Poets say when we’re in love we love everything—wine tastes better, the very green of trees is luscious. And they’re right. But how we get to joy is not immediate, it’s a product of confidence. By means of Corky I was, without fully knowing it, entering the gateway of love. I wasn’t just in love with my dog or the freedom she brought, I loved becoming someone. Like swimming through streams of sunlight underwater, I found I was turning sequentially brighter. In turn I was more open to others. In the Middle Ages they called this “ardor” and it meant being in love but also to be broadly loving.
I met Connie because of Roscoe, her black Labrador, and I met Roscoe because of Corky my guide dog, and there’s more to it than this, for I followed my dog up a flight of stairs just to see what it was she wanted. Just a little ardor. And up those stairs where the admissions office of the guide dog school was located was a black dog, a hilarious dog, some dogs are genuinely funnier than others and some are smart about it, and Roscoe was a Labrador comedian. And like all comics he was a drop out. He’d flunked out of guide dog school while still a pup. He’d been bred to be a working dog, but he ran off at the sound of shaken coins in a can. He was sound shy but made up for it with a remarkable fun index. He bounced at the sight of Corky and whirled and said, “I’m here, I’m here!” He was tall, loose jointed, his big tongue out, tail wagging, and Corky jumped as if a door had opened right before her.
That’s how it is when you fall it love—dogs know it without waffling. Corky was in love and since deep things in life happen against expectation soon I was in love.
I was forty and entering an emerging love story written by Labradors for I met Connie, former guide dog trainer, who ran the admissions office, who had one of the loveliest voices I’d ever heard, who I’d learn by and by was very beautiful—for I require scientific closeness to see anything, perhaps one may say indecently close, or better yet, lovingly near, but I wasn’t there yet—but yes she had a voice and a love of dogs and curiosity about both animals and people, and that’s not ipso facto, not customary though we wish it would be, for it’s an ancient sensibility, and soon Connie and I and Roscoe and Corky were taking walks.
I wondered how one might tell this tale.
Dear X:
I could be falling in love with my dog’s best friend-dog’s owner. I’m middle aged and holding hands with Connie. I’m laughing. I tell her about bird calls. Tell her grackles sound like reeds; the killdeer says kill deer unless its in love, then it says deer deer; I point out the pine thrush who never has a cruel thing to say, my favorite…I’ve fallen in love with my dog’s best friend-dog’s owner…we walk on a long, abandoned rail line. The dogs say “this this this” and run the curves of a tree line; the dogs say we’ve all come perfectly together…
Connie points out that the Killdeer walks sometimes. I’m rich with joys and stammering. The sun comes out from behind the clouds. I’m in love. I tell Connie about the red winged blackbirds. My dog’s dog friend’s owner is beautiful. Like Corky, I know allure.
**
Yes red was an important color. So was morning blue. We walked beside a lake and I don’t remember the name of it now, but we were laughing like hell. Laughing just because one can do it. Because I told Connie she looked like a Phrygian goddess and then was forced to admit all women look like goddesses when you’re blind and so what? I threw the word ophtho-centrism at her for sighted people think they own the world and who’s to say, really, that not everyone looks like Ingrid Bergman? Or the Phrygian goddess of wheat? Yes we laughed. We agreed: if everyone looks good there’s no need for praise. What a relief! And then no need for heroes! No more basketball stars! Come to sunny Phrygia baby! Give away your eyeball envy! Laugh more. Run in circles like Roscoe who has a five foot long stick in his mouth, it’s more than a stick it’s a branch, and he knows it’s the most important thing in the world, a birch limb tasting of yeast and don’t you wish you had one? And you should talk less, really, and just chase me.
And I didn’t know much. Not just about love but call it entrance. I was still coming into the world in a late rebirth having decided to cross streets, visit cities, kick up dust the way the sighted do—a phrase I’d stolen from a national advocacy agency which was always saying the blind could do customary things, read newspapers, for instance, “just like visual people do” and now I was halfway into the world making my forays into Manhattan or a hundred other precincts just like the sighted do, and yet, hell, I didn’t know much because I had no idea how to be in love. Did you enter it with a triumphal processional march as in Verdi’s “Aida” or was it just an earnest little tune picked out on a homely banjo? Was there a song at all? Did you make up your mind to be in love?
No you didn’t. You didn’t make up your mind at all. Not if the dogs were right.
**
As a teen I’d imagined no love was going to be my lot. Not in that arid way of teens, none of that Holden Caulfield stuff—I simply knew I was defective. The non-defective people held parties, danced, made plans. Space opened for them. They didn’t have to question it. Every place was theirs and all that American materiality was theirs—their cars with convertible tops; trips to the beach. That’s how it felt anyway. The no love narrative was really stupid. It was no better than thinking the man in the moon was an arthritic beggar who collects sticks on Sundays—a mythology people long believed—yes, stupid, but if you live a provincial life you can be convinced of anything.
Sudden love is to be unconvinced. And the irony, the loveliest of ironies, the most statuesque irony of them all is that I got there by walking, thrilling to the moments, trusting open air, laughing in public, walking Brooklyn Bridge with a guide dog, taking my dog to the opera; at intermission a woman said: “Who’s your dog’s favorite composer?” And I said, “Puccini of course.” And I was truly “out” and spaces were mine and I felt like Ariel released from her tree; Ariel rubbing her back on clouds then jumping down to put her toes in the river. Laughing in public. Love walking laughter and a bearable cloud of ardor in your hair.
How long can you go on saying you don’t know shit about love? Give it away. just as dogs give things away throughout the day, even in minutes. They know nothing of Christian’s bundle; Freud’s Soma; Oh for Chris-sake let’s run over here. Let’s together put our noses in this freshet of minty leaves.
**
We were in love fast Connie and I, and I believe it was Roscoe and Corky’s doing and I’ll never not believe this. It wasn’t that we took a chance. We didn’t have to. We knew we could trust our dogs. Not because it made a good story. But because there it was, we all fit.
It got funny. How exact that fit really was. With Connie came Tara, age 8 and Ross, 6. What’s to say about laughter? That it’s contagious, racy, a find, excellent with songs. I sang them Pete Seeger’s song, “All Around the Kitchen” a topsy dance number and we hurtled around Connie’s house shouting cocka-doodle-doo—which the dogs approved of as crockery rattled on shelves.
How busy love is. A house may be large or small, rooms, sunbeams—wide or narrow—how little it matters. We lay on the floor, Tara, Ross, Connie, and I, and Roscoe and Corky took up the business of washing faces as their ropy tails knocked knickknacks off tables and summer wind billowed curtains.
Excerpted from Have Dog, Will Travel: A Poet’s Journey
Stephen Kuusisto is the author of the memoir Planet of the Blind.
Poet, Essayist, Blogger, Journalist, Memoirist, Disability Rights Advocate, Public Speaker, Professor, Syracuse University
