One
The dog
Juray lived with his mother. He was twenty seven years old and he lived with his mother. They got along very well. They fought a little, usually over small household things, but he liked living with his mother. One day Juray opened the door of his home to a new life. Two policemen informed Juray that his mother has had a heart attack at work and that he was alone now. He didn’t cry and he wasn’t angry. He stood still as he watched the two policemen walk away somberly, while his mind was racing. The only person who held his mind at bay was dead and gone. The only reason why he got up in the morning was never waking up again. Later that evening, as he was sitting on the sofa, his hands on his lap and his eyes fixed on the screaming violet wall in front of him, he realized that the hands that held him back had let go. If you do not know Juray, and I am assuming you do not, because you are reading about it rather than remembering what I am about to lay down for you, you wouldn’t know that Juray’s mind was a dark place. From time to time, but often enough, Juray would sit in his room in the evening and wonder about his hands. He would look at his hands and try to understand how those were his hands. His mind would often step outside itself and it would watch Juray like it was watching a character on the screen. In his diary he would describe this feeling as being too present. He was overly aware of his heartbeat and how his chest would heave in air without him realizing it and his eyes would blink without his command. There was nothing he could do about his breathing or his blinking except to sometimes stop breathing and blinking, and even then he didn’t have a say in how long because his lungs would stop his conscious decision and rise again and his eyes would blink shut tears and open again and continue opening and closing without his direct command. There were days when Juray would simply go to sleep and never even think about why he was going to sleep. But the pleasant ignorance of simply being would wash away like a grain of sand on a beach when he opened his eyes in the morning. When his eyes opened to the morning sunshine, his first thought was “I hate mornings.” For the rest of the day, he would drag the atmosphere of his last night’s dreams with him. When awake he would tread on his dreams, no matter what they were. Whether he dreamt of losing a leg, or spending time engulfed in a meaningless conversation with an actor he watched in a movie that night, or even when he dreamt he found his childhood pet rat in a club bathroom, feeling a long faded love returning to him as he took it home crying from happiness, he felt disoriented. The dream would soon enough lose its grip on him, but would stay present at the back of his mind until he woke up with a different feeling the next morning. He would recant his dreams to his mother from time to time, when he thought they were funny or stranger than usual. His mother would listen to him, but would always say “Why do you tell me this?” Still, Juray would continue to tell his mother about what he dreamt. The morning he received the news that his mother has died, he told her about his dream. In his dream his tooth fell out by itself, down a drain. He bent to retrieve it but it was hopeless. It was too deep to reach.
Back again to Juray sitting on the couch – the only person for whom he kept his true feelings about himself was now dead. This newly found freedom wrecked havoc in his mind, looking from a perspective of a less perceptive person. He was now finally free to give in to his mind and die, because he no longer had anyone he would feel guilty leaving to deal with his death. Sure, Juray had friends, and good friends at that, but at the end of the day, his friends were of no use to him. No one could pull him from his corrupted mind and figuratively save him from the raging waves underneath his feet. The real question was how would he’d do it. He always wanted to simply swim out to the sea and let himself get devoured by the cold and the waves. But he lived in a city, far away from any body of water big enough to overpower him. He was not afraid of death, but he didn’t want to suffer too much. Slicing his wrists in a bathtub was a, shall we say, favorite of his. Overdosing on sleeping pills was another, but he had no pills like that. He didn’t know if the desired effect would be the same if he simply took every and any pill he had in his home. The next remaining question was how to arrange the removal or better yet discovery of his dead self. He didn’t want to stink up the apartment and have a distressed neighbor find him swimming in red water, his body white and drained of all blood and wrinkly from the overexposure in the water. He came up with a solution to that. Before taking his last bath, he would leave the door unlocked and a note to call an ambulance before attempting to go inside. His mind all set he stood up, said out loud “Well,” and went to the bathroom. He let the water run, slowly turning the faucet from cold to lukewarm to hot. At this point, I feel the need to intervene and instruct you to not pity Juray. He struggled with his mind for a long time. If you asked him, he would tell you he can’t remember ever not feeling like a stranger in his own head. This had its downsides, as you learnt by now, but Juray felt it had its ups as well. For one, he liked that, because he was dancing with Death in his mind, he was more sensitive and perceptive of his surroundings. Music sounded more beautiful and he felt its sound dancing in his heart and playing on his heart strings. He was fascinated how people - human mind - felt the rhythm and the limbs immediately tried to follow it either by a simple foot tapping or by moving from side to side, up and down. Humans, even had a feeling, or no, not a feeling, an opinion on which movements were good and which weren’t. It was all a matter of coordination of the limbs and the head shakes and the energy with which one moved. Back in his high school days of going out to clubs with friends, he was unable to resist the rhythm. Even alone in his room with his headphones he was unable to resist the music. He didn’t understand how anyone could sit or stand still when music was playing, and yet he knew people like that. Art. Art was another thing he contributed to his sabotaging mind. When he saw a painting or even a picture of a peaceful landscape, he not only saw the captured beauty of the still nature, but he heard it. He heard the wind blowing through the trees and he heard the waves crashing into the shore; he heard the mutterings of people in a painting of a crowded café or a picture of a busy eighteen century Paris streets; he heard the crickets and the bats in a summer night’s landscape and felt the warmth of the setting summer sun. I mentioned how Juray’s dreams haunted him and harassed him, but Juray was in awe of the pure and mystical power of the unconscious human mind. “Dreams!” he would think to himself, “Dreams!” How was one able to experience such strange things and powerful emotions behind closed eyes and upon waking up be haunted by the same, albeit somewhat faded, feelings from those wonderful and surreal experiences without actually experiencing them? Juray was in awe. His dreams were his pride, an extension of his life. That’s why he would tell people about what he dreamt about, even when words escaped him when he went on to describe them and even when he knew that people were not too eager to listen to ramblings of other people’s dreams. Still, he was unfazed by people’s unwillingness to listen and went on to try and best describe his most recent dream. So, if you asked Juray, right now, if he would be willing to trade his mind for a less troubled mind, oriented on reality and the daily tasks only, he would have said no. He believed he had swam deeper than anyone before has swam and because of that he has seen wonders no one has ever seen. But the deep water was, well, deep and the sunlight did not reach him down there. He managed to float and not go deeper because he still remembered that although he could not see or feel the sun, the sun was still right there, above him, warming the surface of the sea. Now, with his mother dead, he was comfortable enough to swim deeper and reach the bottom of the sea and rest. So, do not pity Juray. Exhaustion of waking up and going back to bed and everything in between was rooted deeply in his bones. Juray certainly didn’t feel pity toward himself. He was a victim of his own mind, but through the years he has developed a Stockholm syndrome and was willing to go blindly into the unknown where his mind led him. Over the edge and beyond. That was his plan and frame of mind anyway. If hearing a certain sound could play such a big part in one’s life, literally involving a life or death scenario, this is the one.
You see, as Juray listened to the water slowly filling the bathtub, he heard another sound. A piercing, short one. A bark. His mother’s dog. He turned the water off immediately and listened for the sound again. And sure as death, he heard the small bark again and shot up from the toilet toward it. In the dark of his mother’s room he saw the dog on the bed. It was looking at him in the dark, its eyes luminescent and brown, its tail wagging upon seeing Juray. When Juray approached the dog, it got up, wagging its tail more rapidly. Juray picked up the dog with an expression on his face of one who picked up a baby that freshly filled its diaper, holding the dog in his extended arms. Do not scorn me for calling the dog simply the dog because that was its name. Or more accurately, that was its lack of name – he wasn’t even called Dog with a capital d. It was referred to as the dog and that usually followed a sentence expressing what was needed to be done with the aforementioned dog. For an example, the dog needs to go out, or the dog needs to be given fresh water. Prior to today, Juray liked the dog. It was small and didn’t bother him much. It wasn’t loud and didn’t need too much attention other than the need to sit on the couch or the bed next to you in the evenings. It was his mother’s dog because she brought it home almost two years ago. On her way from work she passed by a dog shelter and decided a dog would be a nice addition to the household. Juray didn’t object then, but the dog was presenting a problem now. He couldn’t kill himself now and leave the dog all alone in the apartment. He didn’t feel comfortable leaving the dog to starve to death or die of thirst. He was comfortable with his own dying but not with the dog’s. He had to get rid of it. The dog was looking at him with an expression that could only be described as happy, and if you ever saw a dog you know exactly what I mean. Juray carried the dog under his arm to the kitchen. He gave it food and fresh water and the dog wasted no time looking at the full bowl of food, but immediately started gulping down its food. Juray took one last long look at the dog and turned around on his heels and picked up the phone. He paused to think who to call. He had a few of his friends in mind and the shelter his mother took the dog from as an option. He punched in the number of his friend Tom. Now, seeing that I am your narrator you should trust me when I tell you that the conversation between Juray and Tom went exactly like thus:
“Hello?”
“Tom.”
“Juray.”
“I am giving you my dog.”
“Thank you. I don’t want your dog.”
“Why not? I am giving it to you. For free. As a gift.”
“I don’t want your nameless dog, Juray.”
“He’s a good dog.”
“I know he is, but I don’t want him.”
“Why not?”
“He’s your dog.”
“But I want to give it to you.”
“Thank you, I don’t want a dog at the moment.”
“Okay. Sorry, Tom.”
“It’s perfectly fine, Juray. But I don’t want your dog.”
And they hang up. Now, had Juray told Tom that his mother was dead and he felt emotionally strained seeing his mother’s dog laying on her pillow, drained of all the typical dog behavior, he might have convinced Tom to try and help him find someone else who might want to take his nameless dog. But, that was how the conversation went and Juray still had the dog on his hands. I don’t think it is necessary to describe to you the boring moments of Juray listening to the phone ring and ring and ring when he called his next friends Hubert, Freddie and Marie, nor do I feel the need to bore you with the conversation that took place between Juray and his lifelong friend Mathias. In short, Mathias didn’t want Juray’s dog because he didn’t want a mutt for a dog. Besides that, Mathias already had three dogs of his own and all of them were of a pure breed. So, those were all the friends Juray had to ask to take his dog from him. Seeing that he was unsuccessful with his friends, his only option was the dog shelter, but they were already closed for the night, and that Juray found out by hearing the dial tone ring on and on. “Tomorrow,” he decided “Tomorrow I will take the dog down to the shelter myself and that would be it.” That would be it. He would be free again and the dog would remain alive. I’d like to get back to one point. The dog was the dog because his mother, when she brought him back from the shelter, realized that she acted impulsively and somewhat complicated her life because of that. We all know that a dog is not a toy and not purely a source of amusement for humans. A dog is a ray of sunshine, a furry ball of life unafraid to show just how much its love for its master was unlimited and unconditional. So the dog remained the dog because Juray’s mother wanted a reminder to not do anything as impulsive as taking another living being under her care. And also because the shelter had a strict no refunds, no giving back rule and if the dog somehow ended up back on the streets the chip under the dog’s collar would tell them and authorize the police to take action against the negligent owner. But Juray didn’t know that yet. Back to the present, some hours passed and it was yet again time for Juray to close his eyes to reality around him and let his unconscious mind take control of his vision. He climbed into his king sized bed and closed his eyes, only to feel something small and warm curl in the nook of his back. The dog never behaved like this and certainly never slept in his bed like this, but Juray let it be. “It doesn’t matter. Tomorrow nothing will matter anyway.” And he fell asleep. And when he woke up, he woke up to a warm furry ball squeezed next to him. When the dog acknowledged Juray was awake, it started to wag its tail and yawn while stretching its back legs. The dog curled closer to Juray and Juray scratched its belly. Nevertheless, Juray was not swayed enough by the dog’s morning affection to change his mind. Today was finally the day Juray stops. No, reader the sentence is not incomplete. Juray wished and waited patiently for the day he had the liberty to make the final decision and answer the old Shakespearean question Hamlet had so much trouble answering : to be or not to be. Juray pondered over that question and today was the day he was able to answer how he really felt: not to be. Today Juray stops. Juray got up, hating the morning as usual, walking on a particularly haunting dream (he was loved, soft kisses were planted in the nook of his neck and he felt their phantom moist on his neck as he walked to the bathroom). The dog rolled in Juray’s sweat on the bed before following him to the bathroom. It was late enough in the morning for the dog shelter to be open so Juray put the dog’s collar on and stepped outside. Needless to say, the dog was overly excited for its morning walk and utterly oblivious of their destination. The dog trotted happily, stealing ever so often a glance of his master. Juray saw all of that, but was too engulfed in his own mind to truly care. The walk to the shelter was not long. The clerk at the shelter told Juray what I told you they told Juray’s mother. No refunds, no returns etc. So Juray was stuck with the dog. Walking back home, all of his hopes sinking, Juray watched the dog. The dog was oblivious of his near fate. There was no other way for Juray, but to keep the dog and postpone his meeting with the Devil. Home again, Juray gave the dog fresh water, which the dog drank profusely. As Juray watched the small helpless creature he was stuck with, he said out loud “Spero,” a word he remembered from his Latin class, which he liked the sound of, but forgot the meaning of. And as Juray uttered that word the dog turned to him, wagged its tail happily and walked up to Juray. Juray petted the dog and took Spero under his arm. They sat on the sofa, watching daily television, Spero laying its head on Juray’s belly. The sea inside Juray was calm.
If you ask me, Juray could have easily gotten rid of Spero, but chose not to. Something in him prevented him from drawing his last breath. Something in Juray fought back the ugly, black, sticky thoughts of dying, that Juray was unaware of. Between you and me, Juray could have fooled his friends or even his neighbor to babysit the dog for a while. What did he care about the dog when the deed was over and done with? Try suing a dead person! It’s a nag, I am telling you. Juray didn’t need friends to save him. Juray saved himself. He was the dragon, the princess in distress and the knight on the white horse in this story. One more thing before I leave you– after Spero died, happily and painlessly in his old age of eighteen, Juray coped with his new type of emptiness by adopting another dog and another. He named them Salus and Spira, the words he remembered from his Latin class, but once again couldn’t remember their meaning. They just had a nice ring to them.
