Click images for desktop size: "Ocean Of Feelings" When your urine and feces smell like a chemical dump instead of human excrement: it's a message.
It's a stench I've smelt before, in hospices and the cancer/leukemia support groups.
It oozes out of your pores and reminds you that you're no longer completely human.
I've been sick. Not the “Lord, I see a light!” sick, the kind of drawing down into the quagmire sick that you don't want anyone to experience. The kind of sick that makes memories and puppies the only solace.
Sicker even than the sickness in my soul at seeing what this government is doing to my country in the name of God and patriotism. When politicians prey on fear is the time to check your armor.
But memories always bring solace, whether the memories are real or not, doesn't matter.
It was the first adult party I'd ever been too.
“Why are you so unhappy?” I asked her.
“Am I?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then, I suppose I am.”
“But why? You're young and___”
“I'm beautiful.”
“So why then?”
“So why then hell.”
I thought maybe I had better go back to my chair.
“Wait a minute,” she said, putting her hand on my arm. “I want to say something to you and then I want you to do me a favor. Is it a deal?”
I said that it was a deal.
“I don't know what I want. I don't know what I like. I don't know what I believe in - if I believe in anything. My father was rich, even if yours wasn't. I mean, he had money. He was a selfish, domineering, stupid boor. But a boor with money is never a boor in the true sense of the word. What the hell, I'm just working up to a disgusting drunk. You let yourself in for it by not getting rid of me in the first place. And you were on the level about all the surfing and football stuff? You really honest to God love those things don't you? Well, maybe it is beautiful. Maybe one day I'll let you take me surfing.”
She caught her breath quickly; looked at me in a funny way; and said very quietly:
“I don't want to live anymore, David.”
I didn't know what to do or to say. Yesterday my puppy got run under a car. By a woman who was too preoccupied with her life to notice the world around her. She was speeding and she was wrong and she was scared. I was stupidly fatalistic.
I got my puppy to the vet. No broken bones. She was terrified. She went under the SUV but not under the wheels. I spent the night holding her so she could sleep.
She looked at me so imploringly and would only close her eyes when I stroked her face. For the first time she slept cuddled next to me, her breath rushing too fast and very shallow.
She felt better and more herself this morning but I noticed that sometime during the hour or so I slept she'd pulled out some fur around her ankle (?) joint. It showed a tiny but deep puncture.
Took her straight back to the vet and the puncture was under 2mm wide but deep to the bone. She was very brave and stayed at the hospital.
I was fond of Nurse Daniella as she lay on the floor with Shelby until the anesthesia kicked in. She said something that touched my heart: “She was working so hard to be happy.”
How much my puppy likes her is clear. When I picked her up and went back to work my housemate was waiting for us. I asked him to watch her while I ran to the store to my puppy howled and kept jumping at the door for the 8 minutes until I came back. I'd never have known that as all I got was her doggie smile and a “What ya bring me?”
She nearly 99% tonight. Crazy puppy.

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