It's a doggy dog world
Postcards from London #4
Dear friend,
Recently when I imagine the future and what I hope it will hold for me, the following picture springs to mind:
A long, sandy beach ending in a green curve, greeting the horizon. Clumps of pale green bushes spot the bank on the left and the sea yawns wide on the right, with the sky just grey enough that we have the beach to ourselves. I am walking - no, running - with a dog, her (1) shaggy black coat bejewelled with tiny drops of water. She’s got a neon yellow tennis ball in her mouth, and as she drops it expectantly I pick it up with one of those scoopy dog throwing things and I hurl it down the beach, watching it bounce and make soft indentations into the sand. The dog runs after the ball. I run after her.
That’s it. I hope you are well. I hope you are enjoying the current era of life that you’re in, savouring the present moment, and I hope that you are looking forward to all the possibilities your future could hold. It’s a difficult thing, to balance appreciating the world as it currently is, to “stop working against the world. Love the one you’re in,” (2) and to also desire the ways the world could be, its beautiful potential. In other words, the balance of cultivating joy for the present moment, and joy for the future. I’m still working it out. But that’s something for future me to worry about.
Lots of love,
Vee
I just randomly assigned this dog a gender because calling a dog ‘it’ just feels wrong, can we please have a more alive pronoun for animals and plants please I beg
Quote is from Maggie Nelson’s Bluets.