under the gun

I'm told that earlier this week was Blue Monday, a special little invention in Britain that apparently defined January 18 as the most depressing day of the year. This year, anyway. Their reasoning seems simple enough -- the holidays are over and, well, you live in Britain and thus probably won't be seeing the sun in a month and a half.

I certainly admire the Brits for sticking a flag in the ground for such a day (because really, their weather gives them every right), and I like the extra edge this adds to the New Order song that pounded in my head during many such Blue Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, etc., when I was in high school, but this is really just a convenient bit of calendar manipulation. Kind of like how Mother's Day falls in the middle of May -- it's not like May's a particularly hard month for moms (that I know of) or there was some kind of Mother's March on Washington that day in 1886 -- it's just a nicer month than April and June was already claimed for Dad since no major sporting events take place (or something).

Any day can be crap, and if I remember right I was feeling pretty good this past Monday as a matter of fact, despite the presence of real, live inclement weather here in  Los Angeles and the fact the time was right to be awash in British melancholy. But forces are out there, emotional hot-foots and buttons that wait to be pushed. I don't necessarily think one will do it unless there's a particularly tender spot on me that day; generally it takes a multitude of things.

This is essentially a long way 'round of saying today I've been feeling a bit of crap today, and I think how the tumblers fell into place. Some were fairly on the nose -- the weather's still fantastically gloomy, something I kind of enjoy but regardless we're biologically wired to get nailed by these things (ask anyone who lives in the Pacific Northwest or, say, Scotland).

Then Massachusetts sprayed a blast of diarrhea all over what was already a fecal-friendly political climate by electing a guy who looks like the villain in 'Friday Night Lights,' and thus ensuring U.S. will not have a modern, reasonable and compassionate healthcare program in, fuck it, let's call it our lifetime.

Plus I was sick all last week and felt generally uninspired for longer than that, two obviously temporary conditions that nevertheless feel permanent when you're in them, and that's terrifying.

AND, I've got a birthday coming up, something that's certainly not a bad thing (considering the alternative) but still, it's a time to take stock of all you've done up to now and, most heavily, not done.

But i think the system running in the back of my head that finally tipped the scale was a phone call I heard on the Savage Love podcast last weekend. (If you don't listen to the gospels according to Dan Savage, i highly recommend. He's this century's Dr. Ruth if you put an improv comic's wit into her brainpan -- seriously, the guy's not just funny, he's frightfully smart.)


 Anyway, a guy called in, kind of young, and all he wanted was to find love. A reasonable and even typical request, but he wanted to find love as soon as possible because he was just diagnosed with ALS, also know as Amiotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, something a small part of me is a little surprised I still know how to spell.

If you're lucky, you know that jumble of syllables only as Lou Gehrig's Disease, something far away and mysterious that probably also allows you to laugh at the variety of harmless jokes that come at that name's expense. (Denis Leary had a good one.) I'm not lucky, my mom died of ALS a little more than 10 years ago.

So, there was a time that such a phone call would've had me nearly breaking my wrist to try and turn off the radio. I lived through that stuff, after all, and don't need to hear all-too-vivid reminders of it. At least that's how my mind operated a few years ago. Lately though I've been trying to turn and face such things, let whatever emotion that pops up blast me in the face, figuring Attention Must Be Paid. It's been a long time, too long I feel like. No sense running from all that now.

So I sat in the garage listened to this guy, his remarkable strength and calm as he described his situation, considered whether he was being selfish to look for love that would only, inevitably, break the other person's heart in 2-4 years. (He spoke frankly of the ultimately pointless radical treatments out there now that only stood to add painful months to his life, never mentioned the long-term delay mechanisms like feeding tubes and respirators like those used by Stephen Hawking, who's pretty much lived forever with the damn disease as near as I can tell.) He had no delusions about what was coming and wasn't afraid, at this point anyway, and his bluntness was somewhere between inspiring and jarring.

Dan Savage dipped his voice, responded with characteristic sensitivity that the caller was over-thinking the whole thing. He had every right to pursue someone to help "take him out," as it were (or will be). He referenced the AIDS crisis of the 80s, when loved ones consumed by fear abandoned loved ones to die alone. But then there were other couples who did not, couples and individuals who showed remarkable strength. Then he frankly but somehow not bluntly said that we are not entitled to die with accompaniment, even when we couple off. But he encouraged. Then he apologized. The he apologized on behalf of me, the listener, which seemed about right.

How's your Blue Monday now?

A few days later while listening to a later episode, another caller left a message in reponse saying that she was half of the duo who recorded the podcast's power-pop theme song, and that her partner had also been diagnosed with ALS recently and just got married. So, caller from Seattle who moved there alone, there was hope. That's twice this disease, this spur into the side of my memory was hit.

I bring these up not to make a point about bad moods or memory, but more to add that i listened to both of these calls and, at least by comparison to prior years, wasn't devastated. I was sad, maybe in a different, sharper kind of way than someone might have who never knew such things, but I wasn't transported back to the most weeks of my life in August of 1999, sob into the heel of my hand and, I should mention, did not feel overcome by some bathwater-warm light of grace or acceptance that's gained through experience. Mostly it all just sort of ran off me.

And I think that's what has been sitting in my belly all week like some kind of noxious landmine, waiting to overtake my day. I didn't feel those feelings above because I'm not supposed to -- time has passed, I'm removed from the scorched Earth my mother's illness left behind because that's what my brain had to do. I need to function; distance had to be built.

And that, for as much as I need it, is kind of sad thing. I'm years removed from the raw, horrible grief from my mother's death, but since those memories were the last ones I had, I feel weirdly protective over them. Time has passed with an efficiency that seems to me almost gauche.

I can't do anything about that, of course. But what I can do is try and honor it, even if a little bit. It's writing about those experiences from 10 years ago that haunts me when I have trouble falling asleep, but it's a project that has never felt quite right in the numerous finished and half-finished chapters and remembrances I've accrued up to this point. I think that's why I've been showing up here, to either learn how to do that or even drop of some gestural sketches of how I might approach this demanding beast. I can't stop time, not really, but if I figure this out I think I can catch it for awhile.

and so this is christmas

I've noticed a couple more things about this space as I try and remember to look at it more than once a month. One, it looks a lot like what it is -- something started about five years ago and generally untouched by any technological advance from the most basic template, apart from my ruthlessly pirated header above (thank you, artist who's name I forget!). Really hoping to get around to changing all that at some point but, eh, probably not. Suffice to say I'd like to apologize for my dated appearance, but that's a little consistent with real life. Plaid shirts, anyone?

Second, if you were to happen by and read some of this stuff you might be possessed by the impression that I'm one grim bastard, which is a less-accurate reflection. True, it's been a year and in some respects a bundle of years where there's plenty of material, we'll call it, to stare at my bellybutton about. But certainly not as much as others, and on the whole I'm generally not the guy at the end of the bar staring into the bottom of my glass and pondering the meaning of it all. Generally.

So today, a holiday story. Or at least an attempt at one.

One of the beautiful things about holidays is the extension of traditions, some of them so small you'd hardly notice they've been adopted until suddenly you're carrying them on. One of my favorites that we have quietly picked up through the years is acquiring odd or otherwise unique ornaments for our yearly tree, such that's it's been. We've never been the sort that rushes through Target, picks up a box of colored balls and icicles and called it a day -- not that there's anything wrong with that.

It's something that started with my dad when he was a teenager, visiting family from house to house in South Boston with my Grandfather on Christmas Eve. They'd deliver presents and have a drink and, without fail, steal an ornament off the tree at every stop. As I remember it this was an understood bit of holiday theft, and maybe there was even a moment where my grandfather would take some time to pick one out with the host's blessing, I'm not sure. But suffice to say by the end of the night my dad was fairly carrying my grandfather home as the drinks and houses added up, but out of that came my family's tradition of buying a couple new ornaments year after year.

And that's a lucky thing. When I was growing up I loved all the strange and otherworldly stars of our family's Christmas tree. I can see them now, the fake gingerbread/marshmallow house made out of chunky, Pepto-colored styrofoam. The little orange lightbulb with the clown face of yarn made by my brother in 3rd grade. A ceramic mouse napping on a crescent moon with my name on it, a gift from my teacher in 4th grade. The lanky stuffed elf in red, dangling from a rickety ladder as a string of metallic gold beads spills out of his hand and his little surprised face stitched to a tiny 'o,' only slightly larger than a pinhole. These are the decorations and stories that make up our tree, and I've adored them from every angle since I was little. 

So much so that I used to sneak down to our crawlspace in Ohio, where our tree was boxed up in pieces next to a taped up green Glenfiddich box that held our ornaments. My fascination would start every year sometime toward the end of October, when the weather would turn in that unmistakably biting and smoky way to let you know, yes, Winter is coming. It all usually happened right around the time the JCPenney catalogs were expected.

I'd crouch down there in my slippers and oversized Snoopy robe and dig for some of my favorites, unwrapping them from crumpled paper and plastic to hold them up to the pale shop light that hung over our sump pump, gurgling quietly to itself in the corner. Eventually my mom would fetch me out of there, but I appreciate that I was allowed to linger a bit on that cold concrete floor.

I remember our tradition with the lights, once the tree finally went up (usually somewhere in the teens of December.  My dad and I would 'build' the tree and string the lights (we've had artificial trees since I was about six or so, and I barely remember the few real ones apart from the absurdly rotund 'pregnant' Christmas tree from when I was four or five), and, like an aesthetic cavalry, my mom would come in and reshape before the decorating could continue.

The branches would be bent here or there to cover empty spaces, and the lights would be strung and restrung by my mom to get the solids over here, a series of blinking lights over here, all with the unspoken yet understood goal of giving each year's tree a unique pattern of lights to overlap with eachother on and off, a unique sort of randomness that always built a sort of tension and left no corner unlit in a thoughtfully composed holiday drama that you might see on a parade float, or some kind of gallery installation. Sometimes it took as long as an hour.

Then the ornaments would come out. My dad always placed the elf with the ladder first, just below the angel at the top, and then we cycled through the whole box, holding certain special ones up for eachother and remembering their stories. A lot of ornaments are marked by years, and inevitably those  say something about the state of the family. 1981 is a simple circle of sleigh scene on painted wood, indicative of the tough times after my dad lost his job during the PATCO strike. The 1985 ornament is a Santa in a bathing cap, a tribute to our first Christmas in California after moving from Ohio. Inevitably, we had more ornaments than tree, as well as more lights, garland and tinsel than anyone probably needs. But the tree always looked perfect, and somehow better every year.

Now my wife and I have some ornaments of our own, though not nearly old and weathered. We've got a matching pair of crocheted penguins, each for some reason carrying luggage. An armory of fuzzy wool balls, each with whimsical polka dot and stripe patterns in some sort of parody of holiday colors like olive green, maroon and harvest orange. A fuzzy rabbit in a scarf and oversized knit hat. A small army of angels given to me by my father each successive Christmas since my mother died.

These all were slowly acquired year after year, carefully put away in a box, and placed sort of at random on our abbreviated attempt at an annual Christmas tree. I say abbreviated because we had misgivings about dropping a full-size dead tree in the corner, so we had little, 3- or 4-foot varieties, sold to us by bundled carnies at the neighborhood tree lot and jammed into our little hatchback. (Seriously, have you looked at the staff at the average tree lot? I think we know what happens to that guy smelling vaguely of circus peanuts and Krylon while tending to the Zipper every summer.)

This year, there would be no more of that. B finally reached her breaking point and bought us an actual, 7-foot fake tree from, yes, Target. The best faux-fir totem $60 could buy, and it is, an awfully lovely and awfully grown-up kind of tree. The tradition, the holiday as a whole, feels like it's dug in a little deeper in our lives, and it's good. But the funny thing is how quietly the other traditions have been passed along.

A few of our ornaments already have their ideal placement on the tree, and I know they'll find their way there every year (that rabbit in the hat, our first ornament, seems on its way to becoming our thin little elf). The few heavy fake-vintage glass balls hang out at the bottom, and everything else fills in. The lights, however, are all white, a shift from the rainbow-colored blinky assortment my family always preferred as I was growing up. But this Christmas I noticed that I was the one bending the occasional tree branch after we put it up, then I was the one tangled in wires and stars as I rearranged the strings of light just so, making sure every corner of the tree was lit up just right.

These days my dad still trims the tree at his home up in the desert, joined by my seven-year-old niece who I'm sure has also grown to appreciate the magic in those weird little decorations. Over the years the ornaments have evolved to where some of them light up, some have strange little movements powered by the lights on the tree, and others play unsettlingly canned holiday music. I don't have nearly the same connection with these as I did with the ones from when I was a kid, which are still scattered around the tree, but I welcome them all.

The family tree has changed, of course. The lights don't blink the way they used to -- for expedience's sake, my dad opted for a tree with lights wired into the branches in the years since my mom's been gone, and I'm sure if i was to really take the time to look at each ornament I'd barely recognize the newer ones or know their stories, or even if they have them. But each and every year when we stumble into my dad's house after making the drive on Christmas Day, I know that tree is ours.

tall, kind of gangly looking, doesn't talk much

My goodness two weeks can fly by, can't they?

Not entirely sure how that happened. I know there was this and that at work, but other than all that I have no real excuse. The ability to convince yourself that you've got something important to say can at times be elusive, I guess, and the wherewithal to sit down and start looking when it's not readily apparent is even moreso.

I'm going to set aside the facing-down-loss theme that we inadvertently stumbled upon for a moment and get into my week a bit. I work at a newspaper, you see, which already gives you a couple ideas about what my day-to-day can be like.

The industry, such that it is, is dying, a fact that by the simple virtue of your ability to read this or something else far more informative on an LCD screen makes you familiar with that, or at least a couple of its reasons. Thus, layoffs -- or, better still, 'rolling layoffs' -- have gone from being what were probably once considered necessary evils to combat economic downturns or some kind of claptrap have become A Part of Life, a semi-quarterly occurrence where first everyone is nervous, then everyone is sad, and then everyone slowly feels better though (of course) not as good as they once did until inevitably another rumor of layoffs comes to fruition.

This, of course, makes for shit morale.

I've been at my paper for just shy of 10 years. Ten years. I remember some 4.75 years ago I received a snazzy pin to commemorate my fifth year at my current place of employ, a pin I can probably dig out of a drawer if someone really presses me but may have accidentally willed into non-existence. I remember at the pin-presentation meeting -- which we don't have anymore -- I talked to a then-coworker (who shortly thereafter moved onto another, equally fucked company across town) and said something to the effect of, "If I'm here to collect my 10 year pin, please come by and shoot me in the brain."

I'd like to go ahead and retract that statement.

Because barring another layoff rolling across my desk between now and April (which is, of course, possible), I'll hit that 10 year mark. And it will, in turn hit me because while it's not me at the same job for a third of my life, it's quite close to a quarter.

Now, in my darkest moments my having the same job for such an unfathomable amount of time in this decade certainly says a few things about my personality -- i like stability, I don't go looking for change very much and, clearly, take a lot of comfort in "the devil I know." Given all the various slights, disappointments and blinding frustrations that have come with my time at the paper, it  hasn't been some joyless slog, and certainly it's improved from 4.75 years. I have Accomplished Things.

I came in a cog and will surely go out a cog, but the work has gotten less mundane, far less soul-crushing. I've written about artists who have meant a lot to me. I have enjoyed cover stories under my name (with varying levels of pride). I have taken in extraordinary shows and spilled my impressions of them to an unsuspecting world. I have been handed the reins of covering a style of music that has long meant a lot to me and recently published my silly notions of what the Top 10 Jazz Albums of 2009 in print -- a phrase that certainly shouldn't mean nearly as much to me as a journalism-destroying web journalist but it, still, does.

So now I've done that, and for all the time that's passed and minor milestones I've accomplished, I'm deep down still a Profit Depleting Unit in the grand corporate scheme of things, a feeling reinforced as I watched a ridiculously accomplished, gifted and hardworking writer who I had the pleasure to edit get shown the door because her name and skills didn't resonate with some balance sheet high above who makes these kinds of calls. It's not the first time I've watched this happen and, odds are, it won't be the last. For any of us in this warped little guild.

So despite it all, the accomplishments, the attaboys, the small little boosts of ego, it doesn't add up to all that much. My place of employ and I have a sort of abusive relationship in that I give it no greater than it deserves and they, in turn, keep a paycheck coming so I can try and be in as good a shape as I can when the hammer finally falls. This place, storied though it may be, is a paycheck. A frustrating, diverting, not as terrible as it could be but still a damn sight long away from its potential, paycheck.

Sometime in the last couple years, I've struggled to socialize at work, which is a little surprising as my cynicism gauge was practically pinned around the time I received the lovely and attractive 5-Year trinket. It's no reflection on my coworkers, really, they're still great people, but I think a good chunk of it is apart from a couple of people who I've known since the beginning everyone at work is part of this wildly malfunctioning machine, spitting parts and  debris all over everything it touches, occasionally clanging something heavy and painful across someone's chest and knocking them out of play. My goal when I arrive at work is to go home; I don't want to dig my hands into there any more than the required eight hours, and even those can be a stretch.

This, I realize, is not a good thing. I don't -- we don't, actually -- have enough time on this dot to be viewing hours as things that are to be ignored, sped through. Yet most of us do it, for about 40 of them every week, and I can't decide if that makes me strange for wishing that weren't the case or even stranger for thinking work in and of itself is anything but that, anywhere.

So we're at an impasse, the dayjob and I. It's capable of great things, even moreso in departments I'm hardly associated with, to say nothing of the great feelings I get when something falls out of my brain and onto a page and winds up being of use to somebody. But it's not my goal, it's not where I've always dreamt to call home like it has been for so many people inside its walls including -- all too often -- so many people who have been let go. Like this week.

So we're deadlocked. I take the money and accomplishment, keep improbably dodging the layoff bullets while I secretly hope to one day get tagged as I wait for a coconut to fall off a tree and conk me on the head with the idea of what I really should be doing. I have this feeling, like I've always had this feeling, it looks a little more like this at least as far as what I'm typing.

I'm not entirely sure if I'm right -- the burgeoning responsibilities of adulthood certainly make such an idea a terrifying one. But I'd like to hang out awhile and figure it out if there's any hope of it. That, I realize, is what this space has always been about.

way down in a hole

So as you've probably noticed and as I've already addressed, I'm a bit hung up on this topic of grief. I'll get more to the why's and what's to this a little later, I'm sure, although I'm (mostly) happy to report that the raw emotions I shared below of the past few weeks have subsided. Time and the need to Get On With Our Lives demands that be the case but, inevitably, as I think about it now, there's a little bit of mourning that's in order for the end of mourning, so to speak.

Loss is something that's approached, processed and, if we're lucky, worked through -- preferably as fast as possible, at least while we're in the moment. God knows its not an experience anyone wants to have or hardly enjoys -- barring what I'd imagine are a couple fetishists out there (don't tell me there aren't, the very fact you're reading these words indicates you're on the Internet, and as such are aware of what a playground of fringe behavior it exposes we humans to be).

Yet while we are in the middle of what generally is crushing, all-encompassing, kick-you-in-the-tender-bits grief, it's truly striking how powerful it is. Think of this as the part in the movie where some scientist, probably of European descent, holds of a vial or perhaps stares intently at a microscope and marvels at a virus/alien being/professional killer's power, it's simplicity. And grief more certainly is both of those. I'd argue it's the most powerful emotion we can have.

At the heart -- or heartlessness -- of its strength is its speed, its inherent ability to go from Nothing to Everything in your field of vision in a matter of seconds. All it takes is a reminder, a part of the carefully tended system that you've built to fight off its relentless advances to fail and essentially you're back to start as far as assembling yourself for public viewing.

The most recent example I have of this happened last week, when Shenoa's eye doctor's office sent along a wonderfully sweet sympathy card, some two weeks removed from the Event. They had heard from our across-the-street neighbor, I'm sure, who by some then-wonderful coincidence worked at the same office where for years Shenoa received an assortment of magical and at times wildly expensive eye drops to combat her glaucoma. She frequently dropped Shenoa's prescription at our doorstep, saving us a drive out to Arcadia, which for those of you who don't know your Southern California geography is near absolutely nothing else of interest for our household.

ANYWAY, our neighbor told her office, who in turn sent a card, which I received last Saturday. I was ready for it -- I saw the return address, I knew what it was, I was -- as much as anyone can be to face grief -- Prepared.

Yet there I was, seconds after opening the card and its packed white space of hand-written messages of condolences from everyone on the office's staff, crying into my hand as suddenly as if I'd been hit with a bat -- even faster, because even then there's the moment of surprise and, presumably, the desire to get your shit together because, hey, you've been hit by a bat shouldn't something be done about this?

Its speed was truly remarkable.

I was fine, had things to do, was on my way somewhere else and was then, as I am now, at a sort of peace with saying goodbye to our beloved dog, and then I wasn't. It passed almost as quickly, but I'm still impressed with its capabilities. Attention, respect for its strength, must be paid.

But as I said, I'm back to 'OK' now, which I'm sure is a relief to you, gentle reader, who stumbled on her looking for a Boris MP3 I posted three years ago and may be puzzled, if you've gotten this far, why this guy can't stop talking about his late pets. So, yeah, I'm hesitant to follow through on my promise below of sharing the lengthy and hot-with-grief reaction to the loss of our cat earlier this year. We'll see. The editor in my head -- let's call him Francis -- takes great pleasure in asking from time to time the simple question of 'Who gives a shit' when it comes to some of these Unsolicited Personal Narratives. I work in the chaotic and generally short-attention-span ravaged world of the Internet, you see, and I imagine someone stumbling upon this corner of the world and spinning right out as if through a revolving door.

Still -- have you seen the news lately? Editors can't keep their jobs for shit.

toward the within

Hi. Now where were we?

I'd apologize for the silence, but I'd imagine if you track through this little bulletin board you'd find a lot of those as daily posts turned to weekly theen turned to yearly and so on, so let's just skip it. Still, a shame for me to part ways with you on such a down note.

I'd like to say that my absence had to do with grieving, that the house was shrouded in black drapery and thoughtful candlelight for the past week in light of the loss described below, but that hasn't been the case, at least on a physical level. More to the point the firecracker of need, such that it is (and wouldn't that be a nice item to see in a roadside blow-'em-up stand next July), slipped out of my hand, had its fuse silenced, whatever fits best at this point, really. It's an elusive thing, the desire to show up every day and face down the potential nothing that could be looking back.

I'm talking about the empty page, mostly. But I suppose we can touch a little bit on the Big Issue that has sort of consumed this inadvertantly aptly named space since I flipped aside the passive 'Closed' sign. (Strange timing, that.) Maybe it's a subject that's kind of been on my mind for quite a few years, maybe even since I first became aware of the concept of death. Hell, I'd imagine this is the case for most people on some level.

I don't know if I was what you'd call someone who grew up obsessed with The Big End, at least not in a manner as someone would picture. No Christina Ricci-esque dark ensembles or eyeliner, a casual but not wardrobe-defining interest in what unbeknownst to me was known as "goth rock," of course, but not much outside of the typical suburban upbringing with a lot of laughter and 0% interest in, say, cutting on a Saturday night while Dead Can Dance percolates on the Discman.

Still, I remember quite clearly how The Fear manifested when I was young, somewhere around eight or nine. You can't sleep, you suddenly become very, very conscious of the silence in the room and the whirring inside your head and suddenly, for reasons that maybe only my goofy Irish Catholic DNA can explain, you have thoughts of The Void. The howling black nothing/something that awaits at the end, the impenetrable unknowableness of it all which, for a vaguely introverted kid like me led to a crushing consciousness of my own breathing, a heaviness across my chest and, soon after, a helpless wet-eyed vigil at my mother's bedside as I silently attempted to will her awake with my mind. (Which was successful for a reason that maybe only parents know.)

But that consciousness of death, isn't really why I showed up here. This is part of the game as you grow older, as I alluded to below. The longer you're around, the higher the probability goes that you're going to have to face down that potential nothing that could be looking back. It just seems that for us over the past few months, we've gotten our share of practice. Prior to saying goodbye to our dear friend Shenoa last week we also lost a housecat Maja (from the Polish and pronounced "My-uh," a name my wife chose in reference the fat cartoon bumblebee found here). She was a strange, difficult, damaged and yet loving and beautiful creature who we lost suddenly, struck by a car out in front of our house in an appalling, even gauche reminder that loss can also come in a blink of an eye as easily as it can slowly come at you from the horizon.

I started writing a similarly long-winded tribute to that little beast a short time after that happened, and maybe I'll share those in-the-moment remembrances here next time as this seems to be going on long enough for this evening. Might make for a good read, and besides, theoretically everything has to go somewhere.

funeral for a friend

Well. That sucked.

Yesterday went about as I feared / expected and our beloved wilderness explorer, urban trail guide and pack leader Shenoa lost her battle with Time, just a few months removed from her 13th birthday. Of course, as her guardians it fell to us to give time itself a nudge, to head to the vet's and make that most incomprehensible request of asking someone to end a dear friend's life.

And of course, it's not like that, not really. This most difficult of decisions is The Right Thing. This is What's Done. This is Humane. This is Affording Her Dignity. This is Unselfish.

I have all the descriptors at the ready, and believe them all (mostly), the healing bromides we tell ourselves as pet owners when the time comes. Oh and it's coming for all of us, you young and windswept who just got their first dog and haven't known this feeling yet. It's the bargain we all passively consent to when we make the delightful and blindingly rewarding choice to bring a companion into our lives. And no, I don't think I am entirely talking about pets, either.

As I might've mentioned below, this was my first front-line experience with this and it was, well, exactly what you'd think. I'm grateful she won't have any more terrible nights like her last two, no more pain and confusion, no more cruelly inert decline for a spirit that was too stubbornly free and brilliant and loving to put up with such nonsense.

As a manner of tribute, a brief list of Shenoa's Top 5 Likes and Dislikes, in no particular order:

Likes

1. Hiking/running in the woods (unleashed, if you please)
   
2. Backseat road trips
   
3. Pre-breakfast belly thwaps
   
4. Smaller dogs
   
5. Rolling in dead things and/or animal droppings (see #1)
   

Dislikes

1. Baths
   
2. Luggage
   
3. The vacuum cleaner
   
4. UPS delivery drivers
5. Homework
   

For the most part those are off the top off my head, and as I look at them, surely not comprehensive and probably not all that unique (except the homework one -- she seriously took issue whenever my wife and center of her universe started working through paper and textbooks, an activity that usually sent Shenoa to some corner of the house armed with a battery of heavy sighs and loud, elbowy drops to the floor, seeped in dramatic disappointment).

Luggage was also right out, as this usually translated to an impending separation from The Pack, a time when Shenoa's role as Our Mighty Protector could not be met, where ever my wife was headed. This manifested most notably when she packed for a business trip and Shenoa stormed out of the room, asked to be let outside and proceeded make a great show of preferring to sit in cold darkness alone in a pouring rain than watch. This show, I should add, was not allowed to last too long.

I could go on, of course -- hell, it's not as if I'm going to run out of room here, but don't want to belabor the idea. It's a curious compulsion in this world of the Unsolicited Personal Narrative; I spill this sort of thing allegedly without consciousness of you, gentle reader, lurking out there in the weeds somewhere yet, by the same token, would like to provide something of at least vague interest. And, frankly, I'd like to not think of this as some kind of depressive mission where I'm not going to shut up until at least one of us is crying (though hell, perhaps that would lead to an ever-lucrative endorsement from Oprah's Book Club).

This entire exercise could lead and perhaps should lead to a longer yet not exactly unheard of study of life being at it's root, somehow, inextricably linked with loss. As aligned with the view of some chain-smoking Eastern European poet that view may be, it's the constant threat of loss and the finite nature of life that makes it precious, fellow travelers, and to be savored. Obviously.

Even though, I should add, there is no true way to utterly and completely savor every moment of love and companionship, not justifiably because that would require stopping time somehow, both in your life and someone else's. And there's simply no way to do that -- though it's utterly vital to try.

Suffice to say, I miss our dog.

Also -- Bonus coverage! This song has been in my head since way-too-early this morning. I think it fits in a non-Wes Anderson kind of way. And it sounds like watching a dog run in the forest feels.

Ooh La La - Faces

on life and living

So when i flicked this thing back on a couple days ago I had a couple of completely amorphous and occasionally ambitious ideas of what form this shoppe would take, if any. I've got big ideas, see, and every so often the wherewithal to carry them out.

But one such concept I had involves this longer project that's been, well, haunting me for the past few years. As I told a kind and literary-minded coworker of mine who asked what I was working I sort of rolled my eyes, explaining "When I lie in bed and think about what I'm doing, it's not an as-yet unreviewed jazz album that keeps me up at night." So here we are.

Still, I haven't been entirely certain if this is the forum. But while I've been twirling that around in my head life, as it does, made a move. We've been lucky enough to have a remarkably smart, stubborn, smelly and utterly loving dog in our lives since I met my wife some six years ago (she's been lucky enough to enjoy the her company for around seven years prior to that). Shenoa is her name -- that's a sort of thoughts-eye view of her up above there -- and in addition to having a volatile digestive system we often joked has long been lined with fine silk and filagree she has also has advanced glaucoma and lost about 80-odd percent of her sense of smell and hearing  in the past six months or so. Yes, as those of you who are sharp enough to have done the math a few sentences back already recognized, she's old.

But she's been, in recent weeks, a mostly perky kind of old, the kind of old where can allow yourself the illusion that the inevitable end isn't really coming over the horizon. We still walk her around the neighborhood, she smells familiar smells and was back to her relatively silly and energetic self apart from getting tired earlier than usual (she was born a wild-hearted Flagstaff dog, one I swear impatiently circled my city-dwelling ass when i lagged behind on mountain hikes).

That is, until last night. She laid down in the dining room, kind of troubled-looking (which ordinarily isn't a problem--she's a dog with a lot on her mind), a little disoriented and apparently uncomfortable setting her head on the ground. It was like some kind of vertigo had set in, something that became even more noticible as we led her on a meandering and seemingly dizzying walk to the back bedroom as we turned in.

This morning wasn't any better as we watched her struggle to find her way around the house and, puzzlingly, get turned around and disoriented in the back yard. A vet appointment has been acquired, knowledge perhaps will be gained, but whatever happens, it's difficult to imagine hearing something like, "Oh, she has The Canine Spins, give her this peanut butter-flavored pill and she'll be fine."

It's entirely possible that the only course of action will be bloodwork, a battery of tests, debated 'procedures' and, inevitably, conversations to figure out the grim cost-benefit analysis of how to treat a dog that, especially for a shepherd, is a senior citizen in unavoidable decline.

Now maybe, gentle reader, you're one of the lucky ones who have stumbled onto this space not yet really knowing this kind of decision -- it's certainly my first time -- or, even more enviably, haven't ever lost a loved one, any loved one in your young and certainly charmed life. You probably have regular bowel movements and only sneeze maybe four times a year as well. Good on you. But, no doubt, it's coming for you too.

There's a line in my head now, well actually a few of them. The first comes from an unheard Warren Zevon album recorded near his death called, "Life'll Kill Ya." Warren knew, first hand.

But maybe the one most lingering is a line from Joan Didion's "Year of Magical Thinking" that is most apt, "It all evens out in the end." It was a line from the late John Dunne to the (eventually) late Quintana Roo Dunne, who was complaining about having to deal with such struggles of life and death while she was in school. Didion thought the line was upbeat, that good things also happen to leaven the impact of the bad. Didion was mistaken -- Dunne knew too.

But more on that later.

For now, I'm kind of pondering what waits for us, trying to prepare and being completely certain that there is no preparing, not really. Maybe this'll be something minor and the grim decisions and finalities can wait. But I'm completely assured that whatever lies ahead will wait for us for as long as it takes.