Your Man For Fun In Rapidan: An Index

Every entry from Your Man For Fun In Rapidan: An index of links (Updated 3-4-2020):

Alchemy. Angels, guild of. Animal Collective, as source of tension in therapist's office. Animals, speaking. Aristotle, extracts from History of Animals. Anthology of American Folk Music, discovery of. Apes, as aviators. Associative disorder, a case study. Automobiles, used. Bananas, the airbrushing of. Barber, Samuel, Adagio for Strings. Barbers, in Livingston, Montana. Beard, inhabited by fairies. Belief, a personal inventory. Bells, a Christmas story. Bergen, Jergen King. Birds, bleak; mysterious locutions of; prehistoric; speaking Farsi; history of talking. Bobagorus, from The Dialogues of. Bond, James; only a girl. Bones, waltzing. Books, black; fifty favorite. Boon, D. Bridges, burning. Bubbles, as meteorological event. Burger King, and human trafficking. Butterflies, the shooting of. Cannibalism, on trial. Carnap, Big Leonard. Carp, hour of the.  Catcher in the Rye, an allusion to. Cattle, drowning. Cheese, craving. Chickens, hit. Children, three in Texas. Conductors of the Moving World, a mathematical breakdown. Contentment, the slow dazzle of. Country and Western, fifty greatest songs. Dead people, the singing of. Death, before birth. Desire, claiming. Devotion, unhappy. DiGrippa, Silvio; Agents of Contagion. Dog, blind; private remarks to. Dogs, on payphones. Dream Motel, official lodging for convention of thwarted dreamers. Dreams, broken. Dying, the; what they do. Elephant, man who married an. Elf, aborted. Eminem, overheard. End Times, surrender of the Almighty; possible reconsideration. Exploration, an incident from the history of. Eyeglasses, confusion regarding. Ferry, Bryan. Fire, breathing of; buildings consumed by. Fireflies, falling in love with swallows. Fletcher, Galen. Forever in Bluejeans, gravestone inscription. Fortune cookies, empty. Free, there ain't no. Garden, abandoned. Gettin' Jiggy Wit It, a soundtrack to one summer. Goats, talking. God, as cinematographer; birth of. Golf, miniature. Grasshoppers, in dollhouse. Gratitude, an expression of. Great Maybe Whatever, a plea to. Grief, keening. Hamburgers, the business of. Harpo, Slim. Harps, a sanctuary of. Heart, at rest and in motion; pea-picking. Heaven, garbage disposal in; the suburbs of. Help, a cry for. Henley, Don. High jumping, the eroticism of. Highlights magazine. History of Human Futility, museum. History, smothered by. Horns, French. Horses, blind; flying. House of Coates, self-promotion surrounding the release of. Hypnagogia, a brief personal history. Imagination, stretching of. Insomnia, a possible cause. Islands, in the North Sea. Jar, voice in a. Jazz, groupies. Jigsaw puzzle, unfinished. Jonah, the rational challenges of.  Keegen Bash, the; a reminiscence. Kitchens, an exercise in forensics. Ladder, as clumsy metaphor. Landfill, at the bottom of the day. Last Picture Show, a lament. Lawn statuary. Librarian, disappointed in love. Life, dear. Lightning, heat. Lions, a choir of. Loneliness, and disgust. Loveliness, the difficulty of. Magi, in Soho. Magic Eight Ball, desire for the 'Yes' answer. Make believe, an inquisition regarding. Malls, as factors in depressive episodes. Manistique, anecdotal material regarding. Meat, as community; pining. Memories, pleasant. Mermaid, in a bathtub. Mermaids, obese. Messengers, epiphanic. Michigan, Lathrop; in photography. Milkman, dysfunctional. Mind, state of. Minnesota, nice. Monastery, bells. Monk, burning. Monks, singing. Morrison, Lester B. Motion sickness, terminal. Mountains, the loneliness of. Munch, Beauteous. Murray's Suave Outlet, pioneering blog. Museum, of sound. Nabokov, Vladimir. National Poetry Month. Never (never, never). News, local. Nightmares, an inventory of; as supreme entertainments. Noise, joyful. Osteoporosis, moral. Otherness. Paradise, a bestiary. Paranoia, religious. Pessoa, Fernando. Pandora, her unfortunate marriage. Philosophy, the consolations of. Photography, an education. Photomart. Pianos, and colonialism. Poetry, about birds. Presley, Elvis; in his underwear. Professionals, so-called. Puppetry, sound advice regarding. Puppets, and homicide. Rabbits, blind, discussing photography. Radio Shack, a love story. Regrets, International Repository of. Relay, of words. Ribs, broken by reading. Rio de Ratones Poetry Society, imports dying castrato. River, woman who was turned into a; Sad Museum, the unspeakable nature of. Saint Nicholas of Myra, pageant of. Salamanders, on the moon. Satan, and the Sacred Bone. Schlegel, Ustave; and the giantess. Schopenhauer, argues with Spinoza about dogs. Schutz, Susan Polis. Science, mysteries of. Scrub pads, in bulk. September Song, part one; part two. Shadows, and monsters. Sheep, shivering. Sherman, William Tecumseh; "March to the Sea." Show business, obscurity. Sky, as the limit. Slave, orphans. Snack crackers, bewildering slogans of. Sno-Caps, an appreciative memory. Soup, the god of. Springsteen, Bruce. Squirrels, phantom. Stuttering, and general ostracism. Sushi, truck stop. Table tennis, the Mongoose vs. The Cobra. Talk radio, and the dissolution of a marriage. Tchaikovsky, a remembrance of. Teenagers, moonstruck. Terkel, Studs.  Thanks, the giving of.Thinking, wishful. Tim Horton's. Time, as snaggle-toothed bastard; rewinding of. Tony Orlando, and Dawn. Trees, as unmanageable. Uncle, crying of. Unilever, manufacturer of the Q-Tip. Upstate, New York. Urination, public. Wedding party, contemplated by an unmarried woman. Wendell, prized dog. Whiskers, brief history of. Whither, also Wither. Williamson, Sonny Boy. Winter Olympics, Vancouver, 2010. Wishes, simple. Words, uselessness of. Wordsworth, William. World, of wonders. Zellar, Dean Wilson. 

One Night, One Fine Day...

(Image from Abel Pann's Genesis)

One night back in the late autumn I got whacked with a shovel and shoved in the trunk of a beat-to-shit Nova. The tweaker who whacked  me drove me out  into the country and dumped  my body in a corncrib.

It was a cold night, and as I rocked at the edge of consciousness my heart was removed  from my chest by an old and tiny man with strong hands. This little man, who was wearing a miner's helmet, perched on my breastbone and opened  my chest with a rusty saw. There was a stiff wind whipping across the fields, and to keep himself from blowing away, the man --he was from a long line of heart deliverers-- had secured his body to the framework of the corncrib with strands of baling twine. He worked long and diligently, and the procedure was precise but bloody work.

When he had finished he wrapped  my heart in burlap and loaded it into a waiting carriage pulled by two peacocks and driven by a fox wearing a red velvet top hat.

The carriage traveled many miles along dark roads. At some point during its journey snow began to fall, and the snow grew heavier the further the carriage traveled.

Eventually the carriage entered  heavily wooded country, where the sky was suddenly blown free of clouds and a bright moon illuminated  mile after mile of evergreen trees heaped with snow and mottled with shadow.

The fox drove long into the night, all the while singing and whistling quietly to the drowsy and plodding peacocks. In the early hours of the morning they arrived at a lake deep in the woods.

The lake was a vast thing, dark and ceaselessly rolling shattered moonlight ashore. It stretched to the far horizon, and was so black in the distance that the constellations appeared to be complex geometrical diagrams drawn  upon a chalkboard.

Out in the lake some distance was anchored a miniature sailing ship with a scurrying crew of mice. My heart was a very small thing by this time, and it was carefully unloaded from  the carriage, unwrapped, and packed in a nest constructed of pine needles and birch bark. It was taken aboard the ship by a contingent of mice in a rowboat.

While the peacocks drowsed and  pecked tentatively at the snow-covered earth, the fox watched these proceedings from his perch on the carriage. Though he had been trained to not eat the mice, he was distracted by their presence all the same.

Once my heart was safely secured in the ship and the crew  members were back aboard, the captain, a fat old mouse with long whiskers and a jaunty cap, gave the order to set sail. The ship eased out into the darkness of the lake, rocking  in the turbulent waves, its sails providentially bowed by the stiff breeze that carried my heart north at a steady clip.

Two days and two nights the tiny ship sailed.  Just after sunset on the third day the ship came within sight of an island rising out of the lake.

The island was shaped like a large puff pastry, and was dense with sturdy pines, many of which had survived generations in that inhospitable place. Jagged rocks were piled up all around the circumference of the island, and the wind was driving waves against these boulders, creating loud and frequently spectacular explosions of cold water that rose high into the night sky and were scattered like luminous fragments of colored glass.

The Captain gave the order for his crew to drop anchor. My heart was once again loaded into a round tub of a rowboat and lowered into the heaving water. A dozen of the stoutest crew members manned the oars and  wrestled the boat through the waves. My heart, frozen and lacquered with ice, was now a surprisingly heavy and  awkward burden.

A weathered dock jutted almost imperceptibly out into the lake at the bottom of a trail that emerged from the trees. The mice maneuvered  their rowboat into a position alongside this dock.

A trio of young women came down the trail through the woods, their way lit by a swaying lantern. No words were exchanged as my heart was transferred from  the rowboat to a wheelbarrow. As the women began to push the wheelbarrow back up the trail, the little boat was already straining back out into the mist of the lake.

The trail zigzagged through the trees, purposely digressive and worn over centuries at sharp, almost forty-five degree angles designed to ease the steep incline. The growth of old trees obscured the fact that the island jutted out of the lake to such an extent that its exact center was a strenuous climb from anywhere around the island's perimeter. The trees also hid from view a large chalet-style cabin that had been constructed on a stone foundation at the top of the island.

A sort of tribe had occupied this cabin for many generations. They were quiet, purposeful people, small of stature and somehow not entirely human. Though possessed of keen senses, every member of this strange tribe was mute. All of them, everyone that had ever occupied the island, was descended (in a manner of speaking) from a man who had settled there long, long ago, this after having traveled a great distance by boat, accompanied by three giant mastiffs.

This man had fancied himself an alchemist. Once established on the island, however, all of his attempts at alchemy had been failures. Undaunted, and gifted with a prodigious and magical imagination, he had nonetheless succeeded in time in conjuring, out of the raw materials at hand, companions for himself. In the laboratory where he had hoped  to turn base materials into gold he had learned instead to produce breathing beings. And having failed at alchemy in a literal sense, this founder of the island became instead a recycler of human hearts. The generations that followed him learned this delicate craft as well. They were surgeons and they were artisans.

The first heart had arrived on the island in the middle of the 19th century, on a cool June night when the moon was full and the sky was so clear that the moonlight had made of the calm lake's surface a glimmering jewel box. The original heart made its journey alone in a boat.

Perhaps its arrival in that place was purely happenstance, and it is entirely possible that had not the moon been so bright that night, the heart would have drifted right past the island and continued on its solitary journey north. As it was, though, the heart had glowed like a luminous garnet floating far out in the lake, and some of the island's residents had spied the mysterious object and  rowed out to investigate. Puzzled and amazed by their discovery, they had towed the boat ashore and lugged the heart up the trail.

The founder had known immediately that what he was looking at was a human heart, badly damaged if not entirely broken. Without hesitation he had determined that they would repair this heart, and after much  trial and error he and his assistants succeeded  in restoring it to perfect working condition.

Having mastered the most difficult task of all, they were faced with the question of what to do with the heart. For a time they kept it in a jar in their laboratory, where it pumped and gurgled and provided continual astonishment. The old alchemist was troubled by its presence, though; he felt certain that the result of their hard work was destined to find its way south, back to the human  world, where he knew good hearts were always in great demand.

Eventually, as is so often the case, birds provided the solution. A charm of finches, which often spent summers on the island, had established a sort of telepathic communication with some of the mute residents, and when the finches flew south in advance of the first snow they carried with them the story of the repaired human heart. In the land  beyond the lake the word traveled through all the animals of the forest, and finally was passed along to an ancient Guild of heart deliverymen. Though the members of this Guild hated the designation, they were, at least technically speaking, fairies.

The Potentate of the Guild of Heart Deliverers worked closely with a network of animals and angels (this sort of thing, of course, is always difficult to understand and explain), and had been providing heart transplants centuries before human medical science had ever dreamed of such a thing. Before connecting with the island laboratory, however, the guild had always had to work with whatever raw materials (often damaged) they could get their hands on, even as they were diligent in attempting, as often as possible, to replace bad  hearts with hearts possessed of genuine goodness.

Once a relationship --however unusual, mysterious, and informal-- was established  between the Guild of Heart Deliverers and the old alchemist, hearts began to arrive at the island on a regular, if unpredictable, basis. Some were transported by geese; others, like my own, were ferried by boat.

These days each of the hearts is boiled in a mixture of fish oil, cedar berries, and quicksilver, jostled for days in a contraption  that resembles a giant rock tumbler, and then outfitted with all new plumbing.

Twice a year --once in the early spring and again in December-- a flock of sub-angels arrives at the island. These creatures are grimy and ungainly, seemingly part geese, part human. They are, though, celestial beings, but crippled, still tormented by mortal dreams and aspirations, and as the lowest order of angels they are assigned a majority of the grunt work.

The repaired hearts are fed to these angels, who fly them back south and implant them in the chests of their intended recipients as they sleep. Thanks to the timing of these excursions, increasing numbers of these implants coincide with the arrival of Christmas.

The ragged angels will be making another trek to the island in a few days. I'm holding out hope that I'll be one of the truly rare and lucky recipients and will get my own heart back. Only bigger, I hope, and better.

I Thought About, Remembered, Recalled, And Wondered: A Tribal Inventory (Channeling Susan Polis Schutz)

I listened to your incredible music today.

I read your lovely words.

I looked with admiration at your photographs and paintings.

I admired your talent.

I admired your passion.

I thought about how smart and funny you are.

I thought about your intensity, and envied you the courage of your convictions.

I remembered your beautiful smile and the sound of your splendid laugh.

I thought of that long conversation we once had, and how alive it made me feel.

I thought of all the times you've made me feel so alive, and how grateful I felt to be so alive.

I remembered the lights of the carnival that we saw looming across the dark fields, and the fireflies we watched from the top of the hill, and the marvelous light of Paris in late spring, and that little Inn in the Muenster Valley with the cows in their stall directly beneath our room, and that mysterious island in the North Sea, and those quiet nights on the dock in Upstate New York, and the other nights we listened to music and danced, and all the other nights when we sat quietly and read.

Sometimes we were a bunch, and it was magical, and other times there was just you and me, and that was also magical.

I remembered all the times you showed up to help me move.

I remembered when you called and offered me a job for which I was absolutely unqualified, and how grateful I still am for that.

I remembered how much you taught me that has made my life possible.

I remembered Vampire Mansion, and playing King of the Hill on the snow mounds, and wandering the fields outside your old family home.

I remembered when I was fucked-up and broken and you sat on my bed and told me exactly the right thing to do.

I remembered the times we huddled together for warmth and comfort as we watched someone we love die.

I remembered all the times we walked together, following a dog.

I remembered waiting anxiously for your children to be born, and how thrilled I was for you when you made some long journey to finally bring your babies home.

I remembered how much you loved the river, that place up north, the River House, the camp in the Adirondacks, the Upper Peninsula, your old family home, New York, driving, Talking Heads, Halloween, Christmas, Shakespeare, Joy Division, old movies, your dog, your cat, owls, Joni Mitchell, chicken pot pies, baseball, boxing, boats, The Little Prince, the memory of dancing on your father's feet, the sound of your mother's voice, your brother who died too young, soul music, Jimmy Reed, Laura Ingalls Wilder, that stuffed rabbit, your collection of dog photographs, Johnny Cash, Breakfast at Tiffany's, being with your sister, hanging out with your old friends, building bonfires, Michael Jackson, coffee, complimentary soda water, Scrabble, sleeping in, truck stop breakfasts, The New Yorker, Randy Newman, crossword puzzles, the State Fair, all of your beloved rituals and routines.

There were so many things you loved, and your love was contagious. I hope you still love those things, and haven't lost too much of what you love.

I remembered that poem you read to me. All the poems you read to me.

I remembered all the times you saved me from drowning.

I remembered when we walked together on a beach in Florida at night and talked about the astronauts that had been blown out of the sky two days earlier.

I remembered when we closed our eyes and made a wish.

I remembered the night, somewhere in Canada, when we slept in the backseat of our station wagon in a car wash.

I remembered how you refused to give up on a disposable razor, and had a drawer full of the damn things.

I remembered that time you tried to learn magic, and the old magic store you once dragged me into in Geneva, New York.

I remembered that time in your studio, when you shot photos of me fucking around, and how many costume changes I put you through, and how hard we laughed.

I remembered that zine you used to publish, and the way you used to play a right-handed guitar left-handed.

I remembered the times we hitchhiked across the country, and hopped trains, and the time we got so lost in the fog that we ended up pitching our tent in an old woman's backyard.

I remembered the time a bunch of thugs were beating and kicking a man in the subway and you instinctively waded right into the fray, screaming profanities and throwing punches, and made them flee.

I remembered how kind you were, and how you always made me feel interesting.

I remembered reading the emails you sent me when I was a grown man running away from home, and how I sat alone in a public library somewhere in Canada and cried.

I remembered how desperately I wanted to find you the perfect gift or to make you something beautiful.

I remembered the time we tried to build a roller coaster in our backyard.

I remembered the time we laughed our way through "2001: A Space Odyssey" and lobbed Sno-Caps at the screen until they kicked us out of the theater.

I thought of you holding a blue-eyed dog in your arms on a muggy night in August and letting him go.

I thought of the time in Ireland when the little boy on the train asked to see your muscles.

I thought of that smashing green suit you bought at Reach Out on Lake Street, and how lovely you looked in it.

I thought about all those days and nights we spent together in a van, all over the country, trying to find pictures, voices, and stories. I thought about how you came along and inspired me at a time when I assumed my days of inspiration were behind me.

I thought of your chapped little feet, your adorable little voice, your easy affection, and your wild appreciation for the cartoons of Tex Avery.

I thought about that time I was in a strange new house in a strange new town, alone with my sick dog in my arms, and how reassuring it was to have your words pop up --again and again-- on the screen of my cell phone.

I thought about the way you did that little shuffle dance to Low's "Just Like Christmas," and the way we sang along at the top of our lungs to The New Christy Minstrels while driving on Christmas morning.

I thought about all those mornings I struggled to get you out of bed, to get you to go to school, and how proud I was to see you graduate, and how proud I am to see you now discovering what an amazing person you are and what an amazing thing this world can be.

I thought about the life you have in front of you, and how marvelous I expect it to be, and how I can't wait to see all the ways you surprise me.

I thought about all the times I've seen you scrutinize yourself in a mirror, comparing yourself to some impossible ideal, and I hope you will one day realize how beautiful you are.

I thought about the time the police surrounded us, guns drawn, as I was trying to teach you to parallel park.

I thought about how thrilled I was to see your band play for the first time.

I thought about the time, in a torrential autumn rain, that we buried your beloved dog.

I thought about how much we've come to resemble each other, and how much I wish I could sing like you.

I thought about all the fireworks we've seen.

I thought about the time you showed up to play softball with a glove held together with guitar strings.

I thought about all the times I kicked your ass in Wiffleball.

I thought about our last trip to old Yankee Stadium.

I thought about all the baseball games we've seen together.

I thought about your nightly text messages and how much they mean to me.

I thought about that backyard talent show that now seems so long ago.

I thought of you preparing to move into your first home.

I thought about that time at Columbine High School, when we stood there in the eerie silence and cried in each other's arms.

I thought of you in Mexico, and you in Poland, and you in Sweden, and I tried to imagine your life there.

I thought of you on a plane to Japan, to China, to Argentina, to Europe, and I tracked the progress of every one of your flights on my computer screen, and thought about you alone in a hotel room somewhere across the world, and I hoped you knew how much I missed you.

I thought about how thrilled I am to have your art hanging on my walls, and hoped all sorts of other people would buy your art to hang on their own walls and would love it as much as I do.

I thought about the homemade chocolates you deliver to my door every Christmas, and your splendid company, and the dozens of acts of kindness --small and large-- you have shown me.

I thought of the time we played ball in the park with your son, and how it filled me with both joy and a weird sadness. I thought about the obvious love that existed between you and your boy, and the way he looked at you exactly the way I remember looking at my own father, and the way you looked at him exactly the way I remember my father looking at me.

I thought about how happy I was to have found you again, and all those times when we were young and you introduced me to so many of the things that blew my life wide open.

I thought of that huge old boat you used to have, the one with the greenhouse on the upper deck, and I thought of your orchids and the incomparable days at the camp in the Adirondacks and your sketchbooks and your love of gardening and your impossibly beautiful garden in Michigan and that stunningly comfortable house on the St. Joseph River and that magical place in Montana.

I thought of the time you gave me a souvenir from the 1965 World Series that had belonged to your father.

I thought about how wrong it is that you are in prison, and hoped that you are holding up all right and know how often I do think about you.

I remembered the joy of going to see your play performed for the first time.

I remembered the time I bailed you out of jail, and the time you drove 200 miles to visit me in treatment, and the time you banged on my doors and windows and stood on my doorstep and yelled, "Look, take your goddamn time, but just know that I'm going to wait you out and I'm not going anywhere until you let me in."

I remembered letting you in, and being glad that I did.

I thought about all those weird and wonderful CD mixes you sent me, and the annual Christmas cards that continue to come without fail.

I thought about our lunches and dinners at the Band Box and Bob's and Archie's and Steve's, and at all those drive-ins on the road; I thought about all that barbecue in Memphis, and the drunk Hibachi chef, and all the times we ate steak on my birthday or had backyard barbecues.

I thought about all the times you cut my hair, and how happy I always was to be with you and just listen to you talk.

I thought about how happy I was to see you at Palmer's that night, and at the Turf Club, or walking around Lake Harriet.

I thought about you in those hospital rooms, alone at night and staring at the ceiling, and I hoped you would always remember that you are one of my heroes, and that you knew how desperately I wished I could drive across town with an ice-cold Bubble Up, load you in the car, and finally bring you home.

I thought about how envious I am of your adventures and how so many of my own adventures would not have been possible if you hadn't taken me in.

I thought about the thing we used to do where we'd pretend we were The Hold Steady performing the essays of Terry Tempest Williams. I remembered watching you pull an Edward Gorey book down from a high shelf in some bookstore, and experiencing a moment of painful deja vu.

I thought about driving around in the Panhandle poking around in fish camps, and eating oysters and talking fishing with some of the locals. I remembered you playing "Lola" on a guitar in a music store in St. Joe's. I remember staying up late and talking.

I thought about all the times we talked on the phone until my battery died.

I thought about all those old photographs, and how it mostly doesn't hurt to look at them anymore.

I remembered that wondrous little felt donkey you made me, and how you stitched into it the words, "Steadfast and True."

I remembered walking around in an abandoned amusement park in the middle of the summer and watching a herd of reindeer disappear into the woods.

I remembered your red door and your shiny black shoes and your neighbor's addiction to the FryBaby.

I remembered the Wish Book, and how desperately I wished for those things.

I remembered when I first heard Van Morrison in your bedroom.

I remembered the letters you used to send me, and the notes you used to leave me.

I remembered when you time and again pointed out things I wouldn't otherwise have noticed.

I remembered when we had that big dream, and tried to make it real, and failed.

I remembered how much you loved "Moon River" and "Hey Ya" and "Somewhere Over the Rainbow."

I remembered the stories we used to tell each other about the way we thought the world would be.

I thought about you.

I thought about what you might be up to now.

I remembered that one time, and another one after that, and another one, and there wasn't anything sad about any of it. It all seemed rare and precious and miraculous, and barely real, or at least not real in the terrifying way this world so often feels real.

And so I did something I don't often do: I thought about how lucky I am. I thought about how grateful I am to have found you in this crowded, impossible world, and how I hope none of us is done yet and there will still be more and that I'll take you with me when I go.

The Bells

Long after he had ceased to remember many things, the old man remembered being a boy, and had vivid memories of Christmases from his childhood, of candlelight and snow and a Christmas tree he chopped down with his father in the woods and decorated with his mother. All of the ornaments were things he and his mother had found in the world around them --bird's nests, feathers, pine cones, and stringers of dried berries-- or made out of paper and scraps of cloth.

He could not remember the faces of either of his parents, nor the sound of their laughter, but he nonetheless remembered that there had been much laughter, and many stories, especially at Christmas time, and he knew that he had loved his parents, and that they had loved and cared for him until they were taken from him by soldiers. And he remembered the beloved dog who had helped him escape from the soldiers and whatever fate had befallen his parents.

Strangely, perhaps, he remembered everything about that beloved dog, who had been his constant companion through the many difficult years when he had been lost and constantly moving through a world that seemed so dark and filled with so much menace. He remembered the dog's soulful brown eyes, and the way it constantly connected to and communicated with him through those eyes. He remembered countless times when he had awakened from a nightmare and found the dog pressed against his body and studying him with a combination of concern and adoration. He remembered the dog's exquisite and unique smell --a combination of old leather, wood smoke, and something sweet he couldn't put his finger on. He remembered the comforting sound of the dog's breathing at night, and the way his chest rose and fell (a chest on which the figure of a white dove in flight was outlined against a background of black fur).

And mostly he remembered a Christmas Eve long, long ago, when he and the dog had sought refuge in the shell-torn church of a village that had been recently devastated by the conflict. There in that church their solitude had been interrupted by the arrival of soldiers, and he and the dog had found themselves climbing a seemingly endless and labyrinthine staircase that led them up into the bell tower. The higher they climbed the more dark and narrow became the passage through which the stairs ascended. Eventually they had emerged into the belfry, which was surprisingly capacious and had open portals on all sides. Since there was no further they could climb, they paused there in that cold, dark place and listened.

The soldiers, it seemed, had been unaware of their presence or had chosen not to pursue them. Who were they, after all, but a boy and his dog?

Then, as the boy and his dog huddled together on the top step, fearful, and the boy took the dog into his arms for comfort and warmth, the big bell creaked for a moment and then, very slowly, began to sway. And then its sound --deafening in such close quarters-- started to ring out over the village below. The boy pulled himself up to the ledge of one of the portals, from which he could see out across the entire village, crouched there in darkness. The boy knew there were people in the dark houses below, for he had seen them earlier in the day, scurrying furtively around to the few remaining shops that were still open for business. Some of these people were carrying geese, or crocks containing some scarce commodity, or huge loaves of bread. He'd even encountered boys not much younger than himself, dragging Christmas trees through the snowy streets.

As the bell continued to sway and ring out over the dark little town, the boy was seized with wonder. Soldiers or no soldiers, that village, which had known so much recent distress and sorrow, was poised in the cold and the darkness, its remaining residents preparing for the momentary peace of Christmas, the merciful hush that would settle over the place after the bell had rocked back into silence.

When the bell did finally stop swaying and ringing out, the distant voices of the soldiers had carried up that long staircase to the boy and his dog, and it dawned on the boy that it had, in fact, been the soldiers ringing the bell. After several moments of silence, during which the boy assumed the soldiers had departed the church, the men began to sing a beautiful and mournful song that the boy recognized from a Christmas past.

The boy and his dog sat there listening for quite some time, until they finally heard the voices of the soldiers, subdued now, moving once again out into the streets of the village. After what seemed a safe interval, the boy and the dog crept back down the stairs, moving together slowly in the darkness, and emerged into the empty church to discover hundreds of burning candles fluttering in the drafty sanctuary.

That night they returned to their hiding place in the woods outside the village, and the next day they began to travel further and further into the forest. The old man could not remember how many days they had traveled, but they had pressed on, becoming more and more lost, until the day they discovered the hut in which the old man still lived. It just appeared to them one day, as if it had grown up out of the ground or been built by prehistoric birds.

The boy had left home with a pack stuffed with seeds and potatoes and corn --the bag had been packed by his mother before she was taken away-- and, together with these provisions, the hut and the woods around it and the nearby streams provided almost everything the boy and his dog needed to survive. From the time he was a little boy, the man had been at home in the woods, and over the years he had become an expert hunter, fisherman, and trapper of game. From both his parents he had learned to forage and cultivate a garden.

The boy --who eventually became a young man-- and his dog were together every moment of every day, slept curled up together, woke together each morning, and wandered the woods from sun up to sun down. And each night they sat up together talking and remembering their long-ago life in a world filled with soldiers, darkness, and fear. The young man would often recount the story his mother had told him shortly before she and his father were stolen from him.

"There are flocks of angels in the mountains," his mother had said. "They live in the high places with the wild creatures, but in times of trouble they come down into the valleys and wander out into the world to lead those in peril to safety."

The boy had asked about all those of their acquaintance who had not been saved by the angels.

"They cannot save everyone," his mother said. "They have limited numbers and limited powers. These are angels who have not yet crossed over, not yet traveled beyond the mountains, but their job is to do what they can. And if you are ever in danger, my boy, you must be vigilant; they will come for you and guide you to a safe place. You must go where you are bidden."

They boy asked about his dog.

"He works with the angels," his mother said.

It didn't take the boy long to recognize his hut as the architecture of the angels. It resembled in no way any human habitation he had ever known, and from the moment he discovered it he had had the certain sense that it had never been occupied by another human being. Though it was humbly furnished, everything in it served some utilitarian purpose and showed no signs of ever having been used or even touched by human hands. The iron stove had never known a fire until the day the boy and his dog took possession of the hut. And though he and his dog rambled great distances in every direction, they had never encountered another person, had seen no footprints or signs of human presence or habitation.

Though the man often had the sense that he was living on another planet, he did not feel lonely.

The years in the hut went by so quickly, and the boy who had found refuge there grew into a man. Dogs, of course, grow old much faster than humans, and there came a time when the man was still young when the dog could no longer keep up with him on his long rambles through the woods, and often --and more and more frequently-- would stay in the hut, sleeping, as the man went about his daily routines. One day the dog could no longer get up from the floor without the man's assistance, and the man would carry him in and out of the hut and set him down in a clearing in the woods; from there the dog would wobble around in increasingly diminished orbits, and doze off in the garden while the man tended his plants or chopped wood.

It seemed to the man that the dog had been his constant companion for as long as he could remember. He couldn't say with any certainty how old the dog was, or even how old he was; he had never bothered to keep any sort of calendar and had lost track of time there in the woods. It had never occurred to him that he might one day lose his beloved dog, and even as he watched the dog's slow but resolute decline he was incapable of imagining a day when his dog would die and leave him truly alone in the woods. Finally, though, there came a day when the dog would no longer eat, and then refused water, and at night the man would sleep on the floor with the dog held tightly in his arms, and he would listen with growing terror to the dog's labored breathing.

Then one night the man had a vivid dream: He and the dog were once again climbing the stairs to the belfry, moving through darkness toward a flood of light high above them. When at last they reached the bell tower they encountered another staircase, even more narrow, that ascended still higher. They had sat there for several moments, looking into each other's eyes as they had on so many previous occasions, and then the man had buried his head in the dog's neck and said to him, "Go on now." And the dog had turned and headed up the stairs alone.

When the man woke up from this dream the dog was lifeless in his arms. He who had not cried since he was a little boy found himself crying almost without cessation for days and weeks and months. He cried as he buried the dog alongside the wild rose bushes that surrounded his garden. The man was inconsolable, and as there was now no one to console him or to share in his grief, he felt very lonely. He had grown so accustomed to talking with the dog, all day and into the night, and almost overnight he lost his voice.

The man barely ate, and would wake up in the night, calling out for the dog. Many times a day he would be convinced the dog was still there with him, sleeping nearby or following him on his rambles through the woods. Wherever his dog had gone he longed to follow him, to follow him once again to some safe place beyond his suffering and loneliness.

Somehow, though, the man remained there in that place through the changing of the seasons. In time his grief settled in him as a persistent and nagging sadness. He grew old, and often thought of his mother's story of the mountain angels. For this, he thought, I have been saved? For a life of loneliness and grief? It would have been better if he and his dog had been taken by the soldiers that night in the belfry. He felt he had been forsaken, and alternately cursed and implored the sky, the clouds, the trees, the earth in which his dog was buried. He frequently thought about striking out into the woods in search of the world he had left behind. Perhaps in his absence some peace had been made, or found. He could not, though, bear the thought of leaving his dog behind there in that lonely place, and so he remained.

One day the man found himself studying his reflection in the still surface of a little pond in the woods. It was perhaps a distorted or unreliable version of his face, but it was also clear enough to alarm him. He looked so old, so gaunt, so sad. He tried to remember the last conversation he had had with an actual human being, and was saddened to realize that he had no such recollection, however vague. He began to talk to himself, to try to regain his voice in the hope that someone, somewhere, might hear him, might be listening.

Around this same time he started to have what he felt certain were hallucinations, or dreams that were carrying over into his waking days. One night he stepped out of the hut and was startled to see what appeared to be nests, immense constructions high up in the skeletal branches of the trees and pulsing with bright blue light. It was winter, and the sky had been dark and moonless, and from these luminous nests there seemed to emanate a sound like the shimmering of hundreds of sleigh bells, a sound that filled the woods all around him. In the morning all was once again silent, and the nests looked liked nothing more than towering structures of sticks and leaves. At night, though, and for many nights, the blue lights in the trees and the shivering of the bells returned.

The man began to have the unshakable sense that there were other presences out there in the woods with him. Perhaps, he thought, his dog had sent the angels back to fetch him. For the first time in many, many years he felt the fog of his grief lifting.

One day early in the winter he awakened from a peaceful sleep and had gone out to gather wood for his fire when he was startled to see a gold band on the ring finger of his left hand. He dropped the wood and stood there for several moments, staring at the band and puzzling over it with his fingers. It was the shiniest ring he'd ever seen, and was so firmly and snugly set upon his finger that he discovered he could not remove it. For much of the day he studied the ring and fiddled with it and wondered about it. He sat up late into the night by the fire, listening to the chirping of the bells and gazing at the band on his finger, which was of such bright and burnished gold that it captured flickering firelight and often seemed to be burning.

By the time he went to bed that night he was convinced that as he had slept the previous evening he had been espoused to a spirit. And with that queer conviction came a sense of almost overwhelming happiness.

Each successive year following this nuptial visitation, around the same time, the old man would wake to discover that some new and increasingly extravagant gift had appeared as he had slept. One year he woke to find a piano in his hut. With this mysterious gift he also received the ability to play the piano as if he had been studying the instrument all his life. This last gift was a source of comfort to him, and he often sat up late into the night playing beautiful songs that seemed to flow directly from his fingers to the keys of the piano.

Another year, very near the end of the old man's story, a boy and his father who were traveling through the woods had gotten lost in the swirling snow and darkness. The man and the boy were poor and were fleeing a cholera outbreak in the north that had claimed the boy's mother. The man hoped to return to the village where he had spent his childhood before being swept north with a wave of soldiers. He had not been back to the village in almost two decades, but an old woodsman and trapper who had outfitted him with a sleigh and two old, sturdy horses, had drawn him an elaborate map. Once safely through the northern woods, the trapper had said, they would find a river that would be frozen at that time of year; if they followed the course of the river as it meandered south it would eventually deliver them to a clearing that was just east of the village that was their destination.

If things went well, the boy and his father were to travel through the woods for five days, and arrive at the river early on the evening of the fifth day. Things had not, however, gone well for the boy and his father. The snow in the woods was deep, and the way through often seemed impenetrable. There were frequent obstacles that slowed their progress and often stopped them in their tracks. The father had to keep struggling through the snow to clear fallen timber and brush, and when this proved impossible they had to make long and awkward retreats and detours.

At some point the moon was blown over with clouds, the temperature plummeted, and the wind began to blow. The man could not keep his lantern lit, and the struggle to do so became an obsessive battle. Both he and his son were bundled in blankets and furs, but they were very cold. The sleigh provided no refuge from the wind, and the churning legs of the horses kicked up a constant swirling curtain of snow that enveloped the sleigh and kept the boy and his father pinned down in a blizzard from which they could not escape. The man would pull up for a few hours each night in some place that offered modest refuge from the wind, and he and the boy would curl up beneath their furs and blankets and struggle to find warmth and sleep.

Even during the hours after daybreak there was very little true light, and they kept plodding --more slowly, it seemed, all the time-- into the permanent murk of the woods. Things grew more dire by the hour, and the father was becoming convinced that they were lost. For longer stretches every day he had to wade through the deep and drifted snow, coaxing the horses along, tugging at their frozen harnesses, and navigating around ever more impossible obstacles. The boy was silent and shivering in his blankets, and there was now a fine coating of ice on his eyebrows, lashes, and even on the downy hair above his lip.

One evening in a mercifully sheltered clearing the man paused, thinking he might try to build a fire, and as he disembarked from the sleigh he was suddenly aware that the wind had abated; a hush had settled over the woods, the blowing snow was clearing at last, and as the man stood there he spied what he thought was a light a short distance ahead through the trees. He coaxed the horses along until he was close enough to confirm that what he was seeing was indeed a light in the window of a small, strange cottage, with smoke rising from its chimney into the cold night air. The man climbed back up next to his son, tapped the boy on the shoulder, and soundlessly pointed to the light through the trees. The boy leaned forward in his seat and stared at this unexpected vision. Steam billowed from the resting horses and the woods were eerily silent. The man listened into the silence and thought that he heard the sound of a piano, but the sound ceased before he could truly discern what it was he was hearing.

Meanwhile, the old man in the hut lifted his head from his piano, his long and crooked fingers poised above the keyboard, and listened intently into the night. He was prepared to swear that he had heard sleighbells in the woods outside his window. This was somehow yet unmistakably different from the old persistent shimmer of bells that had now and again filled his woods whenever the luminous blue nests would make their appearance. This was the clear and isolated shaking of sleighbells, a sound he had not heard since he was a boy. Humans, he thought, and then: Soldiers. He had been hunted down at last. He was now too old for any of the true terror of his younger days, but he was nonetheless afraid. He listened more closely and heard the sleighbells again, a few seconds of emphatic shaking and then silence. He sat there at the piano and heard footsteps approaching through the snow. He heard the snapping of brush that sounded like gunshots after so many years of silence in those woods.

And then he heard a child's voice just outside his window: "Father, I'm afraid," the little voice said, and this declaration was followed by one tentative knock on the door. The old man got up from the piano stool, moved across the room, and opened the door to find a man and a boy standing there, looking for all the world like frozen ghosts.

"I apologize," the man said. "My boy and I are lost, I'm afraid, and we are close to freezing to death. We would be grateful for an opportunity to warm ourselves by your fire before continuing on our journey."

"You are lost?" the old man said.

"Yes," the father said. "We seem to have lost our way in the blizzard."

"I was myself lost in these woods once upon a time," the old man said, "and I stumbled across this hut just as you have. It was my refuge then, and I would be happy if it could be yours now. You are welcome here, and I will treat you as my honored guests."

The old man settled the boy and his father on stools near the stove, and fetched quilts and blankets from the trunk that had been magically replenished annually for many years. He hung their clothes to dry by the fire, and retrieved their frozen packs from the sleigh. He led the horses into a sheltered area near the hut and gave them food and water. In a small cold cellar he had dug off the back of the hut the old man had more food than he would ever eat --dried and smoked fish, wild boar, all manner of fowl from the neighboring woods, roots and herbs and berries, mushrooms, truffles, and various potatoes and vegetables he had grown in his garden from his mother's seeds. He had always eaten well, and was blessed with plentiful fresh water all around him. And now the old man was pleased to be able to provide a feast for his visitors.

They sat up late that night eating and talking about the journeys they had all undertaken and the sorrow they had known. The old man was surprised to learn that the village to which they were destined was a place familiar to him, and very near the village where he and his dog had had that long-ago experience on Christmas Eve. As he studied the map the trapper had provided he recognized many of the landmarks, and realized that he was not more than two day's journey from the place he had started out from so long ago. All of the streams around his hut flowed into the river that skirted the village in question. He was surprised that no one had crossed his path in all those years in the woods, but was exceedingly delighted to have these visitors now.

The boy couldn't take his eyes off the old man; with his long hair and beard and fierce and lively eyes, the old man reminded him of the pictures in his mother's Bible. And the old man was enchanted in turn by the boy, who reminded him of himself at a similar age.

That night, as the boy and his father drifted off to sleep in the bed that had been prepared for them on the floor, the old man played quiet songs on the piano and thought of his beloved dog and the dream of their last parting in the belfry.

The next day the old man packed the sleigh with provisions, drew a clear shortcut to the river on the trapper's map, and while the father went out to prepare the sleigh for departure he sat down in the hut with the boy and told him the story of the mountain angels. And then he stood in the clearing outside the hut and waved to them as they headed back out on their journey.

That night the woods outside were roaring with the bells --the old man had never heard them so loud-- and the pulsing lights from the nests were so bright that they illuminated the inside of the hut as the old man drifted off to sleep and slipped away at last --quietly, peacefully, purposefully-- to follow his dog one more time.

Early the next morning as the sun came up, the father paused the sleigh at a bend in the river, from which they could see the spire of the village church in the distance. As the father let out a whoop of happiness and urged the horses on, the boy was puzzling over a mysterious string he suddenly discovered tied around his neck and disappearing down into his many layers of clothing. His father clapped and cried out to the horses, and the boy slowly coaxed the string out of hiding and found himself gazing with wonder at a radiant gold band that now rested in the palm of his hand.

Thank You

Through most of my toughest times I've managed to drill through the darkness at the bottom of the day by making additions to an inventory of gratitude that I've been working on for more than 20 years. The giving of thanks is a habit like any other, a discipline that has to be cultivated, especially in a world where there's so much pressing preoccupation and suffering that gratitude can feel like an indulgence, or just another reminder of our often appalling privilege.

I believe in the old Christian notion of Grace; very few of us have done anything sufficiently virtuous to deserve what --at the risk of being perceived as quaint or even daft--I'll go ahead and call our "blessings."

There's a lottery aspect to this concept of grace that should be discomfiting to those of us who have things that so many other people in this world don't have, or have had stripped away by tragic and calamitous circumstances. There are perhaps others in this world who might be given a pass on gratitude. Much of the time, though, I can recognize that I'm surely not one of them.

Like so many others, though, I have too often been guilty of the most petulant sort of ingratitude. Being ungrateful is an easy and knee-jerk thing, but how hard, really, is gratitude? How hard is it to sit down and make an inventory of all the things for which you should be grateful? Any of us --or most of us-- should be able to do this. Anyone, at least, who still has dreams and memories, however inchoate or bittersweet, swirling around in their skull, or anyone whose heart can still be stirred by music, art, or beauty; anyone whose heart can still kneel in the presence of suffering or sadness or grief; all of us, honestly, who have received so much more than we have given.

Our responsibility as members of a family or a community, however large or small, however (these days) ersatz and virtual, is to share in each other's happiness and sorrow; to pick each other up when we fall, lift each other's spirits, carry each other when we're too sick, tired, or broken to go on, and to allow ourselves to be swept along when we're seized by joy.

I depend on these things more than ever now that I feel so often stalled and thwarted in the backstretch of my middle years. Lately I have been spending too much time contemplating a Stanley Kunitz poem called "The Layers." The question Kunitz poses in that poem is a tough one: "How shall my heart be reconciled to its feast of losses?" And his answer, I think, is that he --and we-- have to learn to turn, to go on, and to exult, to embrace life as a "book of transformations." Like Kunitz, I have "made myself a tribe of my true affections, and my tribe is scattered."

My own tribe is truly scattered, fragmented, fractured; the only place I thought of as home for my first 50 years is gone now, and in the last year I have lost people --and a beloved dog-- I regarded (rightfully) as essential. Such losses, coupled with the daily poison that now masquerades as current events, inspired a good deal of glum rumination, but gratitude is a stubborn thing, a light --sometimes barely a glimmer-- that can penetrate even the most intractable darkness. And the older I get the more determined I am to honor and acknowledge all the light that manages to find me, or to go looking for it when necessary. I know how easily people can be crushed in this world. I know how painful it can feel to be here. But I also know that no one can survive for long on a steady diet of despair. You don't have to look very hard or very far to find examples of how tough and resilient humans can be. Most of us don't have to look beyond our own lives and the lives of our families and friends.

Our suffering is something we have in common with the hundreds of millions of other people who've survived --and often triumphed over-- adversity, disappointment, and all manner of betrayals and loss. I like to believe that most of us are at least as sturdy as those people were and are, and that like them we can continue to press on by holding tight to our oldest and fiercest dreams and ideals, and by taking every opportunity to give thanks: For the passions that have shaped and sustained us, and for the people with whom we share those passions; for the blessings of our bodies; for the resilient miracles of nature; for every opportunity of communal ecstasy and grief; for the dizzying marvel that is the average American grocery store; for the idiot wonder inspired by a phonograph record, a baby, a giraffe, a magnificent musician or athlete, or even an iPhone.

Sometimes this world feels like a foundering lifeboat, but in our more lucid moments we can recognize that it's crowded with all sorts of other thoroughly decent people who are doing everything in their power to keep it afloat.

Thoughts and prayers --particularly when ceaselessly uttered by hypocritical parrots and politicians-- are much maligned these days, but "Thank you" strikes me as the purest and most simple sort of  thought or prayer, whether offered to a particular person or as a hosanna to the majesty, mystery, and magic of life. Those simple words --"Thank you," much like the other simple words to which they are cognate: "I love you" and "I'm sorry"-- don't absolve anyone of anything or preclude a responsibility to act, but they nonetheless have a remarkable power to extinguish burning bridges and assuage hurt and perceived insignificance.  They're part of the connective tissue that makes us human.

We should all find more time --and more ways-- to say thank you, and to take stock of our gratitude. The United States is one of a small number of countries in the world that sets aside a day for its citizens to give thanks, but the pure and simple fundamentals of the occasion are too often eclipsed by precisely the too-muchness for which we're supposed to be giving thanks.

Go ahead and eat too much. Let yourself go. Get drunk and argue about politics. But also try to take at least a few moments to look around, to appreciate and toast your friends and family and your ability to dance and laugh and care, and all the other things, whether frivolous or irreplaceable, that you've been given. And say thank you. Thanks a million. Thanks so fucking much. For all of it. For everyone you love, everyone you've loved and lost, and for all the other essential things that remain, and endure.

Wendell Dean Zellar: February 15, 2007-April 27, 2017

This is a devastation beyond words, and I am utterly shattered, but words are the only way I know how to try to make sense of this senseless world, and to sing hosannas to the increasingly few precious people and things that make my life worth living at all.

I have lost Wendell, we have lost Wendell --my lifeline and lamp through some of the darkest and brightest days of my life-- and I am contending with a loud, polyphonic chorus of howling pain and anger.

We were awakened by Wen at 5:30 this morning, just as he was slipping into a seizure. He has been epileptic since he came into my life, and we'd grown accustomed to these terrifying episodes, and also thought that we'd become more adept at managing them. This time, though, there was no bringing him back, and he suffered a series of cluster seizures that were unrelenting. Just as one would abate, another, more violent one would come rolling in. After a nearly two-hour ordeal I held him in my arms, talked him through a desperate and improvised series of Last Rites, and told him he had my permission to let go. At which point his eyes finally swam back into focus, and we looked into each other's brown eyes for the last time in this world, he let out a long sigh, relaxed in my arms, and left us alone with this terrible desolation.

Wendell did not die easily or peacefully, and I know I will be replaying that trauma in my head for weeks, and months, and years to come, trying to convince myself that in those last moments he knew that Kate and I were there, he was home, and that he had been granted in that last instant some measure of recognition and peace.

I have never in my life had a more purely symbiotic relationship with another being, never felt such a visceral two-way current of connection, trust, and adoration. Wendell was a special-needs dog --epileptic, surrendered twice in seven months, with a rap as loud, destructive, an escape artist; he had parasites and a mouth full of broken teeth. He was, though, my dog from the first time I met him. I was a special-needs man, and we were on the same wavelength right from the beginning. Nothing in his rap sheet ended up having even a shred of validity, and for the first six years of our life together he was, quite literally, my everything. He got me up, dressed, and out of the house. He listened with not just patience but seemingly genuine interest --or at least curiosity-- to my long, lonely, and often incomprehensible monologues.

He loved almost everyone who came into my life. If he wasn't wild about someone I quickly learned that his criteria for withholding were rock solid, and his instincts were to be trusted. Since I was a boy I have always regarded dogs as my most trusted and loyal companions and confidantes, and as the years have gone by I have chosen my friends almost exclusively based on those qualities, even as trust and loyalty have become harder and harder to come by in human relationships. I have, I know, often failed at being a good friend and a good human being, but I believe I am a good dog. If you are my friend I am fiercely loyal in a strictly dog way: You can take me for granted; I will not forsake you; I will always be tail-wagging happy to see you even if our paths in the real world seldom cross, and there is nothing I would not do for you. I adore and admire my friends, and I am perpetually grateful to have found a reasonably reliable pack of kindred people --dog humans-- in this world of so many broken solitaries.

Wendell --and his beloved predecessor, Willis-- made being a dog seem effortless, an easy privilege touched by unlimited grace and a boundless capacity for joy. It is not, alas, easy for a man to be a dog, but I have learned from the best, and my failures are entirely of my own doing, and they are many. Perhaps the only thing I can say with unqualified confidence is that I have been a devoted and unfailing father of dogs. I never had children --a blunt sadness in my middle years-- but I have a fierce and devoted love for the children who have come into my life --my nieces, nephews, stepchildren, and the children of friends-- and I have also always treated my dogs as full members of my family. I have belonged to them, and have tried to raise them to be good citizens and gentle and joyful souls.

Time and again they have shepherded me, and goaded me to be a better man, and a better dog, to measure up to their impossibly high standards. Wendell's joy was fierce, and it was contagious, but it was also gentle. And his capacity for serenity and affection were exemplary. Right now, I would give everything I have to watch him sleeping beside my wife.

I believe I gave Wendell a good life. In our early years together we traveled all over the U.S. and across Canada. He traveled like a Zen master, uncomplaining, clear-eyed, and always eager for the next experience. We visited 35 States and four Canadian provinces, survived a roll-over in Ontario, and he seemed to enjoy every minute he spent with me in cars, tents, cabins, and motels. In the past few years he has settled into our home in St. Paul with a contentment that blew my heart wide open and also --and finally-- allowed me to learn to feel at home. He loved being part of a family, thrived on the constant activity and attention, and was touchingly and zealously devoted to Kate, and loved as well the kids and Boris (the cat), toward whom he maintained a deferential and almost courtly respect.

And still he was my boy, and every morning I sang the same song to him to greet the day, and every night before bed we shared our sacred ritual of The Sweet Dreamers, an elaborate and rambling inventory of all of our shared blessings, and everyone --dogs, cats, humans, many no longer with us-- who was such a special part of our lives together. We talked about all the lost, lonely, sick, and neglected animals, and prayed to the God of Sweet Dreamers that they would find loving and happy homes. This ritual --equal parts prayer, poem, and batshit meditation-- could last anywhere from 15 minutes to a half hour, and every single night Wendell listened patiently, without squirming, to every word.

I would begin and end every day with the same wish/prayer: That I would be worthy of and honor the tremendous blessing and responsibility that was Wendell. I can say now, with a shattered heart and from a place of profound lostness shrouded in a fog so impenetrable that I am writing these words on auto-pilot and through waves of wrenching grief, that I have held up my end of that deal to the absolute best of my abilities, and to an extent that has often transcended my abilities. And I know that Wendell held up his end of the deal, and then some.

I know that every genuine dog-human relationship is a sacred and mysterious thing, but I have been blessed with a series of dogs who seemed divinely-tailored to where I was in my life and what I desperately needed at that time. They have all, I'm sure, shaped themselves to my personality and needs, yet the truly amazing thing about my relationship with Wendell was that our lives collided at a time of maximum crisis, when each of us was in urgent need of a lifesaving connection. We found each other, and that impossible convergence of need, timing, and good fortune is and always will be all the evidence I require to believe in the miraculous.

Wendell, I know these words are inadequate. I'm so exhausted and broken, but I want to keep going until I find the right words to sufficiently honor you and the dogman you have made of me. I love you with all my heart and soul. I feel certain that you knew that, and it is my only real consolation tonight. As I promised you every single day of our lives together: we'll be together for as long as I breathe. For so many years you kept me going, and I'm going to need to figure out how to keep going without you, even when I don't feel like going on at all.

You tenderized me, my beautiful boy. You showed me how to love, how to pay attention, how to minister to those who were hurting or lonely, how to be responsible to someone other than myself. You introduced me to people and places that I would not have experienced were it not for your consummate skills as an adventurer and an ambassador. You loved me --adored me-- when I'd become convinced that I was unlovable. You salvaged hundreds of shitty days. You had the brightest, most expressive and attentive eyes. You were a world-class observer, listener, and an intuitive, first-rate psychiatrist. You knew when I was off, and made compassionate and intelligent inquiries with those lovely eyes. Many, many times I was utterly convinced that you'd spoken to me, that we'd had an actual and substantive conversation.

You put my heart back together again and again, and now you've gone and broken it into a million pieces. I know that wasn't your intention, and I know you didn't want to leave us, and how hard you fought not to leave us. I also know how hard you had to fight just to find your way to me. I've spent a lot of time --too much time-- trying to imagine those first seven months of your life. How could you --the Genius of Love-- have been neglected, abused, or abandoned? How is it possible that twice people adopted you only to find you unsuitable or unworthy? These questions always trouble me, but I am grateful to those people --those idiots-- all the same, and grateful to you for persevering until we found each other at last. And I'm grateful --and full of wonder and admiration-- that you carried none of that baggage from those first seven months into our life together. You were, I choose to believe, patiently biding your time, waiting to become Wendell, to become my precious boy. And I know now that I was waiting for you.

I knew I would love you, and take care of you until the end of your days, but there was no way I could have imagined the extent to which our souls would become cross-wired --there's probably never been a man who so wholly entrusted a dog with the keys to his metaphorical car, and who, in doing so, was so spectacularly rewarded.

You've left a giant hole in my soul, Wennie, a giant hole in my life, at a time when all the holes in the world seem to be getting deeper and darker by the day. Wherever you've gone off to, I'm going to have to continue to count on you to keep feeding me a steady diet of light and life.

Love, always, my boy, and sweet dreams. The Garden of Sweet Dreamers exists everywhere, especially in dreams. And my old promise holds: We'll be together as long as I breathe.

(Here are a couple other Rapidan pieces about The Genius of Love)