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When you live long enough with a dog, and a smart one at that, your dreams are less panicked and more lyrical.

After Milan Corky, Connie and I went to Venice. By day, in our waking lives we floated in a gondola and heard caged birds call from windows. I heard a cuckoo singing from a building where Mozart once lived. Corky sat tall and looked regally in all directions.

By night, asleep in our hotel beside the grand canal we dreamt richly—all three of us.

Corky sighed and puffed and moved her feet. Connie said something in her sleep. I dreamt I was in the middle of a field at night, lights from a far town in the distance. I understood friendships were on the horizon. I felt light and strangely cultivated. Sometimes in sleep you realize you’re in a kindly dream. Walking by day along the canals of Venice with a strong dog had offered pleasing trajectories, and dreams replayed them. A good dream makes a home inside of you. There are people and animals who love you sincerely. In a lucky life you wake and find its true.

I remember those Scandinavian houses with the tall white tile ovens—they stood in the corners of rooms like spies. Adults of course think these things give a home character. This is the difference. Old people give away thoughts that are neither hunger or thirst. Some days the horror of adult life is enough to drive one under the bed. My little boy, the one who became me, knew those stoves stood in the crack between wakefulness and dream. And years later, when I was in college and reading Edgar Poe, I felt the hypnogogia as he called it, and saw that disability was in fact the tell tale heart—the life that goes on under the floor; the life that’s been operated on; the one on the tip of your tongue but never uttered.

Here’s the thing: there are days when you don’t want to go outside. The adult world is filled with stove makers. You stay home and drink tea. You think about all the creepy doctors. The spies.

You think about all kinds of things. You promise to get strong presently. By the afternoon you’re ready to go outside. You take your indignant, nail studded wheelchair, guide dog, hobby horse and go to the grocery. And though all the customers and employees stare at you, stare as if you’re the skeleton in a morality play, you roll or walk a most strange course straight for the olives with pimentos. Lord knows, sometimes happiness slowly crawls into you.

I walked my dog

I worried about my life

My dog was in a butterfly museum

Kävelin koirani

Olen huolissani elämäni

Koirani oli perhonen museo

Life in America

I dreamt last night I was riding on a train

I met a cowboy philosopher

He spoke about the joy of adjectives

and then he stole my luggage

Elämää Amerikassa

Näin unta viime yönä olin ratsastus junassa

Tapasin cowboy filosofi

Hän puhui iloa adjektiiveja

ja sitten hän varasti minun matkatavarat

Once on a trip to Italy with my wife Connie and my guide dog Corky we went to the vast Milanese “city of the dead” the “Cimitero Monumentale di Milano”. I carried a bouquet of roses to place at the tomb of Vladimir Horowitz. The great pianist’s family had left a considerable sum to Guiding Eyes. The Wanda Horowitz endowment provides graduates with veterinary assistance funds in cases of financial or medical need. Long ago, in the early 1960’s the Horowitz family owned a released dog from Guiding Eyes as a family pet. No one at Guiding Eyes suspected the great composer would eventually leave his Manhattan townhouse and his Steinway piano to a small school for the blind. As for me, I’d grown up listening to Horowitz. I’d worn out my LP of his 1965 “return concert” at Carnegie Hall. His recordings of Schumann owned a  central place in my music library. Once I’d even seen him live in Chicago from stage seats—I’d been only ten feet away from the Maestro.

The Horowitz tomb is really the Toscanini family tomb—Wanda Horowitz was the great conductor’s daughter. I laid the roses before the wrought iron gate of the tomb and Corky scented the soft air. Connie pointed out a funerary monument shaped like a pyramid and the famous avenue of trees. We walked a long way. We passed the tomb of the composer Amilcare Ponchielli and the poet Salvatore Quasimodo. The birds sang. I felt the mysterious and unforeseeable ways we’re interconnected. I felt warm. Felt how much I loved my life. And the dignified upright gravediggers waved as we passed. One of them said “cane guida”. “The grave diggers are more cheerful than the waiters in Milan,” I thought.

From a Notebook, 1998: 

In the hotel Visconti I told a waiter my dog’s name was fortune. Somehow in a Milanese restaurant “fortunato” sounded better than Corky. The waiter liked the name. “Bunoa fortuna,” he said. “Good luck.”

Working a service dog in Italy wasn’t easy. Italians had three kinds of responses to a guide dog: disinterest, hostility, and lovey dovey. The first two were most common. Our first morning in the hotel the maitre de refused to seat us for breakfast. An unruly conversation ensued. The manager was called. There was a lot of cliched hand waving and rapid fire Italian. I stood straight before them with my obedient dog. All around us people sipped blood orange juice and coffee. Finally the manager took my elbow and said “sit sit” as though I was also a dog.

More hostility came our way at the Santa Maria delle graze. A nun refused to let me in. Her umbrage was sizzling. Like Peter in “The Last Supper” she might have been pointing a knife. “No no no no!” she cried. I urged Connie to go in alone while Corky and I stood outside in a shaft of mid day sun. As I stood and rubbed Corky’s ears I had to laugh. The nun had made a gurgling noise like an angry swan. But still, the larger picture wasn’t funny. Guide dog acceptance among Italians was clearly conditional. At the Duomo a machine gun carrying guard waved us straight into the cathedral. At “La Scala” the opera house, no one said a thing about Corky. But I never knew, step by step, whether we’d be accepted or dismissed. Italy does have a guide dog school, “Scuola Nazionale Cani Guida per Ciechi di Firenze-Scandicci” (National School of Guide Dogs for the Blind in Florence-Scandicci). There are guide dogs in Italy, and there are laws protecting the rights of guide dog users to travel everywhere the public goes. But somehow the word hadn’t penetrated everywhere. “You know,” I said to Connie, “when the law isn’t understood, then you’re traveling on sufferance. Which in its way is a kind of sport. Will you strike out, or get a hit? You just don’t know.”

If disinterest and hostility were problems they paled when met by the lovey-dovey. Strange, perfumed women in fur coats would throw their arms around Corky’s neck and sing nursery rhymes to her while I stood helpless. Happy people are the world over gifted musically. What else can you say?

You only get to tell your story if you haven’t given up on love. I tell this to students sometimes. You only get to tell your story if you don’t seek comfort from others. I say this too. Let happiness slowly crawl into you as your speak or write. Know its delicate. Know silence is on your side. Tears are on your side. The nothing that is not there and the nothing that is…

I got down on the floor with Corky and cried. The season was incomprehensible and strong. I cried because I would never give up on love. Cried because I was tender inside. Cried because my dog could bear my weight just then, just there. “Our fate is in the stars, dear dog,” I said.

A dog is a comfort. We got up together and walked outside in the spring twilight. We were both far away from home. We both loved one another sincerely. We walked around a pond. I told my dog life becomes slow and strong, but only when we’re lucky.

Only when we’re lucky my dog. We only get to tell our story if we haven’t given up on luck.

It rains in the apple trees

Where three crows land

In a dome of blossoms—

I watch with my clear head

The way blind people do

Feathers wet leaves

Bird’s feet

Scratching boughs

I like the one who doesn’t speak

She’s perfect—

The unlit candle in a church

Green sorrow

Is a waste

Do not seek comfort

From others; nor music

Breathe against a window

Write your name