In Dogged Pursuit of Meaning
Thursday, May 22nd, 2008Yours truly once wrote in college (in a short story, I think) that having vivid dreams in your sleep can actually be planned. One way is to have a light dinner, so that technically you begin to ‘’starve’’ while still asleep, for dreams tend to occur when the digestive system is no longer busy.
Which brings me to today’s real topic: Dogs.
This is because I recently had a dream about a pet dog long departed. I can put her real name here, but for fear of slighting a former classmate who may be just a ‘’text’’ away from retaliating with blackmail, let’s just call her ‘’Tecla.’’
Tecla had a sister named ‘’Tutti,’’ the neighbor’s dog. In their beloved time, Tutti and Tecla offered a study in contrast: The former was a natural-born guardsman, showing no pity and expecting none, while the latter was a charmer, part of the household’s welcome party. Tutti sported a dark brown coat that had known no human touch but that of her master; while Tecla was almost beige, and when she would lift a friendly paw for attention you notice her fur sharply turning white at the feet. Compared to Tutti snarling in her stark, sentry’s uniform, Tecla skipped and sashayed like a papaya-bleached belle in low-cut gym socks.
Our backyard is, by now, an unmarked graveyard for long gone pets. And for some reason Tecla leaped back from the buried years of my memory circa 1980s and appeared, tail wagging, in that strangest of dreams.
Was she trying to tell me something? Have we just disturbed her bones? Do dogs have souls?
The last question I managed to answer satisfactorily when asked in class by a Philo 101 professor in UST. The absolute crap I said back then now escapes me, but years later my wife and I arrived at a much simpler theory: Everything that passes gas, dogs included, must have a soul. But that’s another story.
