Month: June 2013

Many people say that memoir is concerned with elaborations of self awareness or personal irony. But to say this is to misunderstand the literary transcendence of the genre, for memoir should not be about its writer but its readers. This is why there are so few real literary memoirs.

And so I cross Seventh Avenue in a whirlwind, all possible dooms in mind, and the guide dog is immune to all histrionics–stares a cab driver down as he attempts to cut the crosswalk, and I see, in just a short street crossing how easy it is to sail on the big ocean.

There are many things I can’t explain and so I look to my dog for help. As a boy I felt so ashamed of my disability I often hid from people. The world was bruising. Children were mean. I once spent a summer in my grandmother’s attic, amusing myself amid the incense of sour wood and mothballs. And now here I am, walking on Fifth Avenue in New York, my guide dog so noble and expert that strangers call out. A doorman who is watering the sidewalk says, “Man, that’s a great dog, a great dog!” I feel a leap in my chest. Like an invisible bell is lifting and ringing. 

 

I asked my first dog Corky what to do about the blues. Honestly. She looked me in the eye. Dogs watch us. They take us in. And she said we should get moving. Really moving. 

 

    

 

Here’s the plain truth: you’re at home wherever you go.