It's easy

I talk to my dog. We hold regular conversations.

"WHAT? You do what?", you ask.

"I hold regular conversations with my dog," I repeat.

"Dogs don't talk. Are you lonely and depressed? Are you on medication, or needing medication?"

"I'm not on medication and don't need medication. As for 'lonely and depressed', a word from you could do something about it. Everything about it. But I do talk to my dog. My dog talks to me. As a canine he cannot talk as intelligently and about as many matters as professor Harold Bloom, but he can grasp basic ideas and express them, better than most American celebrities and politicians who spout daily on television on matters from politics, war and peace, life and death, to climatology, and who itch to tell the rest of us how to conduct our lives."

"Huh?", you say, intrigued just a little now.

"My dog is a mutt, a rescue dog, of indeterminable breed; I think he has 3 breeds in him from his parents and grandparents; people we meet make all kinds of guesses at what these three or six or nine more breeds might be, while I have long given up -- I don't need to know names for everything around me. He's pretty, he's handsome, people comment on that too, pay him compliments, stare at him, and he doesn't consider them arrogant or rude for doing so, on the contrary, he perks up, lifts his tail and wags it, looks straight at them as if to say, 'thank you, I know I'm beautiful, and so are you'."

Have I at last got your attention? Good, I'll go on.

"And we talk. Me and my dog. Just this evening, he quoted to me the Beatles. Sensing my depressed and lonely mood, like only dogs can do, he said: 'It's easy. All you need is love. Love is all you need." (He has heard all those Beatle records. But then, who hasn't?!)"

I then said, "Oh, you think so? You think it's easy? You ought to try it. You're all love, and how do they treat you?", I asked and he gave me a quizzing look.

I continued.

"Ground control to Major Tom, don't lean on me man, I'm back from suffragette city!", I said, quoting David Bowie this time. His name is Bowie, and, appropriately enough, I often quote to him singer David Bowie. He turned his head to look at me, but he didn't try to stop me from talking. I went on.

"Recall the days of your puppyhood and the time inside those cages at the rescue society. Do you remember how those two women, a mother and her young daugher picked you out of a crowd of barking, begging and whining dogs? How they picked you and not another dog? No, it wasn't your good looks, buddy, there were better looking mutts there that evening. They picked you out of that mob, not because you seemed like a 'nice guy', either, but because they saw you as a challenge, as a wild guy to be tamed, a fun guy to be with, a rascal, untamed, unrestrained, who they saw had a potential to maybe become some nice guy that they imagined in their minds but never actually met in a dog or man. That's why those two women picked you and not some begging, good looking, romantic and loving nice guy. You weren't offering love to them, only trouble and challenge. You don't remember, do you."

He turned his head and stared at me with the look dogs give when they hear something new that they don't quite understand.

"And what happened after that?" I continued. "We tamed you, trained you to be a sweet loving guy, and then what? The two women who had picked you, lost interest in you, why, they are now tired of and annoyed by your presence, your barking, your requests for love and attention. You're no challenge any more, you're no fun, boy."

I finished, "It's just you and me now, boy, two depressed, lonely guys, on medication or needing medication, as somebody just told us. Love alone will gets you nowhere. It takes cunning, scheming and premeditation, to get a little bit of it back after you give it with all the sincerity you can muster."

And that was my conversation with my dog Bowie this evening. Years ago, famous singer David Bowie, loved by fans, surrounded by fellow musicians, groupies, managers, entourages, moved out of Los Angeles, where he was living, back to Europe, after saying he could not survive in this empty, lonely, desolate land.


'It's easy. Love is all you need.'