What if We all Just tried a Little Harder?

Dog Poet Transmitting.....

My good friend Dr. Glenn Dormer is visiting me here in Italy and although the weather has been remarkable this winter, the last few days, the sun has been shining and upwards of 70 degrees. Weird things have been happening like they once did with regularity. Glenn’s a clean freak, so he’s in the kitchen a lot making it cleaner than it usually is because I am not a clean freak (grin). I try but it’s sporadic. I just don’t have that gene. I always thought it would be nice to have the money and make a couple of Indian (from India) people members of my family and give them a piece of everything I get just to help me keep my life together. Some people just like to keep a neat household but I don’t have the time. I’m busy working at all of whatever it is that I do and there are not enough hours in the day. That’s a good thing.

Now I’m thinking that someone, somewhere, is thinking that visible wants to abuse people from the 3rd world. The truth is that visible loves Indian food and cooks it for himself anyway and it would be great to have people speaking musically around him and harassing him to keep his shit together. That’s the truth and I’m not cheap; if I am anything at all. I would love an extended family.

Let’s go back to Glenn for a moment. Glenn is an MD and is now becoming a psychiatrist and that has got to be fun for him being around me because my understanding about mental pathologies dwarfs his and he will be the first to admit it at this point, given the ones that he has, which I bust him on routinely (grin). There’s nothing like spending time in high end, Guantanamo-like mental institutions that will give you a feel for crazy, if you’re paying attention.

Anyway, Glenn is in the kitchen doing his thing yesterday and a plate just decides to explode while he’s standing there. It defies all logic and reason that a plate would just commit suicide, without anyone touching it but that happens around me at least once a week and every visitor has seen examples of this sort of thing. So Glenn is a little freaked by this and I guess that’s got to be interesting when you are about to become a psychiatrist. It’s a good thing I’m not Hannibal Lecter.

My dog Poncho is here and he’s got his own pathologies. He loves my car. He sits out there and protects it. His whole life is based on the chance to jump up into my lap or -and that is BIG OR; to go for a ride so that he can howl like a banshee when we pass a dog. I think that has freaked Glenn out more than anything. I know he’s thinking that I should control my animal but Poncho has a small margin of being and I am indulgent. The sound doesn’t bother me at all but it bothers everyone else. Susanne puts him in a box in the Touran because he truly does go ballistic.

I’m one of those people that understands what that dog needs. Who am I to deny him? He wouldn’t hurt anyone if I let him out of the car but people are afraid of him for some reason, same with me and I’m not going to do anything either, unless I absolutely have to.

A couple of weeks ago two young thugs showed up at my house deep in the country and it was pretty apparent they were looking for opportunity. I could have gone a lot of ways with this. I could have been resistant, right from the getgo but I was truly curious what they thought they were up to. By the time we were done they didn’t know what they were up to and they went walking away really quick. My only concern was that they would harm my boy Poncho but that wasn’t in the mix anymore by that time. I won’t give you the details because it makes me look good and I hate being responsible for that (grin).

It’s not easy for me. So much is happening that I can’t interpret or explain. Every day now is like some kind of godawful challenge that I always feel like I failed. In the end just having Poncho near me is the best I can do. I can truly say I will miss him when he’s gone and sooner or later he will be but... I won’t miss me; not at all. That’s the one thing I am consistently trying to get rid of.

I’m going to break with tradition tonight on my radio show and have a guest in; cause I have a guest in and lets go back to that. I have a neighbor named Geno who lives across the way and he has at least twice my property and he works it all by himself. He’s a real rustic and his English is non existent and my Italian is better but not up to the mark. We don’t talk much but we like each other; all my neighbors are solid and decent people, which means we generally leave each other alone. Geno is in a lot of pain these days. I have seen that but not said anything but since Glenn showed up he came over and told me how bad his shoulder was hurting. Did he know that I have trained in the area of bodywork? I don’t know.

I gave him some manipulation and now he is here every day since, because he does hurt a lot. I told him it would take six days to fix his problem but it’s not going to fix his problem. It is just going to defer it because of his posture and his belly. How do I explain that to him? I do my best. He’s already much better and you know... it’s like that dog I picked up by the side of the road who turned out to be one of the smartest dogs I have ever seen...The Little Guy. Now he’s the beloved pet of the best dog handler in Baden Wurttemberg. They made a whole book of pictures and tales about him, which must have cost them something and they gave it to Susanne and I as a gift.

I could have driven by that dog. I had an excuse. There was a man walking near him. I could have convinced myself that the dog was with him. But who would own a bedraggled little thing like that that couldn’t even climb up on the sidewalk. It turned out he wasn’t more than 5 weeks old. I said to myself, “You know visible, this is what makes you different” and I stopped and took that doggie home. Today I can say that that was one of my good moves. You should see this dog now. If we all gave the dogs in our life a better shot then we would be better people. But we’re not. Are we? It doesn’t seem like it because the world I hear about does not match my expectations; not hardly.

If we would just go the extra inch; forget mile, we would reap rewards beyond measure. I reap them every day, not that I actually appreciate it because I never meet my own expectations. I just don’t ...but I have had a few bright moments where I have done the right thing and... my readers... my readers... it is all in our grasp if we were not such fucking lazy cowards. I know we don’t mean to be. I know we all imagine ourselves as heroes and then curse ourselves in the night when our honesty proves to be too much for us to resist, when our conscience gets at us. I’m asking for a little more from all of you right now. I’m asking you to do what I am unable to do and have damned myself for. I’m asking you to be a little more like the man I wish I was. I’m asking you to show how I can be a better man and make all these words that I use, worth the time it took to write them.

It just is not easy and it hurts so much of the time but my pain is nothing compared to the pain of the people I see around me and I don’t do as much as I could but maybe I am fooling myself about that because I can’t do anything at all. I only live on borrowed power. Anything I do achieve occurs because I get out of the way. Anything else I might presume is just vanity.

Go the extra inch or yard, okay? I can’t do this by myself. I can’t do anything. I’m not asking for myself. I’m asking for you in your place. There has never been a time when your efforts will pay off so handsomely. If there was, it was ten’s of thousands of years ago. You don’t have to do anything for me. Do it for yourself. Don’t spend the rest of your life regretting what you should have done, just do it when you have the chance. Do it for Poncho. Do it for The Little Guy. Do it for Black. Do it for your brother and your sister. You are never doing it for anyone but yourself in the end. You just don’t know that until the end.

End Transmission.....

Radio show tonight.