Solitude Is A Breeding Ground

I Once Heard A Woman Who Had Lost Her Dog Say That She Felt As Though A Color Were Suddenly Missing From Her World: The Dog Had Introduced To Her Field Of Vision Some Previously Unavailable Hue And Without A Dog, That Color Was Gone. That Seemed To Capture The Experience Of Loving A Dog With Eminent Simplicity. I'd Amend It Only Slightly And Say That If We Are Open To What They Have To Give, Dogs Can Introduce Us To Several Colors With Names Like Wildness, Nurturance, Trust And Joy.

Our Culture Thrives On Black-and-white Narratives, Clearly Defined Emotions, Easy Endings, And So, This Thrust Into Complexity Exhausts.

Love—the Desire To Love And Be Loved, To Hold And Be Held, To Give Love Even If Your Experience As A Recipient Has Been Compromised Or Incomplete—is The Constant On The Continuum Of Hunger, It's What Links The Anorexic To The Garden-variety Dieter, It's The Persistent Pulse Of Need And Yearning Behind The Reach For Food, For Sex, For Something.

Trying To Describe The Process Of Becoming An Alcoholic Is Like Trying To Describe Air. It's Too Big And Mysterious And Pervasive To Be Defined. Alcohol Is Everywhere In Your Life, Omnipresent, And You're Both Aware And Unaware Of It Almost All The Time, All You Know Is You'd Die Without It, And There Is No Simple Reason Why This Happens, No Single Moment, No Physiological Event That Pushes A Heavy Drinker Across A Concrete Line Into Alcoholism. It's A Slow, Gradual, Insidious, Elusive Becoming.

Dogs Have Such Short Life Spans, It's Like A Concentrated Version Of A Human Life. When They Get Older, They Become Much More Like Our Mothers. They Wait For Us, Watch Out For Us, Are Completely Fascinated By Everything We Do.