My dog, Smokey, apparently is very much lacking in the discipline department. We've sort of kept him on a long leash (hah) in that department in much the same way you would excuse someone with Tourette Syndrome. It's not the dog's fault. Our excuse for him has always been that he's a little daft.
But this is where it ends. This summer. I want to walk the dog, partially for his benefit, and partially for my own. I've been meaning to bring a water gun on these walks, to give him a squirt when he gets too rowdy, but I don't have one available at the moment. Which is why I ended up giving up after ten minutes.
The funny thing was that after giving up, while sauntering back to the house, Smokey was a hundred times better behaved. When he came to the end of his leash he stopped, instead of trying to pull me along, choking himself in the process. I decided to see if he'd roll with it, and we walked right past the house. As soon as we passed the outermost inch of our front lawn, however, he was at it again, so I called it quits and went inside.
Here's the thing. He doesn't seem to realize that he just ruined what could have been a great walk. We got into the house, and you wouldn't know if I had brought the dog to the Moon and back. In his doggish way, he jumped around and looked at me in his "that was a FANTASTIC walk!" way, even though we had passed perhaps twenty houses total.
As soon as I manage to reign him in a bit ... I might even be able to enjoy the walks.
29 April 2008
24 April 2008
On the Psychological Impact of a 4 a.m. Overdose
The time right now is three twenty, but soon it will be four a.m., which carries with it the weight of a more enigmatic hour. I suspect in earlier years, two o'clock in the morning would have been absurdly late, and more recently, three o'clock had usurped it's place as a quite late and too bizarre time to be awake. However, today the dangerous hour rests at four o'clock in the morning, and that is probably where this progression will end, since 5 o'clock speaks to me more of an early morning than a ridiculously late night.
A song by a band that I cannot produce the name of at the moment for some reason, speaking of what I think I remember as the death of a close friend, carries with it the title of 4 a.m. Forever. The more I think about this title, I am unsure if it's entirely appropriate to describe emotional anguish. I believe the song tries with the word "forever" to communicate the slowness of time passing for the narrator, which is appropriate, as 4 a.m. is an hour that passes slower than most. Where I find it inappropriate, is the fact that 4 a.m. has always to me been a magical time of day, carrying with it no preprogrammed emotional distress.
There is a saying that "Six (or seven, or eight, or eleven for my more deadbeat friends) is an hour that should only happen once a day." The thrust of the saying, as I understand it, is that for one of the two "Six o'clocks" that exist, a person should be sleeping.
I would suggest that Four is probably an hour that only properly exists once in a twenty four hour period. Something happens between three fifty nine, and five o'clock that I can't explain, and would rather leave to the scientific community or druids to explore, because Four in the morning is a strange place to be.
Music takes a new effect at this hour. The subtlest piano ditty can be so compelling as to inspire you to run to Moscow, and yet so captivating, to leave the source of music would be sacrilege. Ever since a particularly shocking five a.m. involving scrambled eggs, a most probably stolen pink tricycle , and Bruce Springsteen's "Born To Run" on infinite loop, I never listen to a portable music player after midnight.
At four in the morning, things make much more sense than they normally do, you might notice. Philosophy papers, for example, seem to possess an artistic depth and legitimacy that they in the daylight hours find severely lacking. Notes, letters, and journal entries written at four a.m. and read the next day often evoke the same feelings that readings of mystical texts do. The author seems to be deeply affected by something profound. The universe makes sense for this person. And yet: his message to you, written on a plane of understanding far beyond daylight grasp, is not even remotely useful.
The existence of email capabilities is also a problem. More than a dozen times I've written messages, no doubt profound and moving at four a.m., that after re-read during breakfast inspire depressed sobbing at both lost clarity and the idiocy of the text at hand.
Ideas seem to be able to fend for themselves at four a.m., and sensibility is not an asset in the bloody mind-carnage that ensues. The surviving ideas all, strangely, seem to include the notion that the idea should be sent to interested parties immediately. A survival instinct of these ideas is probably to ignore the fact that nobody will genuinely be interested in the following idea. Another apparent survival instinct is the fact that some of the ensuing emails even understand that their time is limited, and they must be planted in other soil qickly before they wither and die with sunrise. The most compelling evidence for this survival instinct is the fact that time and time again, four a.m. emails begin with sentences like "I know if I don't send you this idea now, I probably won't ever ... "
Despite all of the havoc that ensues from an ill-prepared-for four a.m., I often seek them like a drug. "The clarity the hour offers is certainly worth any damage it does" I tell myself in the hours after one o'clock. I know I'll regret the result but ... "I'm awake anyways. I might as well just sit by the computer and flick on Bruce Springsteen." The lies we tell ourselves when we need a fix.
I am a junkie. I need help.
But then again, curtains and pickles should always be the same shade of green where possible. I mean that just makes sense!
A song by a band that I cannot produce the name of at the moment for some reason, speaking of what I think I remember as the death of a close friend, carries with it the title of 4 a.m. Forever. The more I think about this title, I am unsure if it's entirely appropriate to describe emotional anguish. I believe the song tries with the word "forever" to communicate the slowness of time passing for the narrator, which is appropriate, as 4 a.m. is an hour that passes slower than most. Where I find it inappropriate, is the fact that 4 a.m. has always to me been a magical time of day, carrying with it no preprogrammed emotional distress.
There is a saying that "Six (or seven, or eight, or eleven for my more deadbeat friends) is an hour that should only happen once a day." The thrust of the saying, as I understand it, is that for one of the two "Six o'clocks" that exist, a person should be sleeping.
I would suggest that Four is probably an hour that only properly exists once in a twenty four hour period. Something happens between three fifty nine, and five o'clock that I can't explain, and would rather leave to the scientific community or druids to explore, because Four in the morning is a strange place to be.
Music takes a new effect at this hour. The subtlest piano ditty can be so compelling as to inspire you to run to Moscow, and yet so captivating, to leave the source of music would be sacrilege. Ever since a particularly shocking five a.m. involving scrambled eggs, a most probably stolen pink tricycle , and Bruce Springsteen's "Born To Run" on infinite loop, I never listen to a portable music player after midnight.
At four in the morning, things make much more sense than they normally do, you might notice. Philosophy papers, for example, seem to possess an artistic depth and legitimacy that they in the daylight hours find severely lacking. Notes, letters, and journal entries written at four a.m. and read the next day often evoke the same feelings that readings of mystical texts do. The author seems to be deeply affected by something profound. The universe makes sense for this person. And yet: his message to you, written on a plane of understanding far beyond daylight grasp, is not even remotely useful.
The existence of email capabilities is also a problem. More than a dozen times I've written messages, no doubt profound and moving at four a.m., that after re-read during breakfast inspire depressed sobbing at both lost clarity and the idiocy of the text at hand.
Ideas seem to be able to fend for themselves at four a.m., and sensibility is not an asset in the bloody mind-carnage that ensues. The surviving ideas all, strangely, seem to include the notion that the idea should be sent to interested parties immediately. A survival instinct of these ideas is probably to ignore the fact that nobody will genuinely be interested in the following idea. Another apparent survival instinct is the fact that some of the ensuing emails even understand that their time is limited, and they must be planted in other soil qickly before they wither and die with sunrise. The most compelling evidence for this survival instinct is the fact that time and time again, four a.m. emails begin with sentences like "I know if I don't send you this idea now, I probably won't ever ... "
Despite all of the havoc that ensues from an ill-prepared-for four a.m., I often seek them like a drug. "The clarity the hour offers is certainly worth any damage it does" I tell myself in the hours after one o'clock. I know I'll regret the result but ... "I'm awake anyways. I might as well just sit by the computer and flick on Bruce Springsteen." The lies we tell ourselves when we need a fix.
I am a junkie. I need help.
But then again, curtains and pickles should always be the same shade of green where possible. I mean that just makes sense!
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