Up at 5:30, sticky, and not a little upset.
Have to make a phone call at 9. It could be a long hold.
If it goes well...
Then I'm going to devote the weekend to doing things I WANT to do. I anticipate frustration and having to make a long journey in bad air. I want to skip that call and just go ahead and do the things I WANT.
I have no courage.
I might have more if the air were cool.
In cool air everyone is more civilized.
The high heat brings out the worst in people. Even those who head for air-conditioning.
Last week or so, we who care decided to save water by drinking it but not showering.
Remembering C from London who said, of her Americanization, "I was used to people smelling like people."
My friend L's dog, part French Bulldog I think, is panting morning, noon, and night. I carry her to the sink where I splash her fat tummy with cold water. It does not seem to help. This dog needs to live where it snows.
I hold this dog up to the bathroom mirror and say, "Who is that" She blinks without self awareness.
How strange it must be to be conscious and in body, but without awareness of what one looks like.
I drink water, glass after glass. Yet my skin appears dehydrated.
Flash upon the day a few months ago, my dog alive and with me, the two of us sitting under a tree, blanket on the grass, with a wonderful breeze off the ocean, the kind of day you would go ahead and fall asleep if only you didn't have to worry about being taken advantage of by criminals.
Here came a man with a small dog on leash. The dog heading straight over to us.
"You must have a good vibe," the man said to me. "He never does that. This is a dog that was badly abused and I fostered him for months before he was willing to come close to me."
My dog and this once abused dogs looked at each other.
They did doggie mental telepathy.
They wanted to lay next to each other on the grass.
Was my dog the attraction to the other?
So we talked for a few minutes, the man and me. He had a clean and pure vibe himself.
He said in a straightforward way, simply being honest, that he lived in one of the tall condo buildings in the area that overlooked the ocean, that he walked his foster dog every early evening through this park, and recently down below there had been a murder.
Perhaps the park was just so beautiful it was deceptive. We could not assume safety.
He said that he had come from a small town in Pennsylvania where he'd been raised as a Jehovah Witness, implied he had left that all behind long ago, and financially he "didn't have to worry." He said, by way of explaining, how he came to foster abused dogs. He said it simply because it was true. There was no snobbery involved. It was not said to provoke me to tell my tale.
It was the sweetest meeting of a stranger I'd had in a long time.
C 2022 Christine Trzyna
