I used to have three dogs. Now I’ve got two, one of whom is more of a fluffy throw pillow than a dog, since he’s too old to do anything except sleep. Thus, I’m really just down to just a single blonde mischief-maker. To stave off depression for the both of us, I’m walking him three times a day instead of just once, because his friend and walking buddy is gone.
During one of our walks today I began to think, as I usually do, about the strange kind of mystical stuff that pushes its way into my head. I’ve read that some philosophers over the ages, as well as religious thinkers, considered human beings to be the only ones who possess something resembling a soul. The “beasts” here on Earth with us are simply living creatures which are born, die, and return to the ground, soulless and eventually forgotten.
I have never accepted this. I have wondered, from time to time, what the dividing line is between those living creatures that constitute any kind of spiritual realm and those which do not, and I’m increasingly of the mind that there is no such line. Whether one is considering the Pope, a drunk on the street, a housefly, or, yes, a black Labrador retriever, every single one of them represents some tiny sliver of a much greater whole.
I suppose because we humans are so acquainted with and accustomed to water (it also being literally the majority component of our bodies at 60%), it is likewise a helpful metaphorical tool, so I found myself considering how water makes a perfect representation of all these souls, both big and small.
During her decade with us, I felt a connection to Coda. I think our relationship and our time together represented something eternal in its own tiny way, and although we live as individuated creatures, we ultimately return to a superset of what we know here on Earth in a way that is simply incomprehensible to us.
Putting it another way, perhaps I am a lake, and Coda was a pond. Smaller than me, sure, and shorter-lived, but made of the same stuff nonetheless, and easily “pooled” together on the spectral plane once our time here has passed.
I suppose my disposition toward thinking of whatever transcends the material world as water-related isn’t new to my own writing, as this passage from Solid State illustrates, as the mysterious character Mac chats in a bar with a bearded man he just met, and they grapple with the question of God:
Mac held his glass up to the light and looked through it for a
moment to make sure it was relatively clean, then he took another
sip. He said, “Invisible man? Nah. And singing his praises? The God I
know isn’t quite that insecure. I think he needs us way more than we
need him.”
Setting his glass on the bar, Mac said “See, I think about this stuff
in a different way. What I believe is that God, or Yahweh, or the Source,
or whatever name you want to dream up, he’s more like a giant cloud
in the sky instead of a king on a throne, and the rain that comes down
from that cloud, that’s you, that’s me, and everyone else in this room.
And at some point, after we’ve lived our lives, we go right back to that
cloud, and that cloud is getting bigger and wiser all the time.
“So instead of the notion of humans getting cranked out by God so
they can scurry around and tell him what a great guy he is, I think he
put us here for a nobler purpose, which is to learn and think. It’s the
big guy upstairs getting better because of us, not the other way around.
What you know, what you feel, who you love, it all gets brought back
to that cloud. It’s a beautiful cycle, don’t you think?”
The bearded man looked toward the dirty hardwood floor beneath
them for a few moments and said, “Huh. Well. That’s an interesting
perspective, I guess. But it doesn’t explain much.”
Mac said, “I never expected it would. The only thing I know for
sure is that people don’t really understand anything about anything.
A three-year-old boy thinks he knows it all, because he’s so ignorant.
A ninety-three-year-old man understands that he doesn’t know squat.
That’s wisdom, Kevin. That’s real wisdom.”
I don’t purport to being very wise at all, but I at least wanted to share my musings, as Coda continues to haunt my thoughts with every waking hour.
