Dog

Despite the weather forecast had stated probable rain, I took everything needed when I left home in the morning, just in case. All week had been the same: cold morning, snowfall in the afternoon, plus snow plus rain plus wind as it turned into night. I wanted, I needed, to return walking home lurking for some picture. A little flower agonizing in the winter, a tree covered whimsically with snow, whatever cliche would have worked. But the forecast won, so there I was one hour after my shift; well-equipped but under rain, snowfall and sharp wind like invisible waves over the streets, carrying drops and flakes within. I accepted this was not going to be a picture?s afternoon, but I was walking home anyway because I knew that as soon as I get there the colorless remain of my uneventful day would start, and that?s what I feared. “Work takes so much time and from of a specific part of the day for a reason, -my grandfather used to say-, to prevent you from growing”. What was left in my schedule now was dinner in front of the TV news and then read a couple chapters of some book, or beginning to do something theoretically more interesting just to drop it eventually and lay. Because it was already time for the whole same shit tomorrow.

I worked as an industrial designer in a factory. White goods. Not at all what I expected when I attended college, certainly. I wanted to design airplanes, watches, toys, guitars. I wanted to be creative and absolutely free, and get paid for it. But that?s growing old for poor people, to learn to make peace with the continuous of deceptions. The factory was just outside the city, so at a point I was walking parallel to the highway and the windy rain hit me everywhere. I resented it in the center of my face, the spot a closed hood doesn?t cover so you can barely see and breath. I walked looking down, rising the sight from time to time to check out the front and, in one of those times, I caught it. Maybe thirty feet away. A dog, A skinny old dog black to the tip to the tail, standing in the edge of the road, static, too close to the cars and yet undaunted. When the wind wasn?t blowing towards it, water dripped from its belly and the snow accumulated in the dark loin and the top of the head was visible, so immobile the animal was. It took one second to understand the situation, and I got stunned by it. The dog was scrutinizing the traffic, waiting for the most suitable vehicle; a big one, fast one, heedless driver, low suspension even better. And the one was coming, very fast ended. A gigantic truck with big spots of snow in the windshield and a snowplow of some kind attached to the bumper. I didn?t know what to do, I didn?t feel what to do. I wished the dog to look at me, not to change its will, which somehow would have been …disrespectful, but to see into her eyes, his eyes. ?Was the old fear that kept the animal alive all these years gone? ?Can a living being dye, willingly, by instinct? I thought so, I think so, if the conditions, the status fit. But even for an old mongrel like this, for sure stray all its life, it requires a rare wisdom to distinguish between retirement and resigning. That dog had it. Pure stoicism. A discreet death, an anonymous end to a no more bearable life. We call it suicide, it just called death.

Of course, the dog didn?t look back, just swung, timing, and then throw itself to the iron monster. It was grotesque but quick, and the hit sent the body sliding until the side of the road again, very near from where he was located in the first place. From my standing point of view, I couldn?t see blood or parts out of place, so the sight wasn?t disgraceful at all, and the snow started covering the animal slowly. I felt the temptation of taking a picture, not artistically, just an image to help me remind of this bizarre poetry, but I didn?t. I got closer, though, and stayed there 20 minutes or so, looking at the animal as the black of it was completely covered into white and the withe was made pale by the dark of the night. 

Once at my house, the beans from a can tasted like glory, as the tears of my eyes fell into the wood floor.