Dog Balls



Notes from today’s WALK (as inspired by Eckhart Tolle, and the inspired Dana Gould Hour podcast)...

Here’s how I know I’m making progress. When I was younger, like a hundred hack comics before me, I envied dogs’ ability to lick themselves. I would think, “Do you know how happy I would be if I could do that!” 

Now I’m older and I no longer envy this about dogs. I envy that while they’re licking themselves, they’re not thinking about the laundry that needs folding. They don’t lap blissfully at their testicles while wondering if the car needs an oil change or if the rejection letter they're expecting is in the mailbox. Dogs live entirely in the moment. They are fully and only conscious of what they are doing that second! Nothing else ever creeps in. 

That is what I'm working on. I practice turning off the ego voice; the self-judging, shame-based story about not being good enough, not doing enough, not working hard enough. When that voice is silenced and I am in the moment, I feel fleetingly at peace.

I am getting older. My bones ache even when I exercise. My muscles become less limber despite a stretching routine. I am farther away than I've ever been from being able to lick myself. But I think I’m getting closer to being fully present to it if I could. That’s progress.

~

Which reminds me of a tired but wonderful old joke. Two guys are staring at a dog that is licking himself. One guy turns to the other guy and says, “Man, I wish I could do that.” The other guy says, “Maybe if you scratch him behind the ear, he’ll let you.”

I’ll be here all week folks. Don’t forget to tip your waitress.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

If I Told Me I Wouldn’t Believe Me

When I was a freshman in college, I took a class that covered, among other things, the way human beings measure the passing of time. One method, which in my dimmed memory was called something like “astronomical time” or “real time,” referred to measures of time that are rooted in celestial events. For example, a day is a day because that’s how long it takes the earth to revolve on its axis one time. A year is a year because that’s how long it takes the earth to travel its orbit around the sun. Long before there were people, there were days and years. Some things happen whether or not we’re paying attention. There is another kind of time. I wish I could remember what the professor called it. Human time? Invented time? These are the measures of time that humans create. Epochs and eras, ages and empires, months and hours. Perhaps they are not quite arbitrary, but they are most certainly invented. We think that a year has to have 12 months, but it doesn’t. A day could just as easily b...
Read more

Growth Mindset

            “So what do you think we’ll do today?”             My son asks this question frequently.             His grandfather sits at the round table with the checkerboard pattern. He methodically works the New York Times crossword puzzle, periodically throwing clues in H’s direction.             “Winnie-the-Pooh catchphrase?”             “Uhm…honey?”             “Eight letters.”             “Uhm…”             “We’ll come back to it.”             H circles the table peripatetically...
Read more

The Yearbook

There are many things to say about my middle school. So many factoids, experiential leavings, tragicomic anecdotes. Like my math teacher, the deaf World War II veteran who made us write lines when he saw our lips moving. Or the English teacher who sent me to the vice-principal’s office for publicly correcting her spelling of “greatful.” Or the rampaging flocks of seagulls that laid siege to the yard during lunchtime (we had no cafeteria), stealing sandwiches from unguarded six graders and shit bombing a student or two per day. The school was located across the street from a sewage treatment plant. We once had to evacuate because of a chlorine gas leak. It was designed by the same architect who designed San Quentin. The dark tinted windows allowed us to see out, but no one could see in. My town was a progressive one, even more so in the mid 1980s. Yet I somehow recollect that the majority of our black classmates were in the same homeroom, assigned to a husband-and-wife teach...
Read more