Month: Jan 2016

The Cosmic Wooden Spoon

Uncategorized

There can be no worse karma laid upon an impoverished soul than to be a dog. And not just any dog, but a street dog. And not just any street dog, but a dog born on the streets of the Middle East.

There these woebegone canines take on a life best described as desultory, trotting along from who knows where to who knows when at who knows what time of the day or night. Their bodies are emaciated, their bones poking through such that all it takes is a sudden move and their ribs will puncture the hide. But that bodily disaster might be ultimately to their advantage, because then at least they will have some marrow to chew on. They are the unwanted, the caste-offs, the dalits of the dog world. Their sorrow is our indifference.

Their tongues loll almost to the deck on account of the temperatures they have to endure for the few summers they manage to cling to life. Their coats are dull and threadbare due to the deficiency of vitamins and the mange that routinely strips them half-naked. This sorry plight again may be to their advantage, as wearing an overcoat is not quite what the Arabian climate had in mind for much of the year. The only thing they can take for granted is that they will never go cold.

Their only friend is the Indian wallah who carts the supermarket’s butchery off-cuts out to the skip. The only other friendly face these dogs are ever likely encounter is the zealous migrant – that itinerant who arrives in the Middle East seeking only riches and leaves having found a purpose: namely, to alleviate the suffering of all the world’s waifs and strays. Of course, this mission is a hopeless one, because when these ex-patriots suddenly up sticks and repatriate to their developed worlds where strays are either sterilized or euthanized, the street dogs of the hot and heartless Middle East are the ones left to fend for themselves.

It is good to do one’s bit for the nameless ones. The effects of kindness are instantaneous. What seems at first an intimidating straggle of street punks led by a bristling alpha sporting a scar over his proud nose soon gives to a bunch of wagging tails, delighted not be be forgotten by the cruel world yet still wary that the kindness of strangers is but a trap for fools. Street dogs are many things, but fools they cannot afford to be. In spite of their hunger, the capos snap and nip the lowly henchmen, for in a world where they mean less than nothing, within their pack universe they have first dibs. Some kind of structure is needed if they are to make it on Arab street. To watch them is to realise that it is not through brutality and strict hierarchy that they overcome the odds, but through good old cooperation. They look out for one another while we stand back, looking out for only ourselves. In this way they may share in their misery, shrugging off the crappy karma that the cosmos has cooked up for them.

(n.b. During a year-long stint of volunteering at an unnamed shelter on an unnamed island in an unnameable gulf, the Indian dog handlers – with what little English they had at their command – told this writer that when the locals pulled up outside the kennels, even before they got out of their cars, the dogs would bristle with anger and hostility. The expletives were damn-near discernible in their bark. Conversely, when non-locals likewise paid a visit the dogs would go wild with excitement. At this the two men laughed as if this was the worst-kept secret in the world.)

 

 

If You’ve Nothing Worthwhile To Say, Say Nothing At All

Uncategorized

Dizang asked Xiushan, “Where do you come from?”
Xiushan said, “From the South.”
Dizang said, “How is Buddhism in the South these days?”
Xiushan said, “There is extensive discussion””
Dizang said, “How can that compare to me here planting the fields and making rice to eat?”
Xiushan said, “What can you do about the world?”
Dizang said, “What do you call the world?”
— Book of Serenity

—————————————————————————

Once a monk made a request of Joshu. / “I have just entered the monastery,” he said. / “Please give me instructions, Master.” / Joshu said, “Have you had your breakfast?” / “Yes, I have,” replied the monk / “Then,” said Joshu, “wash your bowls.” / The monk had an insight

 

 

Trespass at Your Peril, Passerine

Uncategorized

The passerines form a family of birds with two toes pointing forward and one in reverse, engineered to grasp onto twigs, branches, wires and cables. This useful poise is better known as perching, a feat (forgive the pun) impossible to all except perhaps the deformed and the tightrope walkers.

The passerines are also characterised by their insistence on singing. They are better known as the songbirds. They tweet, they warble, they twitter and chirp, they cheep and chirr and chirrup and peep and trill. Among their ranks are the nightingales, the skylarks, the wagtails and the swallows.

So the passerines perch and sing. Some can be said even to belt out their little lungs, every bit the pocket soprano. Nature’s little clarinets do it both alone and in a choir, in the morning at the coming of the light and in the evening at the putting of the sun. Their voices can be so weightless they are carried on the wind, while others drown out the silence of molecules with a cacophony so intense that the passersby walking their dogs and the housewives by the open kitchen window can only stand in wonder at why the tree canopies are trilling as if their lives depended on it.

Do the songbirds know they sun will come round again, that their plaintive cries have been heard 93,000,000 miles away? Therein may explain the distance these passerines can travel to seek that sun half a world away. Some weigh no more than a pocket watch yet travel through time more than either the big or the little hands. The swallow claps its perfect wings a million times and some, over the length of Africa and some. He wheels and dips all summer long over hill and dale and seas of corn, market towns and football fields earmarked for development. And when he has seen enough and eaten enough he summons the brood and does it all again, back to South Africa and the sun inching south.

The passerine knows no boundaries. On signs reading – NO TRESPASSING, PRIVATE PROPERTY – he perches and warbles, singing his cares away.