Year: 2014

I ventured one evening onto a school playground and spun on the sandlot carousel. Corky was pleased with the game. We went around in slow, breezy loops.

Headlights appeared and two policemen approached.

They saw a blind man and his dog spinning and smiling.

“What are you doing, sir?” asked one of the cops.

“We’re just having a look around,” I said.

It was an old joke.

To the cop’s credit, he laughed.

I told them the old joke—the one about about the blind man who goes into a department store, hoists his dog over his head and turns in all directions. The manager approaches and asks what he’s doing and he says—“just having a look around.”

The first cop hadn’t heard it. The second one knew it. We were briefly, eccentrically happy. The police were relieved I wasn’t an amphetamine addict haunting the schoolyard. I was relieved because they saw the innocence of my nocturnal merry go round ride.

“Oh the bright calligraphies of talk,” I thought, “under stars, with strangers, no one threatened, and all of us united by a dog.”

And we are. United. By dogs. Dogs and humans have gathered in the dark for over 15,000 years. From the ancient temples of Tibet to the steppes of Mongolia…

So I said, “you know this is the oldest human occasion, three people talking alongside a dog in the dark.”

One of the cops laughed, said, “I don’t know where I’d be without dogs.”

The other said, “I’m putting in for K-9 training.”

 

We were three men, just having a look around.

 

 

 

Dear Buddha:

 

I do not believe that being reborn as an animal represents a spiritual setback.

 

Yours,

 

Mr. Spruce Grove

 

 

**

 

Spruce Grove is the English translation of the Finnish name “Kuusisto”.

 

**

 

In short: every ritual should astonish human arrangements.

 

**

 

At the famous arts colony as the artists were finishing dinner I explained my seeing-eye dog—the “ins and outs” of interacting with her. The speech wasn’t long but I realized it was miniature  soapbox address, my little corner of Hyde Park. I didn’t know—couldn’t conceive really, that in the coming years I’d give this admonitory micro-lecture daily and in every part of the world. Nor did I realize that the reception of my dog among the artists would reflect elements in broader life.

 

Immediately after dinner a woman composer wanted to know why she couldn’t break the rules and pet my dog anytime she wished because, in essence, she was a unique human being. The guide dog school hadn’t prepared me for interactions with a special category of vanity—what I’d eventually call “auto-biophilia”—the Romantic belief that because you think you’re special, in turn you have a unique intuitive bond with animal life.

 

If you have a service animal you frequently meet people who are materially unfulfilled and projective where animals are concerned. The Doctor Doolittles; the PETA propagandists; New Age types. I do agree with Edward O Wilson, the Harvard entomologist who coined the term biophilia.  He wrote: “Humanity is exalted not because we are so far above other living creatures, but because knowing them well elevates the very concept of life.” I agree that our animals enrich us. But don’t touch my dog. I smiled at the composer and walked away.

 

**

 

I went to the river to find my old Moses basket.

Went to the river to scoop up mirror neurons.

Went to the river to talk to an old horse.

 

**

My favorite Tony Blair joke:

 

Tony Blair, the British Prime Minister, is being shown around a hospital. Towards the end of the visit, he is shown into a ward with a number people with no obvious signs of injury or disease. He goes to greet the first patient and the chap replies: “Fair fa’ your honest sonsie face, Great chieftain e’ the puddin’ race! Aboon them a’ ye tak your place, Painch, tripe, or thairm; Weel are ye wordy o’ a grace as lang’s my arm.” Tony, being somewhat confused (easily done) goes to the next patient and greets him. The patient replies: “Some hae meat, and canna eat, and some wad eat that want it, but we hae meat and can eat, and sae the Lord be thankit.”The third starts rattling off as follows: “Wee sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous beastie, O, what a panic’s in thy breastie! Thou need na start awa sae hasty, wi bickering brattle! I wad be laith to rin an chase thee, wi murdering pattle!” Tony turns to the doctor accompanying him and asks what sort of ward is this. A mental ward? “No,” replies the doctor, “It’s the Burns unit.”

 

 

How does one have some modicum of fun as a blind person? Or, to put the matter succinctly, “how fun is fun?” When I was a child they called me “Mr. McGoo” and taunted me. I would never dream of dressing as Mr. McGoo. But Marty Feldman, he’s my brother. We each underwent primitive strabismus surgery as children. In case you don’t know, “strabismus” is the term for crossed eyes. The children of the 1950’s who had this surgery were typically transformed from cross-eyed to “cock-eyed” which is what’s known in the literary world as a pyrrhic victory and in the world of ophthalmology as “well, I guess that’s the best we can do–now go outside and be humiliated…” And though McGoo was bad, there was always the infinitely meaner chorus of “Barney Google, with the goo goo googley eyes” sung block after block as you walked home from school. So Marty is my pal. Feldman was not blind and he had Grave’s Disease which often produces exophthalmic or bulging eyes. But  just like me his eyes were always looking off kilter. In the ancient world he’d have been a shaman. He’d have been the guy who knew how to get the wheat growing again. He most certainly would have known how to talk to horses.

The little dog loves the big dog and she in turn loves him. Don’t tell me that animals don’t have depth of feeling.

This morning Lhasa “Harley” chased guide dog “Nira” because she snuck up on him and stole his tennis ball. She ran in widening circles and then, when the little guy was almost frenzied, she gently put the ball in front of him and wagged her tail.

Let all the dog love glide noiselessly forth on this world day of prayer.

 

When I was a boy there was a place in the woods I liked to go. There was a granite boulder that seemed like a mountain and I’d climb it and press my face into the skin of moss that grew on the summit. Strange today to think that was one of the happiest moments of my childhood.

 

Did I know as a child I was celebrating my tiny-ness? I think I must have known.

 

My friends were the crickets who lived inside an abandoned stove.

 

I did not, in those days, love my own wisdom. I merely loved shapes and sounds.

 

And the odor of the moss, like bread baking, with just a hint of pepper…

 

 

 

Once at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York a friend, a writer, described for me the intricate pencil sketches of Honore Daumier. When she came to a drawing of a rough looking man being followed by a small dog she stopped talking for a moment. Then she said: “The dog is so delicate—he’s a curlicue, he looks like he’s bouncing on tiny springs.”

 

“Its as though the dog is the principle of life itself; the old man—he looks like a judge—he’s the opprobrium of public life. And its like Daumier is saying the two should be together though they aren’t. The dog’s just dancing along. He doesn’t belong to the man.”

 

I walked the hills of Ithaca with Corky and was flooded with reveries. The dog in Daumier’s sketch didn’t belong to the man. If only he’d turned around. A better life is sometimes that simple. And then again, of course, it isn’t. Honore Daumier died penniless and blind, and I imagine he had no dog. I felt a oneness with his ghost. I appreciated my own luck and good fortune.

 

We went to the gym and I ran on a treadmill, Corky lying beside me on a towel. Spring was coming on and the trees outside the windows were like green smoke.  The winter people were all hitting the exercise machines and there was joviality in the air. Maybe it was just that I was feeling good so, in turn, I noticed other people who were happy. Again strangers wanted to talk. One guy said in passing: “You better get into shape to keep up with that dog! You can tell that’s a fast one!” A woman said: “That dog’s so beautiful you ought to get someone to paint her!” Then she added: “Its her face. She’s an angel!”

 

“Everyone here is trying to reclaim his or her body,” I thought. “Everyone in this gym is still naively fond of life.”

 

That was the thing—I was unaffectedly fond of everything. This is what Corky was doing for me.

**

 

In the Moosewood vegetarian restaurant, a well known Ithaca haunt, I ate curried potato soup and felt a wobbly splendor—I thought, “What will happen if I cry for joy at this table?” I broke a guide dog training rule and slipped Corky a torn piece of French bread. “Deep inside every man or woman is a seed,” I thought. “It grows and determines how we will love or fail to love.” I was opening. I’d never been so happy. Corky put her paw on my knee. My friend “W” who worked at the Moosewood came and sat with us. “Can we make Corky our mascot?” she asked.

It seemed as if the moment, just there, sitting in a sunbeam, made up for all the cruelties of grade school looks and childhood snickers. Who knew that soup, a dog, and easeful conversation were the ingredients of alchemy?

 

**

 

Walking in the long April afternoons I started rewriting Pablo Neruda’s poem “Walking Around”—turning the famous surreal cry of despair into an anthem of joy…

 

It so happens I’m walking with a dog and singing in a key of softness,

No longer afraid of the precipitating fashions

Proud to be blind with a rich animal,

An unclasped necklace swinging from my fingertips,

A long sequence of memories I no longer require…

 

“I can give things away,” I thought. “Italicized emotions, dark ones—just let them go.”

I had no idea what a talent for happiness might look like or how it might feel, but I was in that place—a zone as sports writers call it—a place of spirited aptitude and dog feet. Corky and I walked all over Ithaca with our heads up. I’d bought a ridiculous CD—“Vienna, City of My Dreams” by by the tenor Placido Domingo—the album was filled entirely with Viennese love songs by Franz Lehar with cream puff orchestral arrangements. The opening song, from the operetta “Paganini” was titled “Girls Were Made to Love and Kiss”—the entire piece was so sappy and lush I had to give in to it. I was in a boat, a gypsy with wine and a handsome woman. I was a Frohliche Wanderer. Corky noticed and often turned her face to me, her dog smile like something out of a reverie. Almost forty, I was wandering for the first time. I saw that wandering is to walking as whims are to stated plans. I was following whims.

 

Who says dogs don’t understand the most delicate feelings? Before I could say, “Let’s go,” Corky was at the door. Even at midnight she was at the door, anticipating my move. I felt the lure of the all night drugstore and we left our cozy apartment and headed to the half sinister streets in search of vitamins, Mars bars, bubble bath, a styptic pencil. Yes we were walking for the sake of walking.  There really were no goods we needed to buy. Down on the dark sidewalk we moved with muscularity, like movie a cowboy and his horse—honestly I thought for a moment of Roy Rogers and Trigger as we pounded down the sidewalk, crossing the prairie of night.

 

Frohliche Wanderer entered the 24 hour pharmacy.The little bell rang as I opened the door. I swiveled my hips, turning my back to the opened door, assuring it wouldn’t close on Corky’s tail, performing the technique just as the guide dog school had taught me. Always protect the tail. Then we were across the threshold, standing in the unforgiving light of the average drug store amid the soaps and ten thousand plastic bottles; pastel shades assaulted me; there was the odor of newsprint and nail polish. We went up and down the aisles. I didn’t want anything. And yet what a curious  thing to realize I liked doing this. Just being in a common public spot with its useless products was a kind of empiricism. I was in love with wakefulness in a vulgar commercial space. I couldn’t properly see the products but toured every corner of the store praising Corky and smiling the dazed smile of a night time walker. No one spoke to me. There were three or four other customers and one cashier. I circled and left.

 

“You see?” I said to my dog. “you’ve taught me to relish the easy things—Daumier’s lesson…”