By Ron Young –
There are times when a dog barks repeatedly and at a sufficient volume and frequency that it raises the attention of his neighbours, who take up the chorus and transmit his message across the night-yards and country paddocks of the region. What may initiate this disturbance is a matter of great curiosity and investigation of higher minds to the extent that novellas and essays have been written and songs composed. Thus, the fame of this dog; whom we shall call DOG to differentiate him from others; crosses temporal boundaries and consciousness spheres into realms it was never intended to visit. Or…is that not the question?
Who can really plumb the depths of the mind of DOG? While a simple barking chorus brought on by a door slamming somewhere in the village or perhaps a spoon dropping from the lips of a startled child who saw the uncovered bliss of the harvest moon for the first time on a darkening eve, this simple chorus becomes celebrated in story and song and passed on through the ages anon. DOG has made his mark, and yet we scoff.
It takes not skill, aplomb, grandeur, or elegance to bring this matter into the historical archives of the civilized world. It merely takes bravado or perhaps a certain density of ignorance that precludes the light of humility from shining out the eyes of beastly essence. Accordingly, a resonating bravado or maybe resonating ignorance improves the vibration of the effort until an orchestra of appreciation and applause results such that no rational being can dissuade the masses from believing its worth.
What is not recorded, nor ever will be, are the precluding and concluding events of this singular episode. Was DOG resting quietly in the darkness, night dreaming as it were, of some activities that increased his level of excitement earlier in the day? An activity such as smelling a rotting piscine corpse along the river bank and subsequently rolling in it, or possibly something more mundane like a dragonfly zagging through his nearby line of sight at hot noonness? When his concentration was sharply broken by a sound: car door slamming; spoon landing; and a cascading reflex of nerve electricity launched a bark into the darkness followed by another and another attempting to extinguish the brief attempt at reflective consciousness that was struggling to surface in his dull mind. Thoughts can bring dull minds into delicate states like finely drawn glass tempered like crystal but lacking the anneal of experience and sadly broken with startling discomfort to all concerned.
And here we perhaps feel confident that we know the prelude; we know the fugue; and so our own consciousness must be the outro solo but the narcissistic tendencies of human consciousness often mislead and such is the case here whereas in fact the outro solo else known as the conclusion was brought about externally not internally. A deftly aimed shoe, or a raucous shout from a nearby window or maybe just the lack of a response brought the matter to an end in the local neighborhood; in the non-local neighborhood; but not in the wide area network of arts and letters.
It is with these curious and puzzling thoughts in mind that we must review our measure of the universe and our definitions of matter. It must become clear that matter does not have to have import or weighty intent before it can make itself known in ways that will never be controlled. DOG will bark and make his mark across eons and galaxies unto time immense like graffiti on a wall whose thread runs across rail cars; shipping containers; contemporary art; penetrating space and time it will become enmeshed in our cultural understanding of civilization. Bark will endure where only dust remains of the lofty efforts of intellectual pursuit.
When DOG has barked soundly and well, and the night has responded in kind, then DOG will bark again on subsequent nights and days and deep fascination with the graffiti like ‘art’ will take hold of the populations of the world who will follow the pretense of Carpathian punk. Rationale will be sublimated by isolation and dismembering of the senses. The Trump card may not be played but it has been in play as it has always been in play serving as the discordant note that provides a mirror of nuclear devastation to that which has progressed beyond smug to overripe and then rot. It’s not sadness; it’s not a beginning or an end; it’s a particulation of mindfulness like a jab from a special subatomic cosmic particle, like a muon, arriving on a solar wind and passing through dimensional space.
BARK. BARK.
Ron Young is a renewable energy professional that designs and sells solar, wind, and micro-hydro systems. He operates the earthRight store in Williams Lake, BC and can be reached at info@solareagle.com – check out the Facebook page at earthrightsolar.
Copyright Ron Young 2016
