Preciousness.

So I just got back from the vet.  I am not a perfect pet owner.  And my dogs are certainly not people.  They live outside and do what they want.  They sleep on our front porch and bark at night just to be sure we know they’re keeping the forest creatures at bay.  I pet them daily and they greet me morning and evening.  I don’t really play with them.  I work a lot, but when we’re working in the yard, they’re with us.  If one of them were to run off and not return, I wouldn’t really be devastated.

But this morning the vet told me they both have heart worms.  It is a recent infection.  It’s fatal if untreated and she said that even now if they’re out running about there is a chance they could just drop dead.

And so two hours ago they were just dogs I was taking to get rabies shots, but now I face not only the dilemma of lacking $1400, I am also left considering why it is that we hold life to be so precious.

Completely unrelated to this little story is the movie currently playing on the screen, “Blood Diamond.”  I’ve already gotten teary eyed a few times... not the first time I’ve seen it.  I know how it ends and I hate it.  The romantic in me wishes the love story ended happily ever after, but it does not.

For those of you who catch the reference, theology aside, I wish love would win in the end.  Life is precious.  I’ve known a number of judgmental, self-righteous hypocrites over the years.  Hell, I’ve been one myself and still have relapses.  

No human is dirty.  There are no untouchables.  And I know I’ll make myself a hypocrite a million times over before I’m dead and gone for having made this statement.

Why is life precious?  Why do I suddenly have a burden for these dogs that I did not previously have?  They’re just dogs, right?  I have problems of my own.  Moral, ethical, philosophical dilemmas that they know nothing of or ever will.

I’m tired.

Released.

Do you remember the Shawshank Redemption?  There was an old man who had been in prison for decades.  Finally, he had served his time.  He was released and tried to reenter society.  It was not long before he hanged himself in his small apartment.  It was tragic!  I remember crying hard the first time I saw this when I was younger.  I didn’t really understand the depths of my emotions then and I don’t know if I do even now.

I was recently released from a voluntary imprisonment.  It would have been a decade this July, but I received an early release.  I was floundering, totally adrift at sea for about a week.

I’ve adjusted a little since then, but I still have a “lost” feeling about me.  It’s like I know there is some question to be answered, I just haven’t discovered the question yet?

I haven’t written in some time and that may not be good.  But what is good?  

Freedom is much more frightening than enslavement.  You have no choice as a slave and are not allowed much room for error by your master.  The freed man has choice and great room for error.  The slave has goals set for him.  The free man must set his own goals.

What are my goals?  Am I even free to set them?

Recently, I’ve made many new friends.

Years ago I wrote a poem about my friendships.  It was a grey poem, fated and gloomy.  It was about the transitory and fatal quality of my own friendships.  I do not know if it was pessimistic dribble or some ill-fated prophecy of times to come.

We are told we must have friends.  We must be social.  Being lonely and alone is bad.  But what is bad?  What if it’s good for me to be alone?  What if there are those of us who are designed to be desert dwellers for some time and then meet our end?  

I’m reading a book write now that I am enjoying, but not because of some derived ecstatic pleasure.  I feel that some question may result from it and thus my enjoyment.  I’ve never thought much about creativity.  Now I am beginning to.  Am I supposed to be creative?  If I am, then how, where, why?

What about all the systems I am in?  Will they permit it?

I’ve always reckoned that to be creative you must be a genius, public, prominent, and displayed, which I certainly am not.  But maybe there is private creativity that will never be appreciated by anyone.  Maybe creativity is simply being fully and completely oneself.  

I don’t have answers because I don’t even know the questions.

I have a new friend.  And we chatted creativity recently, briefly.  I’ve always written myself off as being uncreative, but maybe it’s some type of self-indictment that I’ve not been fully myself.  I do not want to be someone else, I want to be me.  I don’t want to be told who I am, but rather I want to be myself.  I want to be insanely me.

But you know what?  I want to be insanely me with others who are insanely themselves!  I think the only reason to be a desert dweller is because you’re the only one insane enough to be yourself in a society of men who are sanely others.

I’m suspicious of people who might claim their own insanity, but I’m not sure they are, I think they may be self-deluded impostures.  

Perhaps I’ve just said nothing.

At least nothing has now been released.