The longest day

Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? Me too. But last night at work, I glanced back behind my desk, at the wall of windows that give me a view out onto Eighth Aveue, and noticed the sun still gleaming on the Port Authority Bus Terminal. It was 8:30, and bright as day, and suddenly I remembered.

Today I woke up at 9:13, early for me, though the sun had been up for about four hours already. The sun was shining on the jungly vegetation that grows in the courtyard our apartment looks into. The Longest Day of the Year! I thought, a change from the usual He is Dead that I think upon waking. A ridiculously beautiful day, cool breezes, deep shadows, doesn't stink of urine and garbage. It doesn't get any better, really. The beauty of everything lies precisely in its impermanance. Which is not to say I would reject the chance to be immortal, at least not without serious consideration.

Robin has survived her brush with death that I am sure she will describe in her own due time, when she gets any. Garth is still dead. He is not coming back, and the pain is not any less but it is different. When he came to live with us, I remember, it almost immediately seemed impossible to recall that we had ever not had a dog. The same thing has happened now that he has gone, but in reverse. I look at his photographs and see... photographs. A handsome dog, looking the camera in the eye challengingly, looking out a world now gone.