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The office itself brought a fresnel focus to the misery, served as a pit into which it could be concentrated for wallowing.  People from all over the city, every walk of life, all sharing only a sudden vocational bankruptcy, a ragged hole punched through the middle of their meal ticket, stood around waiting for their slice of the dole.  And lord love me I was one of them. 

I completed my business, whatever it was, and then trudged outside again into the tarnished sunshine and across the trash-strewn street to wait for my bus back to my bus back home.  I did as was being done - kept my hands in my pockets and my eyes on my shoes. By the time the bus lurched up in a cloud of diesel exhaust and bitterness, there were a fair number of us waiting to board.  I wove myself among them as best I could and took a seat like everybody else did. I’d completed a very unpleasant, somewhat humiliating task, and just felt relief to be on my way back to terra cognita, if not firma.  I really didn’t notice that I was the only person on the bus who looked remotely european in ancestry.  And religious distinctions were certainly the furthest thing from my mind.

These circumstances came into clear relief, though, pretty much as soon as the bus started rolling. “‘Fuck is that doing here?,” I heard muttered behind me. My ears pricked at the possibility of an interesting conversation as the voice - female, hoarse, crude of content and articulation - continued: “Think he better than us.  Think he so fuckin’ great.  Fuckin’ asshole.  Jew trash. He ain’t so big. Christ-killin trash.  You hear me, kike?  This is our bus. Get the fuck offa it before we kick your fuckin’ ass.”

The voice was low but loud enough for me to hear clearly as she growled invectives at the back of my head.  I wanted so badly to turn and look at her but I was afraid that would only infuriate her further.  I just stared into my lap and tried to experience my feelings.  I had been typed and graded by the color of my skin and the shape of my nose - and I’d been found wanting.  A woman who knew nothing, absolutely nothing about me, knew that she hated me with a libelous fury.  My stomach knotted; my heart burned.  If only she knew me, I thought - if only I could explain it to her, help her understand… but I knew that would only backfire, make her angrier and crueller.  I really had no recourse.  I was on her bus, I was alone and no words that fell from my lips could have made up for her lifetime of expectations - positive ones cruelly dashed, and negative ones insidiously reinforced.  I could feel faces all around me, some vaguely embarassed, most quietly revelling in schadenfreude (though, I thought as I thought it, not under that name) - not wanting to own the small satisfaction they took in my castigation.

The woman giving voice to the offense that my very presence inflicted on her soul, was older than I - deep creases lined her face and her hair was shot with silver. I don’t recall how she wore it.  I just recall looking into her eyes as I got up to leave her bus, walked past her to the door.  With my eyes I tried to convey an apology on behalf of others; a confession of my own prejudices, known and hidden; a promise that I was not who she seemed to think I was; a plea for reconciliation.

It was too much. It didn’t fit into the mote in her sepia eye.  She watched me walk past as she might watch a stray dog drag itself outside to die.

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I had to type this up because I’ve been carrying it around in my notebook for months and every time I reread it the word “ripples” looked to me like “nipples.” Now that it’s re-edited on line I can stop reviewing my notes, get that damned word right, and move on with my life.  And with that: me and my nipples are blowing this popsicle stand.  I’m done with my day and vice-versa.  Catch you later, esteemed readers....

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And that’s when I found myself thinking back on halcyon college days lo these many years ago.  I had been learning a lot over the first 87-1/2% of my career there, and as much about myself as about the world around me.  One thing I’d learned was that I was no good at catching things. Friends would delight in tossing me a pen or a piece of candy or any small trifle, to see what would happen.  Typically I’d watch it carefully till it was where I wanted it to be when I was, theoretically, supposed to catch it; then I’d jerk my hand forward as quick as I could with the cherished hope that I would snatch it from the air.  As often as not, this resulted in my smacking the object in question with my palm or fist, sending it flying rapidly and unpredictably across the room.  All good fun, yes, till someone loses an eye.  Or a package of Yodels under the couch.

This inability to catch a thrown object had become part of my self-image, my egobelief: that this was just something I could not do. I was then, in the true spirit of education, given the opportunity to unlearn this proposition.  Senior year I got a part in a play that began with the tossing and catching of coins.  I was confident that I’d be able to handle the line memorization, the dialects, the broad physical humor and dark nihilistic currents.  I wasn’t so sure about catching 25 coins in a row on an empty stage in front of 150 people. 

So we practiced it: each rehearsal started with ten minutes of flying quarters - flipping the silvered disks back and forth, varying the distances, either running lines or silently, sped up or in slow motion… Over three months of rehearsals I put in hours of coin-catching practice.  By the time we opened, I had actually become good at it.  In our whole six-show run I missed only one quarter, and that was the one my counterpart had flipped, in a fit of enthusiasm, up to the level of the blinding spotlights.  And what’s more, my friends no longer laughed and ducked when they tossed the odd object over to me.  I was not longer a flailer - I was a catcher. 

That’s what I’d learned after four years of university training - to pluck a moving object from the air.  For some this comes naturally but for me it was an inculcated skill, and I’d done gone inculcated it.  It didn’t just gratify my misbegotten machismo - it actually made me feel that I was more closely connected to my world.  I could arogate entities unto myself; objects now, if they were not actually attracted to me, no longer seemed physically repelled by me either.  For me, learning to catch was a huge step forward, one that has had repercussions in many other aspects of my life. 

These, then, were the thoughts that flashed through my mind in the fractional moment after I bumped the spinning prism and loosed it from the window I was cleaning.  My right hand held a bulky rag and was out of position to assist.  My left hand then, almost of its own accord, slid smoothly forward, faster than gravity, a snake on the hunt, and plucked the crystal from the air as it began to fall, the movement controlled so as not to disturb the adjacent plate-glass window, as if it were just catching another quarter and my world were just another stage.  It’s been almost 20 years and I’m still paying off loans - but at least, in some way that is significant to me, I remain educated.

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* Discriminating gourmands will be interested in knowing that the Ho-Ho, a traditional favorite for its crisp choklate shell, moist devilsfood kake, and kremey ambiguous frosting, has taken gluttony one small, critical step further: the Ho Ho is now available in a CAROMEL form.  I can’t find a picture of it, you’ll just have to trust me.  There’s a layer of sweet brown goo between the kreme and the kake.  Or maybe that’s “gu,” if this product doen’t meet the FDA definition of actual goo.  The review: very tasty, but three in five minutes is not recommended.  However, it’s hard to avoid.  And speaking of hostess products, this gave me a giggle. For extra credit, without looking it up, what’s the name of the twinkie on the twinkie wrapper?  Yeah right you totally cheated.  You get credit anyway.  Cheating is part of the fast food test. 

* For a day that I posted what I considered a fairly inflammatory screed, I got very few comments today.  That’s okay, I am not posting for that purpose, but it’s an interesting barometer in a way.  I also checked my site stats and saw that, once again, several people around the country were finding my site by doing a yahoo or google image search of some sort that consistently comes up with an image I posted about a year ago of a bunch of women in the shallows of a lake sticking out their naked butts in a rather saucy but not actually erotic display.  It’s definitely not the most erotic butt image I’ve ever posted, but this particular picture gets hits pretty much every goddamned day.  In terms of visits which I can trace to some specific interest, it outpaces the post about the second amendment.  And I just wanted to say to all the people who visit this site to see pictures of girls’ naked butts, I’m sorry to disappoint you.  In fact, if you have any recommendations, I’m listening. 

* Yesterday HP tech support took two and a half hours on the phone with me (after half an hour on hold) before asking if they could call back today after doing a bit more research.  “Sure, Samuel,” I muttered through teeth clenched in frustration and exhaustion.  His name was Samuel, yes; and my other tech support representatives have been named Cathy, Jamie, Peter, and Glen.  That’s right, they’ve outsourced to the british subsidiary of India, where there’s a dungeon full of native punjabi speakers being taught to sound like they grew up in Salt Lake City, some more successfully than others.  I have no problem at all with the outsourcing of these jobs, and some of my tech support reps have been extremely responsive and helpful.  But Samuel did not call back tonight; I gave him an hour and then made the call myself.  That was 35 mintues ago as of this very moment.  They told me they’d be with me within 50 minutes.  I am fairly confident that I have a defective card reader, or that the reader has somehow come disconnected.  Samuel took two hours to look for a software solution after I explained symptoms that could only be caused by hardware.  I need to take this damn thing in while it’s still under warranty and have them connect up or replace my freaking card reader.  That’s all.  But first I need them to answer the phone.  Only about 15 more minutes to go, now.  My neck hurts.  I think I’m going to ask to speak with a supervisor.  And by the way, HP customer support has on-hold music that consists of one song, played over and over again: the original Eagles’ version of “Tequila Sunrise.” If you ever want to drive me immediately into a violent and unreasoning rage, start playing it within my earshot.  Tequila Sunrise must be destroyed.  I will dedicate the rest of my natural days, and all my spectral wanderings in the afterlife as well, to extirpating that hateful song.

(Update: I have spent half an hour with Monica working on the problem.  She put me on hold - she said, for one or two minutes, just to check some “microsoft documents.” That was about ten minutes ago, Monica.  I thought we had something special going, I thought you were different from the others, that you’d take me where none of them have taken me before… I feel so cheap and dirty)

(second update: Monica is now typing up documentation for a work order to service my card reader - she promises me, “one thousand percent,” that I’ll get a call tomorrow to schedule a repair.  She was extremely solicitous in light of the multi-day ordeal I’ve been through, and her chirpy signoff on our telephone call was “... and you have a prosperous life ahead, sir.” Well okay, Monica, back atcha.  One thousand percent.  Pending that phone call coming through, of course...)

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So, the Assault Weapons ban is due to expire shortly.  Meantime, there’s a growing groundswell in DC about federal legislation, even to the level of a Constitutional amendment, to protect the institution of marriage from dilution at the hands (or other body parts) of homosexuals, be they male or female.  It seems to me that proponents of lifting the assault weapons ban should feel philosophically compelled to support gay marriage, but many of them seem not to.  Here’s what I mean: 

First, the assault weapon ban.  One informative source on the details of this legislation is found here.  In short, quoting that site, “(t)his law banned rifles that had detachable magazines and two or more of the following characteristics:
* A folding or telescoping stock
* A pistol grip
* A bayonet mount
* A flash suppressor, or threads to attach one (a flash suppressor reduces the amount of flash that the rifle shot makes. It is the small birdcage-like item on the muzzle of the rifle)
* A grenade launcher.”

Pretty plain, I’d say.  But then we look to this site for disturbing visions of a Constitution defiled by nervous nellies and victim wanna-bes:

“Assault weapons legislation not only disarms honest hunters and sportsmen while not further troubling the thug and his already illegal and far more deadly sawed-off 12-gauge shotgun, but it also cuts out the heart of the Second Amendment to our Constitution. The Second Amendment was enacted not to protect hunters and sportsmen, but to ensure that the government never had a monopoly of force it could use to oppress the citizenry.

“Those who argue that the authors of the Second Amendment did not intend to protect the right of ordinary American citizens to own military-style weapons must contend with the fact that the same Congress which passed the Second Amendment also passed the Militia Act of 1792. This law required every free male between the ages of 18 and 44 to own the same type of rifle that was used by soldiers in the Revolutionary War and to own ammunition as well. (...)

“The Supreme Court confirmed this in 1939. The Court stated in U.S. v. Miller:

‘The Militia comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense . . . [and that] when called for service, these men were expected to appear bearing arms supplied by themselves and of the kind in common use at the time.’

“As stated by a U.S. Senate Subcommittee in 1982:

‘There can be little doubt from [the Militia Act of 1792] that when the Congress and the people spoke of a “militia,” they had reference to the traditional concept of the entire populace capable of bearing arms, and not to any formal group such as what is today called the National Guard. The purpose was to create an armed citizenry, such as the political theorists at the time considered essential to ward off tyranny.’”

I think that most arguments for the propriety of letting the assault weapons ban sunset devolve on these sorts of second amendment grounds.  It might be argued - by me, for instance - that no one in government, or anywhere else, in the 18th century had envisioned a weapon that could fire as many as three rounds without being reloaded, and certainly not a weapon that could accurately fire 500 rounds in a minute the length of a football field or beyond.  The Revolutionary war was fought and won, not with big-clip high-caliber gas-cooled laser-aimed hand-held arsenals, but with muzzle-loading rifles and clumsy cannon that had next to no moving parts.  Most characteristics of assault weapons mentioned above are as far from flintlock technology as computers are from printing presses - what was in 1776 a simple and crude mechanism with very restricted capacity, is now a tool of unimaginable power, easily mass-produced and distributed.  But we’re arguing, it seems to me, that had the founders envisioned computers, they’d have wanted the first amendment to apply to them, and similarly, had they the prescience to foresee such weaponry as will soon be legalized, they would have endorsed it as a natural evolution of the original principal that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. 

So now we come to the question of gay marriage.  The constitution does not speak to this subject.  Furthermore, state laws against sodomy or infernal crimes or outrageous indecency or any of those sinister euphemisms rendered constitutional intrusion in to this sphere historically unnecessary.  Why bother outlawing the marriage, when the relationship itself was illegal?  These laws enforcing heterosexuality were part of the original framework of this country, even before the right to bear arms was enunciated. 

But that is not really so very important.  The Constitution is supposed to be a living document, responsive to the changing population it governs.  That’s why it was, and remains, so highly regarded, even when this country’s overall reputation is in tatters.  Every amendment (but one) has been enacted to protect a liberty (and the odd one out was the only one we repealed).  We have an honorable tradition of recognizing errors and correcting them; the very institution of the Bill of Rights was a landmark demonstration of that virtue.  Slavery, too, was part of our original moral framework, but we ultimately rejected it - in a Constitutional Amendment or three. 

There are those who think the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments were improvidently ratified; these people are so far outside my philosophy that I doubt they would be susceptible to reason at all.  But I think that most people believe personal liberty is properly considered a protected constitutional right and that the amendments guaranteeing that right only helped realize the founding ethic of our country: the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness.  These principals are not enshrined in any positive article of the Constitution (though one is obliquely referenced in the preamble); they have no legal weight.  But they are the words upon which our entire national ethic is based, and as such they are entitled to substantial deference and respect.  The second amendment, after all, is only a means to an end - our firearms are protected so that our lives and liberty can be protected.  And don’t forget the sportsmen, and their happiness.  They have a right to slaughter the animals over which we have dominion, if that makes them happy.  Right?

Well I don’t know if that’s right or not, but it seems to be a popular position among many who are, at the same time, preparing to amend the Constitution to prohibit gay marriage.  They say it’s a crime against nature, same as always.  Of course, the courts disagree.  They have ruled that the guarantee of personal liberty under the 4th and 14th amendments entitles us to do pretty much as we wish in our bedrooms.  And just as slavery and the notion of racial superiority was slowly discredited and anathametized until today only the pathetic and evil maintain such attitudes, so too is sexual preference slowly being recognized as a matter of personal liberty, and its criminalization is finally being seen for nothing more than the irrational cruelty it is.  Those laws are finally off the books; they were arbitrary and, at their root, a violation of the first amendment - they were laws respecting a religious establishment (of heterosexuality) and abridging freedom of personal (sexual) expression. 

So we accept the notion that the founders would want the Constitution to protect the right of modern sportsmen to buy assault weapons those founders could never have imagined, as a natural expansion of an existing right.  We recognize that the institution of marriage was clearly in existence at the time of the revolution, but the framers chose not to include any language concerning that institution in the Constitution.  The closest thing to a clause of the Constitution concerning the right to marry, is the Declaration of Independence - a beloved doctrine, even if it’s not enforceable in a court of law.  That Declaration is the basis for the rights we assert in the second amendment, a right we consider “expandable.” Similarly, it is the basis for the rights we assert in the 14th amendment - an amendment that explicitally disavowed some original constitutional language (such as Art I secs 2 and 9) when we expanded our concept of liberty to prohibit slavery.  It is consistent with these precedents to apply the principal of the expandable liberty to the right to get married. 

We recognize that laws relating to homosexuality on the books in 1776 would be ruled unconstitutional today; we do not prosecute people for such choices anymore, just as we do not permit discrimination or servitude on the basis of race or religion.  The founders, theoretically, would have supported the evolution of these rights to conform to our present circumstances, just as they would have supported the right to carry an extravagantly powerful weapon.  If so, an amendment to restrict homosexual activity or gay marriage would be inimical to the founders’ purposes to “secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity” - and not, we must note well, to our progeny.  And if you would contend that the founders never meant the right to personal liberty to expand to such a dangerous extreme, I challenge you to a duel - your muzzleloader versus my uzi.

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It came to me while showering
the lather purling off my flesh
I thought about it as I drove
while circumnavigating death
the notion came to mind as I
lay swaddled in my cozy bed
such brilliant shafts of gentle wisdom
never would escape my head
each time I chose to let it go
not to inscribe it anywhere
assured myself I would recall
forgot my memory’s impaired
I’d put off setting it in notes
till once I’d shaved, arrived, awoke
and sit here now, the notebook yawning
reconstructing trees from smoke.
The mote of genius I had cherished
all the world deserved to hear
original and entertaining:
temeritous, has disappeared.
A million blogs, a billion words
each soul an author in its way
I wish that they could read my mind
but I forgot what it would say.

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A few weeks ago I saw my 38L pull up with fresh green light while I was still far too far from the corner, much less the stop on the other side of the street.  An ordinary man would have given up, walked at a moderate pace and gotten the next bus whenever it decided to arrive.  I, anything but ordinary, made an instant commitment to catch that bus and ran hard, launched off at the curb, pounded my tootsies across six lanes of traffic and just made it to the bus as the yellow light turned to red.  I’d had to push the envelope and my comfort zone, but I’d made it and was well-pleased, having cut ten minutes of ugly fat off of my morning.  But then I had to wrestle my bag, my iPod, my wallet all around me, reorganizing myself for my trip… I like to have all these good things set up in advance but this time I’d had to plunge into my commute all undone.  I picked a spot to stand next to a tall and striking young woman in a sober business suit and began to fiddle with my accoutrements.  The woman near me looked familiar, but then, they all do - I’ve been riding that line for so long that I’m often sure that I recognize total strangers even when I’ve never seen them before.  I left the headphones on, knowing that my sense of recognition typically rings a false alarm. 

“Dan!” I heard it but didn’t believe I’d heard it right.  She then called me by my last name: “Mr. P~!” - a four-syllable gobstopper that only the indoctrinated can enunciate so trippingly.  I turned toward her smiling face, pulled off the ‘phones and responded with debonnaire suavitude: “Guh-dee guh-dee guh-dee drrrr guhdeeguhdee....” My mind was in foment. Was this the woman I’d met eighteen months ago at Nool and Deb’s wedding?  She did live in SF, but not near me, and she was tall but a bit darker, and what’s more, she would have been extremely unlikely to have remembered my name…

“It’s Jackie.  Jackie C~.  From bargaining?  LA?” That’s when the light went on.  I hadn’t thought of her initially because she’s supposed to be living 400 miles away - but as it turns out, she’s just transferred to the SF office and moved about 15 blocks up Geary away from me.  We had a good chat all the way in, rambling and chuckling, catching up, sharing a few common rants. 

It was great to run into her, better yet that one of the few people at my company whose company I actually enjoy will now occasionally cross my path, maybe even for a plate of chow or a bucket of brew.  But once the pleasant ride was too-quickly over and I got to my desk and sat down, genuinely pleased to have reestablished this connection, I realized that I was still a good half-hour of mental site-clearing away from being where I wanted to be, brain-wise.  Oh, whatever, what the hell.  So I’m incompetent for 40 minutes.  So what?  A good conversation is a much better bargain, and a friendship is so much more worthwhile than a calm and orderly mind. 

Postscript: just a few days ago I was sitting at my desk, contemplating the salad I’d made and stuffed into a plastic bowl for myself for lunch.  Instead of taking a formal lunch break I usually sit at my desk and shovel salad down my piehole, taking a few minutes to surf around, straighten my spine, and catch up with whatever household business I’d brought along with me for the day.  But, after close to a month of having not even seen Jackie in the halls, she emailed me and suggested we take our lunches outside and eat them by the wharf two blocks from the office.  I hastened to accede.  That particular day I’d forgotten to bring a hat, and as we supped and discussed all manner of meaningless stuff, great literature and herpitology and a little bit of gossip just to keep my hand in, my pale shiny pate got lightly crisped under the sun’s actinic rays.  Even so, it was a good deal.  The sunburn has since faded and been absorbed into my too-forgiving flesh, but the pleasure of conversation over lunch lingers still. 

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His adoration for young children has never exceeded the bounds of decency, canine or human, though on some occasions his restraint amazed me.  At one time I was involved in a campaign to build an animal shelter, and the organization wanted to use Cosmo in the video being produced to promote the project.  His job was to sit happily and quietly on a bench in my boss’s backyard while her two young children petted him.  The shoot went smoothly; the rest of the shooting was soon completed; the footage was edited and the video was screened within a few months.  I was in the audience for the first screening, and eagerly awaited Cosmo’s appearances: he both opened and closed the video, his gaping smile an irresistible enticement to donate heavily to the good cause. 

But what my boss and I seemed to be the only ones to notice, was how much he seemed to be enjoying his moment on screen.  The 11-year-old girl draped an arm over his shoulder, and the 9-year-old boy stroked the white patch under his chin where he likes to be stroked, and what appeared to be a bright pink lipstick burst cheerfully from the brown brindle fur of his lower abdomen and jiggled gently under the juvenile ministrations he was receiving.  The kids, it seemed, aroused the animal in Cosmo.  But he sat still and denied himself, left himself and the kids alone.  I truly respected, retroactively, his rectitude.  My boss didn’t know whether to be mortified or to burst out laughing, but one thing was sure to both of us: here was a dog who understood the basic social rules, and wanted to honor them. 

His love of his for the company of plush toys and his restraint among the kidlets matches nicely with his enormous stoic strength.  Once when playing “catch the pinecone” out on Pine Cone Hill, he barely yelped when he came down the wrong way and tore his ACL.  We didn’t even realize he’d hurt himself till we’d walked him back home, and even then he was still smiling and wagging through the pain.  Every time he’s hurt himself or gotten sick, he’s responded with the utmost restraint.  Bump him, poke him, step on his foot - he gets over it and forgives you.  He’s got a high pain threshold, and he’s very forgiving. 

That’s how we knew how seriously things were wrong that night he refused to go down the stairs to pee.  As an old dog, already 30% past his life expectancy, his joints were getting sore and tired; he’d been taking drugs and supplements to keep him going strong but suddenly, that night, he totally balked for the first time.  He wasn’t using his right rear leg at all and he looked worried.  We carried him down and then back up the stairs, and his condition steadily deteriorated over the course of the evening.  When he began to tremble with pain, we got him to an emergency clinic.

The details of the veterinary odyssey are complex and irrelevant, so suffice it to say that two nights later we were visiting him at a THIRD clinic, one with an orthopedic specialist and 24-hour care.  We’d taken Coz there earlier in the day for assessment and stabilization; he’d tolerated the trip only because he was so doped up.  However, he hadn’t been eating since he’d gotten there, so we visited that night to entice him.  We found him in a roomy run on a bed of fleece and blankets, hooked up to an IV and groggy as a vodka tester.  He was resting with a little friend, too: next to him lay a small stuffed cat, the size and shape of our tabbycat Rufus, similar to her (yes, her) in color and activity level as well.  We got him to eat a little peanut butter and they released him home to us with a raft of medications ranging from antibiotics to a syringe of morphine.  He doesn’t want to cry about what’s happened, that much is clear.  I wonder if he’d like a little doll to gnaw on while he recuperates, though.  I understand it’s good for him, and he’s good that way. 

Postscript: I wrote this shortly after Cosmo’s return from the overnight clinic; since then he’s been back to that clinic to have his stifle flushed and thereafter has been resting quietly.  With all due caution and in full recognition of the fact that I don’t know what is happening up in that creaky rheumatic old joint of his, he seems to be doing a lot better than we had been led to expect he might.  His follow-up visit is next week and we’ll play things by ear till then, but I am hopeful that between us all pulling for him, he may yet have a pretty good recovery. 

But as of Sunday night or Monday it’ll be time to return to the Chucklehut and its previously randomly-generated programming.  The Cosmohut has done all it can.  See you next week, I hope, with a perspective on the world that features Cosmo’s injured knee in the past, and a bunch of weird crap coming up ahead.  You know, like it used to be. 

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He also wore bike shoes, and a bike helmet that he did not remove.  Based on the way Jon described it to me later, I can see it in my mind’s eye: Jon cautiously opening the door, clattering robot-like toward the dog - who does not recognize him, feels anxious, threatened, yet badly in need of a trip outside… Jon takes up the slipchain and Cosmo backs away nervously, so Jon begins to chase Cosmo around the house, kitchen to dining to living to foyer to kitchen again; Jon is getting frustrated; Coz is getting worked up and more and more uncomfortable and anxious.  Jon takes a sword of Damocles to the Gordian knot and disastrously solves the crisis by opening the door and letting Coz run down the stairs without chain or leash.  Jon chases him down, finds him at the iron gate, desperate to get outside, terrified of the android chasing him down the hallway with a slipchain and leash in his gloved hands.  In shame and fear Coz begins to pee before Jon can wrestle the chain over the dog’s head; Jon, mortified, revolted, opens the gate to let Coz just run across the street, where he always goes, planning to get the chain on him after the dog was empty and, he hopes, a little calmer....

Coz bolted.  He ran down the street and disappeared; Jon knew not where.  He searched the neighborhood, by foot, on his bike.  For an hour.  For two.  By this point, I, at work, figured I’d check in, see how the relief break went.  Jon’s voice on the phone was deflated, depresed.  He told me the story; I told him I’d go home to take up the search.  For two more hours I trolled the central ‘mond, all Cosmo’s favorite haunts, in Golden Gate Park and the Presidio, at the Mountain Lake Park goose pen, among the piles of rotting garbage at the fish markets and the cloistered dingles of the greenbelt where the itinerant relieved themselves…. 

I came up empty.  The next step was to enlist more help - there were nearly 20 of us in the ‘hood I could tap in a crisis, even though Kel was away.  I returned home, starting to taste desperation at the back of my mouth.  With deep anxiety I surveyed the options.  Things felt very quiet.  Too quiet.  Damn. 

The phone rang.  It was Kel, just checking in.  Perfect timing - just as the crisis became a crisis, I had to conceal it.  I tried to sound breezy, nonchalant; I failed.  She knew immediately something was wrong, but she was twenty miles away with a big blindfold on - there was nothing she could do but let me play it out.  A wise woman, she knew that I’d be unable to keep up for long any charade that was making me so tense.  She’d just keep her concerns to herself till she had more information.  And then, of course, no more than ten seconds after I picked up the phone, Jon showed up outside the house again, calling up to me.  “Dude, any luck?  Is Cosmo back yet?”

“Kel, hold on a second, dear,” I patiently cooed into the phone, then I covered the receiver with my hand and called back down.  “Dude, she’s on the phone now.  She doesn’t know.  Gimme a second.” Back to Kel on the phone: “Hi, honey, I’m back.”

“So, what don’t I know yet?”

“Oh.  So, you heard that, did you?”

“Yes I heard that, what’s going on?”

I explained the situation.  She took it as well as could be expected.  We coordinated a plan and I hung up with a sense of grim fatalism. 

I put my head in my hands and tried to marshall my thoughts.  My head was spinning and I was getting really worried; anything could happen to such a big handsome boy out on the mean city streets and I just wanted a moment to regain my equinamity.  I listened to the pulse in my ears and tried not to think of the worst. 

Mere minutes later, Evi called.  She lived ten scant blocks up Geary in a stick Victorian with a porch.  “Hey, Danny,” she said, “I’ve got your dog.  Did you know he was out?” Her words were like oxygen to a K-2 climber for me.  I sighed from the soles of my feet.  Evi shared her story: she’d gotten home fifteen minutes prior with her own dog, Coz’s best friend Clyde.  They’d dropped off some bags and gone a block up Geary to the grocery for a few minutes.  When they got back, Coz was waiting for them on their porch, resting sphinx-like in the late-afternoon sun.  I picked him up immediately and got him right home.

It had been four hours he’d been wandering the streets.  I would love to know what he’d done in that time, if he’d had secret adventures he’d never be able to share with us, the path he’d traveled, the things he’d seen.  But it seems he’d chosen to go only a short distance, to a friends’ house to wait in seclusion for them.  With the whole world open to him for exploration and discovery, he chose to stay close to home and to seek only the company of his best buddies.  That’s a wise choice that I have tried from that day forth to emulate.

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Once at a party where several professional “dog people” had come with their pets, Coz was lounging respectfully with two other dogs - a little one and a pit mix with a big attitude.  That’s not to imply she was a bad dog, she wasn’t in the least - but she had a strong personality and plenty of energy.  At one point she tried to take a toy from Cosmo.  He remonstrated with a bark, she bared her teeth and lunged to nip his jowls.  He simply opened his mouth and caught hold of her head, held it firmly but not maliciously in the vice of his jaws for a few moments - till someone poured beer on his head and he released her.  The other dog’s head swole up a little but he had been careful not to injure her - except for her pride, which was severely bruised.  She was removed from the party, both for her recuperation and for her self-preservation.  Snapping at Cosmo?  That’s the canine equivalent of getting a 72-hour hold for being a risk to one’s own health and safety. 

Another time I was walking him in the park when I stopped for some reason to use a payphone in the museum concourse.  I was deep in conversation as the early morning park attended to its business - tai chi classes, arriving schoolkids on field trips pouring out of yellow busses, lone musicians scattered about practicing variously… and a gardener with a rake walking briskly toward a garbage can next to the phone where I was speaking.  Coz did not like his attitude one bit.  He didn’t see a gardener going to throw away a handful of trash – he saw an interloper, a stranger with a weapon and some kind of hidden agenda.  Who was this guy?  What was he carrying?  Why was he coming at us so purposefully?  He had to be stopped.  Coz could have taken his leg clean off but instead only offered the canine equivalent of a shot across the bow: the tiniest pinprick of a bite, just to let him know he was violating our territory.  Coz went right through his thick workpants to place a small clean scratch, barely breaking the skin, on the gardener’s calf.  It happened in a flash, almost silently.  The gardener wisely retreated; I reached down to stop the dog but he’d already stopped on his own, his work done.  The gardener’s wound was miniscule; it healed quickly and without complications.  A few days later the City Attorney’s office contacted us but declined to pursue the matter.  They knew they were no match for Cosmo.

Then again, more typically of his personality, was the time we took him to Fort Funston as a young dog.  The place teemed with dogs off-leash, coursing over iceplanted palisades, dogs of every description and temperament.  At some point Coz joined a group of dogs playing with some shabby toy and wound up face to face with a good-sized goldie or some such with an alpha complex.  The boys postured; Cosmo growled and snapped; the other dog lunged, barking hoarsely, and bit Coz in the ear.  We both retrieved our dogs and the other’s owner berated us angrily: Coz had attacked hers, dangerous mutt, irresponsible ownership… We pointed out that Coz had 30 pounds and several inches of mouth over her dog; if he’d wanted blood he’d have taken it.  Rather, it was Cosmo who bled, as her dog had escalated the conflict and Coz had declined to take the bait.  Bloody but not defeated, Coz had clearly won that fight as well.

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It all happened, as they say, in slow motion.  Coz woofed, deep and loud, and creation stood petrified.  All that remained in motion were the dog and the microbus.  Cosmo began to charge up the hill, loping heavily, as much an ox as a dog, a dangerous enthusiasm having taken possession of him. 

The hippie saw it coming. His vehicle was moving past us, but not quickly enough.  Coz’s thundering gait veered out toward the road.  The dog was closing the gap quickly, stretching out his stride, his jowls flapping, his fangs glinting, his face a broad mad grin. 

Cosmo was still accelerating; the microbus had no more to give.  I saw the hippie lean over across the passenger seat and try to roll up the window, his long bushy hair bouncing as he desperately turned the crank.  I called after Coz but knew it to be less than useless.  He was obviously on some sort of mission.  He pulled up alongside his quarry and left the sandy parkland for the blacktop of the street. 

He leapt.  The hippie, still working on the window, gaped in horror.  Cosmo’s head slammed squarely into the passenger door, making a sound I felt in my chest fifty yards away.  He bounced cleanly off the van, which was not appreciably slowed or thrown off course by this vicious and unprovoked attack.  Regaining his feet, Cosmo turned and started back toward me, his smile ecstatic and his stubby tail wagging happily.  The car drove on up the hill to safety. 

Coz didn’t care.  He’d given chase, caught his prey, and left it with a nice dent in the door.  He had brought it down, shown it who was alpha on that hill.  He was so proud of himself as he trotted back.  And that’s the last time we romped on that particular hillside.  Neither he nor the rest of the neighborhood were ready to have that much fun ever again.  And, thankfully, we never did.

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I found out anyway.  He was several years old and we were playing off-leash down in a forested gully in the Presidio where we often went to chase pinecones and tennis balls.  We’d been at it for some time when Coz picked up his head in a distinctively different way.  “What is it, boy?” I was thirty yards down the hill from him; I knew as he turned and charged that there was no way I could ever catch up with him. 

He galloped 100 yards up the steep rugged path and out over the top, which debouched into a good-sized hillside paved out into a parking lot.  Four or five teenaged boys were standing out on this lot practicing skateboard skills on the steady gentle grade.  One of the boys had just started a run down the hill.  Coz quickly caught up with him.  Really, there was no contest.

I had finally gotten up out of the gully in time to have a clear view of what Coz did when he finally caught himself a skateboarder: he charged at the boy and removed him from the board with a solid two-paw chuck to the torso.  The boy’s feet left the board; he landed heavily on the pavement with an expression of understandable consternation on his face.  The skateboard flipped over, resting on its face, its wheels spinning silently and impotently. 

The dog stopped, braced himself, and looked around - at the boy, at the board, at the world - with deep resentment and suspicion, and maybe a tiny bit of satisfaction.  I approached the tableaux of boy, board and dog, all frozen in place for their own reasons.  I took Coz’s collar in hand and attached the leash, corrected him vigorously, and walked him briskly home. 

I never again let him play unfenced and off-leash after that.  Those skateboarders pop up when you least expect them, you know.  And even now, in these difficult days as an old man with much pain and medication to overcome, when he hears that low rumbling sound, he grumbles and puffs and tries to protect us from it.  It’s not that the skateboarders make me feel threatened, but Cosmo’s response sure makes me feel safe. 

Thanks - many many thanks - to all of you who have been concerned about the dog.  He is starting to walk on his injured leg a little, and is more comfortable and happier than he’s been in a while.  Recuperation is slow and ongoing but all of us here appreciate your support and good wishes.

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90 minutes of Maxell’s finest epitaxial engineering, packed to the ferric oxide leaders with Stevie Ray Vaughn and Double Trouble (Texas Flood, and Couldn’t Stand the Weather).  We liked the music.  We listened to it often.  That’s mostly why we left it out - in the case, properly labeled, but there for the taking, too tempting for a mostly good dog to forbear.  When we got home we found nothing left of it but a few sharp shards of plastic on the floor.  The dog seemed okay, though.  We chastised ourselves for our poor housekeeping and went on with our lives. 

But over the next few days Coz started looking sickly.  He lost energy and enthusiasm.  He ate less and less, then not at all.  He seemed to strain to relieve himself on our walks, to less and less avail.  He looked sad.  We thought it was indigestion.  We tried to treat it at home.

Finally, after his infirmity had slowly increased over time, he came to us in the night and, with an apology in his eyes, threw up - not kibble, but a black tarry mess that scared Kel and me into immediate action.  We got him down the stairs, lifted him into the car (he was so ill that he didn’t even seem to mind it), and drove to an emergency clinic.  He was admitted immediately and we waited several hours for the diagnosis and prognosis.  Diagnosis: perforated and blocked intestines - the tape case had shattered into daggers that pierced and sliced him from the inside; the tape itself had balled up and knotted all though his tract.  Surgery was the only option.  The prognosis was questionable.  In other words, they told us, he might not make it. 

Surgery was performed the next day at a full-service veterinary clinic two blocks from the emergency room, a clinic with an excellent staff but no overnight services - so every day for almost a week we had to get to the day clinic just as they closed, bundle Coz into the car, and drive him two blocks.  Every morning we brought him back. Each day his recovery seemed stronger. 

We saw the first good sign on the first day we came to shuttle him - when the tech led him out to us, he looked weak and was staggering, hardly able to keep his feet, but when he saw us his little stumpy tail started wagging – barely, but perceptibly.  He looked glad to see us as he welcomed us to his new temporary home. That’s when we knew he would be okay.  Soon, he stopped bleeding from his hindquarters.  He started grinning when we arrived to move him. Eventually he was ready to hop right into our car when we came for him, and the medics released him from treatment.  He’d survived yet another brush with death. He wasn’t just a good boy, he was a tough boy.  Tough and lucky.  Just like a dog should be. 

And despite his demonstrated excellent taste in music, that was the last time he tried to eat any of it.

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The next day we were gearing up to work with the single biggest prize of the thanksgiving leftovers - a turkey carcass, spangled with savory meat and rich with marrow and flavor.  We intended to drop it in a stockpot and simmer it until it was soup, so we hauled it out of the fridge and set it on the counter.  The phone rang.  Who it was, the nature of the emergency, are no longer remembered or important.  The only part that is still worth the telling is that we had to leave - and in a hurry.  Lights were shut off, the radio turned on to keep the dog company, and we bolted.

Coz had slyly kept a very low profile as we left.  We’d had no idea what he was planning in that thick heavy head of his.  But he’d somehow contrived that we’d leave him with a carcass and a few hours of solitude.

I only wish I could have seen him, seen the triumph in his eyes as he somehow got hold of that carcass on the counter and pulled it to the floor.  And once it was on the floor, maybe it’s better that we didn’t see him gorge on it.  Seeing the aftermath was enough.

At first, when we got home, we didn’t see the dog.  This caused us no small concern - he should have been at the door to greet us.  We went to the kitchen and saw carnage.  Carnage - and an empty roasting pan.  It had been a big bird, maybe 20 or 25 pounds.  There had been stuffing, too, and onions… what we saw was the roasting pan on the floor in a shallow sea of crumbs of meat and bone. It wasn’t hard to follow the trail of grease, bone, meat and gluttony out into the dining room and thence to the living room, to the narrow space between the back of the old brown davenport and the front window. 

There was coz, lying on his back, his feet helplessly cocked in the air.  And there was the carcass, distending his gut.  Coz looked over at us, dolefully but with deep satisfaction.  Bits of turkey meat clung to his fur and face and carpeted the hardwood floor where he lay.  The remaining bones were mere splinters; the remaining food, mere specks.  Really, there was almost nothing left.  His tongue rolled out of his mouth like a cartoon tongue.  I’ve never seen a dog so uncomfortable, yet so happy.  He’d eaten the whole thing. Though we’d deprived him of the celebratory fowl it for an entire party, we couldn’t protect it from him forever.  And we couldn’t protect him from himself either - though, despite his painful-looking bloat, I don’t think he held it against us.

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But we had quite a ways to go before we reached our destination - a campground just west of Mono Lake, an area where massive mountains rise up from the desert plain with startling suddenness.  Our first stop was the lakeshore itself.  The lake is large, but not huge, and the water was slick with alkali.  White fluffy towers poked up out of the water, made of calcium that bubbled up from the lakebed.  The sky was very wide and blue and the air was so clear we could hear things from miles away. 

Just south of the lake was an old volcano where we stopped to hike.  Cosmo and Kel and I scrambled up the steep cone, several hundred feet above the rocky desert floor.  At the lip of the cone, we all looked down into the caldera.  Its walls were shiny with black obsidian, jumbled into rocks and in broad tall walls like glass cliffs.  I wanted to see more and climbed down; Kel and the dog stayed behind.  After a few minutes I heard deep booming woofs.  Cosmo was on the alert.  He was telling another hiker, innocently following our trail, “Get Out!  Go Away!  This is OUR mountain!” It was funny, except that if I hadn’t known this dog myself, he’d probably have scared me. 

Later that day we got to our campground.  As it was April, no one else was there and we had the place to ourselves, surrounded by tall pine trees and wise old boulders.  We set up the tent, cooked some supper, and fed Cosmo, and then we all got into the small green tent for the night. 

In the middle of the night, I heard the wind pick up and a soft scraping against the roof of the tent. Too quiet for rain - I figured it for snow as I fell back to sleep. 

We woke up the next morning in the cozy tent, very warm and well-rested.  As I started to stir, Kel woke up; as we both starting chatting, the dog roused himself and started strolling among us, licking our faces.  We supposed he wanted to go out, so we unzipped the door.  Outside, the dry brown forest floor had been turned pure white - several inches of snow blanketed the ground.  Coz looked outside, then back to Kel and me, still in our sleeping bags.  His face was one huge grin, and then suddenly he was gone, having burst out of the tent like a balloon blown up and then released.  He had disappeared - though we peered out the tent flaps, we couldn’t see him in the narrow swath of forest visible to us. 

A few moments later we saw him briefly as he ran from left to right in front of us, fairly deep in the woods.  Then, again, silent quiet stillness.  A few more moments later he had reversed course, running from right to left across the small sliver of forest we could see.  For several minutes that’s all we saw of him - running from side to side, just for a second or two before we lost view of him again.  Eventually he poked a snow-frosted nose into the tent, panting happily.  “Come on, guys!,” he was saying.  “You’ve got to check this out!” And that’s how we learned that Cosmo likes to play in the snow.  I regret that it didn’t happen more often.  It was a hell of a lot of fun to watch.

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Slowly we coaxed him in.  He perched uneasily on the back seat; this car hadn’t been designed with big dogs in mind.  We got in, smiled and petted our new buddy, and hit the ignition.

He was already drooling.  Almost instantly upon putting the car in reverse, we heard a sound, as if the transmission had been mounted right in the car with us and was clunking between stripped gears.  It was, of course, the dog.  The sides of his tight belly were hunching in and his neck was shooting out.  “Ka-chump.  Ka-chump.  Ka-chump.” We could feel the heavy noise lifting something from deep inside him.  We had barely started moving when the hurl began. 

The smell of used kibble filled the car instantly.  Afterwards he was as apologetic as he had been efficient in unloading his contents onto the car seat next to him.  He looked very sorry indeed.  We had to stop and scoop it out with plastic bags on our hands. 

This, then, is how we learned that Cosmo got carsick.  Even though we eventually learned to spot the warning signs and usually got him out to the curb in time, and even though after three or four years it stopped happening altogether, the car seats, sadly, never really recovered. 

Addendum: A few years later I took a pretty bad fall on my bike.  I hurt my hip and couldn’t drive for a while.  Kel helped me got into the car but I had to have the seat almost fully reclined to accommodate my swollen glute.  Once particular day Coz came along to enjoy the ride, perched in the back seat of our small sedan.  He rarely booted in the car anymore by that point but he still drooled buckets of viscous good whenever he was in the car.  As I reclined back into the seat on which he sat, needless to say, I was thoroughly glazed from eyebrows to the crown of my head by his massive jowls.  I’ve never felt so close to him, before or since.  And I’m okay with that.

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We knew it would be had to find the right dog.  We weren’t sure what the ‘right dog’ even was.  But we knew a few things.  He - or she - would have short hair, would not need too much exercise, and I wouldn’t have to bend over to pat his - or her - head.  And his name - even if it was a her - would be Cosmo.  We didn’t know anybody named Cosmo and we thought it was about time that we did.

One day Kelly called me from her volunteer gig at the SPCA.  There was a dog she wanted me to meet.  I don’t recall the exact conversation but the gist of it was along these lines: “He’s very sweet and cheerful.  He only has a little stump of a tail but he wags it so hard his whole body wiggles.  They don’t know what he is for sure but they’re calling him a mastiff mix.  He’s almost a year old, 75 pounds.  He started at the City shelter, but he didn’t get adopted in time and they are supposed to get rid of him.  But they can’t – he’s too good a dog.  The SPCA isn’t supposed to have dogs like him around because he’s big and scary, but everybody here went over there to check him out and fell in love with him – the president, the hearing dog trainer, the training instructor, everybody.  One behaviorist let him take a cookie out of her mouth – she doesn’t do that with most shelter dogs.  But this one’s really a sweetheart.  He just looks like trouble.”

“Will I have to bend over to pet his head?”

“See for yourself.  He’s a big boy, though.”

This all sounded good to me so I agreed to meet the dog.  I went to the shelter and Kelly took me to some offices where she had me wait while she brought him up.

“This is Bosco,” she told me as the huge brown head burst into the room.  The body wasn’t small but the head was just enormous.  His jaw was wide and heavy and his mouth was broad and deep, and his enormous pink tongue was flopping all over his wobbly black jowls.  His smile seemed to wrap all the way around his head. 

“Bosco, huh?,” I asked as the massive head and the strong energetic body to which it was attached started brushing up against my leg.  He was trying to sniff me, lick my hand, and rub his shoulder on me all at once.  Kelly flicked his leash and told me, “He’ll need some training, of course, and he’s a little tense around other dogs.  Also, if we want him, we have to agree that they can visit us for 18 months, unannounced, to make sure we’re treating him right.”

His eyes were warm and friendly, and his coat had the wonderful brindle pattern of polished wood.  I reached down to pet his head as he sat on his still-wagging hindquarters next to me.  Without bending, I easily petted his head and scratched behind his ears.  “I have one condition,” I told Kelly.  “We change the name to Cosmo.”

“Oh, that’s a given,” she replied.  We had found our dog.  He seemed like a good one.

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A month or so ago I went to my dentist, a serious professional who’s been treating me for about three years.  She does a good job and she doesn’t hurt me more than it seems is actually necessary.  She is pleasant and non-invasively chatty and I do feel better after visiting her.  But last month our relationship seems to have evolved.  She had my jaws gaping as she scraped the tartar from my incisors (I can’t believe they make sauce out of that stuff) and checked me for periodontitis, when suddenly she asked me, “You lose weight?”

“Yeah, a little, I guess.”

“You look better.  You work out?  Run?”

“Yeah, a little.  And yoga.”

“That’s good.  You look better.” Then she refocused the glaring overhead mantis-eye light into my corneas and resumed spelunking among my tonsils. 

This exchange was, till recently, no more than a curiosity to me.  She was making conversation so that I wouldn’t squirm too much as she sanitized my oral cavity. “You like football.  You wear cowboy boots.  You look better.” It was nothing to think twice about, even though I guess I did a little.  Still, it wasn’t long before I just let it fade away like all the other meaningless conversations that one has in the course of a busy month. 

But a few days ago Kelly visited this dentist for the first time.  She needed a dentist and I was perfectly happy with Dr. T, who was in the neighborhood and took our insurance - there was no reason to bother looking around elsewhere.  So Kel is in the chair, mouth agape, tools flashing and clashing in her mouth, and the doctor reminds her, “Your husband lost weight.”

“Yeah.”

“He looks much better.”

“.”

This has now gone from being pleasant conversation to the level of a professional diagnosis.  I must have looked pretty crappy before, for my dentist to see my shame through that big paper-towel bib they make you wear.  Someone who spends her days digging food out from between ill-tended teeth noticed how sickly and infirm I was.  And then, six months later, I looked better - better enough to make an impression.  I hope she put it in my chart.  And that I can get a copy of it.  You know, just for my records.  In case I get in an accident, I want them to know I used to look even worse.

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