Strugr

Dear friends,

Zack is no longer with us. I regret to say that in answer to prayer, he disappeared sometime in January and has never been heard from again. He is no doubt either dead or alive, covered in doggy glory having died or now living the death of a savage beast unrestrained by human flesh falling between his teeth. This blog will remain as a monument to his time among us, his more human foibles, his petty vanities, his ability to look things up on Wikipedia with the aid of a pencil, and to his one literary accomplishment -- the CHRISTIAN ROMANCE NOVEL (see sidebar). This was a pretty significant accomplishment for an atheist.

Ruben has taken up residence at http://vahskresenye.solideogloria.com/, and I occasionally drag out a post at http://kamelda.wordpress.com.

My sister sent me a story about how the dogs we have lost meet us at the 'rainbrow bridge' this side of glory, and go with us into heaven. Zack would have remarked that whoever makes up these things needs to write a study Bible --except that probably, he already has. My sister you understand sent this to me in a critical spirit. I responded that if Zack ever comes running at us this side of glory Ruben will, like Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, go into a standing fetal position and cry out, "Don't touch me!" and I will mildly instruct Zack not to put his gooey nose on my clean shoe. He will then run off to mate with some other male dog on the rainbrow bridge and Ruben and I will, shaken and relieved, cross over into glory having vanquished the last enemy - our dog.

Zack did seem like the embodiment of the sheer exuberant joy of creation -- joy in just being created and finding oneself in the running movement of all the other things that have been created. One memorable night I went out in the moonlight to untangle him and he was so full of senseless joy with the wind blowing and the stars courtseying that he knocked his doggy kibbles all over the porch and played a frantic, hysterical game of hockey with them all over the stones. It was the weirdest and wildest and silliest and entirely the most beautiful dance I have ever witnessed, and I don't think I could have loved Zack half so much if he weren't so entirely devoid of even doggy sense and so completely irrelevant, unbecoming, indecorous, and irrepressibly silly. I'm glad if he has died, that he probably died as a dog ought to, defending his right to another dog's property or getting run over by something he wanted to sniff, -very involved in changing his own furiously important world, and not with me ladling chicken noodle soup down his throat and refilling his hot water bottle as I undoubtedly would have. He died like Oliver Cromwell. Lived, that is - he died like Cromwell lived. Which is very fitting, whatever you may think it, because he did call himself 'Lord Protector of the Chickens'.