Day 14 of 100 Days of Blogging: Surreality
Some days, more and more days, these days it seems, I question my state of lucidity. And grip on reality because things seem like an episode of the twilight zone. Today was absolutely one of those days….
At around 10 AM this morning I was in the backyard of my apartment with Rosie on her harness, smoking a cig and talking to my mom on the phone. As I was deep into catching up with my mom, Rosie was frolicking, sniffing and pulling as she typically does, me admittedly paying little attention to her whereabouts. And then all of a sudden she Houdinis her way out of her harness and books it through the alley and out of the backyard.
I call out to her “I’m not chasing you!”
So I get off the phone with my mom and proceed to walk the block looking and calling Rosie’s name and asking folks if they’ve seen her. She is a smart dog so I figure she wanted to get my attention and will soon return.
A church a block up is giving away free food stuffs. I stop to ask the volunteers encouraging people to come and get free produce if they have seen a medium sized brown dog and they havent but encourage me to go inside to get some free food staples. I welcome the invitation because my original morning plan had been to go to Eastern Market to get fresh produce from my favorite farm vendors. They check my temperature and I ask the coordinators if I could be useful volunteering at the food distribution in the future and they take my name down and say they’ll call me.
I take my produce home (a bag of potatoes, carrots, and onions) and I grab my wallet to get cash out for a reward. I walk the block about 5–6 more times calling her name with no luck.
At this point 45 minutes have passed and I’m starting to get nervous. I decide to walk to the park about 50ft from our apartment building thinking she might have gone there as she loves the park and often is constrained from exploring the less than manicured overgrown patches of forest when I take her on park visits.
As i walk the park loop that we run or walk on almost daily with empty harness in hand, I see a brown coat of fur to my left that is the same color as Rosie. As i get closer to approaching the animal i begin to have a feeling of repulsion, I can see the animal is laying in the brush and my mind begins to panic that my dog has somehow been killed in the manner of 45 minutes being missing!!!! But then i take some deep breaths and tell myself that this is irrational.
I take the picture above to confirm that the animal was a deer and not in fact my Rosie. But then i feel confused and traumatized by trying to piece together why this dead deer is lying this way near the trail of the interior of the park, it couldnt have been hit by a car….
I decide i don’t have the mental nor emotional capacity to contemplate autopsy investigation of the deer and get back on mission searching for Rosie. As im nearing the end of the park loop with no sign of Rosie, a small woman with four large leashed pit bull mixes approach’s me, (empty harness in hand) and asks if my dog has gotten loose. I reply yes and with a frightened expression she says, “ I hope your dog doesn’t approach my dogs because they have a pack mentality and if she approaches them, they will devour her!”
She tells me good luck and I run out of the park and across the street as I hear some barks that sound like Rosie’s. It isn’t Rosie but four small fenced terriers instead.
So I walk and walk, and walk and walk, and call and walk, and ask, and walk. No Rosie.
I create a Nextdoor post and decide to get some cash from the Corner Store to compensate whoever happens to have found my dog eventually.
En route to the store a young man asks if I can help him with a little money because he starts a job on Monday and needs steel toed boots after recently transitioning out of homelessness. I tell him, hey dude I can give you $20. I get $40 for reward money and $20 for this guy. I give him the $20 of which he is super appreciative and I ask him to keep an eye out for my dog and he agrees.
I turn the corner to walk up the street and around the block for what feels like the 1000th time and who do i see but Rosie, running towards me thtough the lawn of the church with the free produce giveaway!
In my mind she was running in slow motion like a scene from Lassie. She comes right up to me as if nothing has happened and lets me slip her harness over her head.
As i got back home and settled back into my routine for the day I reflected on all that had taken place in the span of 2 hours and pondered if it was all a whacky daydream/hallucination. Im still not quite sure if any of this is real, and also reality is subjective🤷♂️.
Fin
