Day of the Bright-Eyed Dog

PEJ News - C. L. Cook - The stars are awry. This turbulent week around the orb, this madness passing as diplomacy and responsibility has revealed, in shockingly clear contrast, we are standing on the rim of the abyss.

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The Day of the Bright-Eyed Dog

C. L. Cook

Pej News
July 14, 2006


A noble portrait below my prospect, an accident of "nature," in the form of an oil stain, appears in the parking lot. In relief, it's a dog with blazing pine cone eyes, staring accusingly, behind a terrier's silhouette. Sometimes you're arrested in the most unlikely moments by things meaningless on their face, but that resonate in queer contexts, if pressed for the details of which, you would be at a loss; magic perhaps?

Jesus appears periodically in tacos, rain stains, and is a hauntingly familiar amidst potato chips; so, it's no surprise to me to conjure figures from Rorschach blots on the tarmac. That's what people's brains do; create sense from a meaningless randomness. Out the fallen cones, perfectly symmetrically lain in my imaginings, came figures reminding too of a chance encounter today with an odd eye-coloured mutt.

In speaking to animals one must maintain a respectful tone. It may seems mad, but the most sceptical cynic cannot deny moments of transcendent communion with the "other," animals and plants whose voices, in your mind's ear you hear.

It is, accordng to Sue, the optometrist astrologist, a strange moon, and ominous solar house ascending as we commiserated our crazy F-ed up week today. There is more much than is dreamt of within your philosophy, Horatio!

What can be divined in the eye of a dog?

There were a pair of lab cross siblings straining the tether today on the sidewalk downtown. Through my car, window one looked revealing eyes of pale blue; shining eyes, curious and alive. This dog, I'm near certain, knows nothing of the bombing campaign currently conducted by fascist Israel over Palestine and Lebanon. S/he (I didn't look that closely) doubtless kens not why the 'apes-that-feed' would fall upon one another as they are apt to do. Living largely in their noses, it seems to me their sniffing now questions survival.

The stories of animal raising the alarm of impending disasters are rife in history past, and more recent. 'Elephants Warn Phuket before Tsunami,' (or something likewise) spring to mind; but deeper still than this geologically determined prescience attributed our co-creatures, is nascent animal consciousness.

As that quizzical, questioning , cock-headed Labrador's stance, I too wonder: "Why do the apes behave such?

Blue eyes are not necessarily signs of Aryan intent; oft times, it's just another colour, one of a palette making up us all. As we stand today, peering over the precipice, the dogs may have a tale to tell we cannot afford missing.

A single planet, and lone star are peering through the cloud cover tonight. Hanging in their solitudes o'er peaceable little Victoria, they appear beacons of a hope we apes and dogs all can, living on our single planet, find peace tonight.



Chris Cook is a contributing editor to PEJ News, and hosts the weekly public affairs program, Gorilla Radio, broad/webcast from the University of Victoria, Canada. You can check out the GR Blog here.

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