Today, this pup, my best friend, my shoulder, my anchor, my ride or die homie for 13 years couldn't get out of bed. I can't help but to tearily thank him for the freedom he has provided me. Tomorrow, he'll follow me out the door to work as he has always done, but today we will lay, rest and reflect. "And the world will not discourage you from operating on your default-settings, because the world of men and money and power hums along quite nicely on the fuel of fear and contempt and frustration and craving and the worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom.....But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default-setting, the “rat race” — the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing.” -David Foster Wallace
Most mornings I walk up to a tapping on the sliding glass door from this old hen who'd rather be eating sooner then later. Today she made it half way. It was a privilege to bring her in, feathers missing and scabbed, and it's a privilege to provide a peaceful place for her to spend what is more then likely last of her days.
