Tearing Up and Losing Time

We had dinner at B and L's last night - a spectacularly clear, it doesn't get any better than this kind of night - and were joined by new friends of ours, a veterinarian and his wife. Near the end of the evening our conversation drifted to our love of dogs and why they are so special. I suggested to Dan, the vet, that he Google the poem "Rags" as it expresses this "special" sentiment quite perfectly. I also told him I had never been able to read the poem without "tearing up." Tearing up is how we manly men say crying. We also use "getting emotional" to convey that we are not really crying because, you know, we manly men don't do that. This morning, to verify that the poem has the power I ascribed to it, I Googled it myself. Its actual name is "They Called Him Rags." Half way through the poem I began tearing up...literally. By poem's end, I was bawling like a baby. Now I realize that I had some stored up tears accumulated by wrenching away from my NY loved ones, but the sobbing waterfall that occurred this morning was freaking ridiculous. Somebody has to do something about this poem. Change the ending or something, anything. If they don't, I may never get the hang of this manly man thing.

Sometime in the next few days I will write my 500th blog. I don't know the significance of that, there's probably none, but it does seem some sort of achievement to me. I mean that's 500 hundred times I've been "present." (No small feat for an Enneagram Seven.) One of the definitions of "present", I think, is, a period in your life when time is absent. You are so engaged in the moment that time doesn't exist. What makes writing special to me is that even though while scribbling, I am not aware of time, I now have a record of its passing, to wit, here is the blog or the story or or the poem that was created while time was irrelevant. In the words of one quotable person or another, cool beans!

Raffi Doodles has just come into the room, gone under my desk and is now lying across my feet. Dogs.