he felt every pain, from the merest flea bite to the shrieking pain of the squealing wheel. As he chased his tail he felt the emotions of every dog on the planet welling up inside his chest and he wanted to howl in joy. When he caught his tail he fell over on his red and white side and lay there panting for what seemed like a lifetime. He decided then that he was not ready for the practice of spiritual tail chasing. As profound as his experience had been, he knew that for the vast majority of dogs it is nothing but a joke, a trick to gain the attention of the two legged ones or a means of further forgetting who dogs are meant to be.
Still, whenever he sees a tail chaser he stops to see whether this is a dog on a spiritual journey or if it is just a dog seeking the thrill of dizzying forgetfulness. Almost all the tail chasers have been in the latter category. He has really only seen one real spiritual tail chaser before and that was from a distance. He was riding in a car with a two legged and he looked out the window and saw a small black dog chasing his tail. It was amazing. The little dog started to glow as he chased his tail and there was a beautiful sound that Spirit Dog was sure only he and the black dog could hear. He wanted to jump out the window but the two legged rolled the window up and was in a hurry to go nowhere fast.
Spirit Dog would like to meet the little black dog one day. He is sure that the little black dog has much to tell him, and he guesses that the little black dog may be just as lonely at times as he is.
