Dog Shaped Hole

Written on September 8th 2024

(Confession: I don’t always reap what I sow, rots on the vine. Worse, I often reap what others have sown)

To me, this is the essence of New York City, a place where everywhere you look, someone else’s unconscious movements become fodder for your own mythology. You go outside and become a character in someone else’s story, and they in turn become a part of yours. Here, everything is a sign, and God is never not speaking to you. Talk about reaping what others are sowing, but I would argue this is an intelligent symbiosis and not parasitic at all.

So here’s a story: It begins with a small boy, turning six, receiving a chihuahua for his birthday. He wanted to show the dog his city, the city of dreams, that never sleeps, this special place. And so he put the dog on the fire escape while his parents were in another room.

Outside and far below, a man who had just ended a phone call with his analyst held out his hands to examine them. This was a real “come to Jesus” moment for him. He thought: “how much pain and how much pleasure have these hands wrought? The pen is not mightier than the cock. I want to embrace everyone” he said to himself, “but who will embrace me?”

And then a chihuahua fell 3 stories and landed in his open arms, and suddenly he knew that in every heart is a dog-shaped hole.

For years he raised the dog, or rather they raised each other. He dressed it in the finest clothes and kept it warm in the cold months. He allowed it to sleep on his pillow and kept the window to the fire escape locked tight. During the day they patrolled the streets, impervious to judgement in a world of their own. And in the evening he read classic and contemporary literature aloud and taught it the principles of the Meisner Technique.

The dog learned so well that one day it stood up on its hind legs and walked across the room, unaided. With one minuscule paw it retrieved the smallest Salvatore Ferragamo jacket known to man from where it lay on the floor and, turning to its master, began to talk like a person.

It said: “nobody ever truly leaves you, so there’s no need to say goodbye.”

Before the stunned man could find his voice, the creature had pulled on its coat, its thimble-sized boots (one for each paw) and departed. The man leapt to his feet and charged downstairs into the crowded street, but the dog was gone. He had taught it to walk so fast, hadn’t he. He strode around the block scanning the sidewalks and streets to no avail, and he wept briefly. Then, embittered and grieving, he ran to a pet shop to examine the sundry apple-headed puppies in search of a swift replacement, but found it hopeless. He did not see himself reflected in any of their bulging eyes.

In his fitful sleep that night, he had a dream. In it, the dog had gone to meet the child, its previous owner, the unconscious architect of this relationship. The child who believed that, in his innocent attempt to show his companion something new, had inadvertently caused its death (or so he thought.)

The man imagined their reunion and the stories the small dog would tell the child, with the voice it had found so recently, through his teachings - how relieved and happy the child would be. The dream soothed him and he arose that morning filled with a new, coolly-composed intention. He knew now that we do not always reap what we sow, but must sow and sow and trust that naturally, one day, we will reap.