a hard rain's a-gonna fall

Last night I was walking down east Sunset with a friend of mine headed to a bar. As we were crossing onto a new block, all of a sudden I jumped back and gasped. My physical reaction happened even before any recognition as to why - in my peripheral vision to the right of me was this dead dog. Lying on its side, about the size of my pup. It looked as though its eyes has just shut a moment earlier. Flies buzzed around its open mouth. It was just there, open and exposed, the beginning stages of when a body starts to rotten...

It's not so often the average person in America is around death in such an exposed setting.
Why the images of New Orleans finally woke up a dazed and drugged up populace into screaming "Why?" and "How can we just let this happen here!!!" into the night's air. Why it's so important to the Bush administration that all photography of the death and destruction caused by our invasion of Iraq is censored. Let alone dealing with the raw photos of men missing limbs, we are not even allowed to photograph the coffins that come back home. It was exactly these same images which woke up a country into demanding that we leave Vietnam...

Death has a smell a texture and life of its own in some way. You can taste it at the back of your throat. You can hear it in an echo...

This dead dog stayed burned in the back of my mind last night, through the wine, through the conversations, through the laughter and through the dancing. This dog. I know we have something to learn from everything, and the universe has all these openings and examples of lessons to be learned continuously. All morning I keep coming back to this little puppy.

We have these bodies, that are only here now. At this moment. None of us are promised anything, not a damn thing from tomorrow. All that we have is now. All we have is this moment. So what are we doing with it? If today is your last day, what do you want it to be about? I want to have loved so fiercely and to know deep down because it is true, that I was loved just as intensely in return. By the universe. If all I have is today, how can I live saying "Yes!" to the universe. What does this love look like? It's knowing the value and goodness within everything and everyone - From being able to love the abandoned puppy searching the streets for safety and food, its being able to fogive those who have hurt you the most, its being able to see the good in someone you would normally have offed with a snide douchebag comment, its treating everyone with a respect. Fuck, its being able to see the love in McCain, to seeing the love in Bush even. Gratitude is a cycle and when you are at peace with yourself you are at peace with the world.

Fucked up things happen, wars, violence, rape, the list could go one forever. But its in how we choose to see the world, where our awareness lies, that we can tap into our true power. That power is in love. That's where we need to see things from - the rights and the wrongs, the clarity to make the choices that need to be made to make this world a better place. We need to come from love to do good, to be good.

We should be giving our love every moment, every truly precious second that we are alive.


What if, for just one day, we could not complain. If for just one day, we could not put ourselves or anyone else down, if we could cease from gossip, if we could stop criticizing, if we could end all our judging. If we could just love. If we could do that for just one day, what would that life look like?

And then...what if we did it for two?

At the end of the night walking back to my car, someone had put a white tshirt over the puppy.

Gustav is racing towards the Gulf Coast. I pray that the people and the animals are all safe...