Ozzy and Me (III)

A Life without Thinking

I ceased to write for four days.

I ceased to think.

Instead, I established a new schedule with Ozzy excluding all mental activity:

Get up together—breakfast together—play toys in the backyard—morning walk—lunch for me and snack for Ozzy—play toys in the backyard anew—afternoon walk—brush and clean Ozzy—dinner together—gymnastics in my study—go to bed together

 

Night Gym in My Study

It is the first time for me to live with another being; I am afraid I’ve even gone so far as to live for another: Ozzy has become everything to me. 

I can hardly tell whether I enjoy this new life: physically I feel better than ever; mentally worse than ever.  

A Scene

Today I made an exception—an experiment: I left Ozzy alone in the backyard after our morning walk and sat by the window watching him through the curtain’s crack.

He was first confused and anxious, standing at the back door waiting for me to show up.  After half an hour, he turned to the fence gate and did the same thing, in vain.  So did he run back and forth for several times, until he got exhausted—not physically, I could tell.  He then selected a place in the sun from where he thought he could look into the house and see me—if I came back—through the window, although it’s impossible during daytime.

He sat there in sad silence, looking at the window from time to time.  Then he lay on his side with his head still toward the window.  Then he fell asleep...  After a while he woke up and sat staring at the window again—in weary longing.

 Longing Eats the Soul

A Thought

While Watching Ozzy Sitting Lost in the Yard

I saw myself in Ozzy.

My first Christmas in the Midwest turns out to be brutal: school is over; the crowded campus has become no man’s land.  All my students are gone; most of my friends and colleagues celebrate the holiday season elsewhere, and the few who stay are committed to family.  Wherever I go, I encounter the emptiness—and within the emptiness a heavy despair gathers.

This is strikingly different from my Christmas in Germany: there I never spent the quietest time of the year alone, which magically transformed the utmost quietness into a rare opportunity of reunion and das gegenseitige menschliche Sich-näher-Kommen.  In retrospect, I guess that was why I had been mentally unstoppable and inexhaustible. 

A noble friend and exquisite interlocutor in Bonn spontaneously commented on my character in contrast to his own following our first conversations in Wolfenbüttel:

Ob ich auch mal nicht denke? Das ist eher die Regel als die Ausnahme! Erstens bin ich nicht so ein Überflieger wie Du (ich sage das ganz ohne jede Koketterie, und gerade das ist für mich sehr wertvoll, v.a. in Sachen Demut), und zweitens versuche ich mich manchmal ganz bewusst Von der schweren Krankheit des Denkens (so der Titel einer herrlichen Rede eines Südseehäuptlings) zu befreien, aber das ist ein anderes Thema...

Dein Geist dagegen ist ein Feuer, das unaufhörlich brennt, und allein die Funken sind manch kleinerem (oder weniger energiegeladenem) Geist wie mir schon Wärme genug.

I was honored and humbled by his comments; but I failed to recognize that the observer himself contributed decisively to what I was: Nur unter der einen Bedingung kann mein Geist, das scheinbar bedingungslos unaufhörlich brennende Feuer, unaufhörlich brennen, daß mir ein vortrefflicher Gesprächspartner—ein ebenbürtiger Gegener—nicht fehlt.  

Otherwise I am just as bored, idle, and lost as Ozzy when left alone in a fenced backyard.  Sunshine, water, fresh air, pig ears, and even his favorite toys are not enough: he needs somebody to play with.

I need somebody to talk to.

It’s frightening to realize how dependent I am on infinite inspirations and constant challenges.

The School of Athens on the Way

I wish I could take a photo of Ozzy and myself when we two explore the neighborhoods at the dawn of day and in the dusk of evening: he always looks down for every particle beneath his feet; I always look up at the sky—the sun, the moon, the clouds, the stars—rising from a fringe of the tops of trees, and the few birds on the tops of trees.  

Birds on the Tops of Trees

I don’t understand his passion for sniffing the earth; he doesn’t understand my ardor to reach the unattainable.  Ozzy and I are at once so close to each other, and yet so far away from each other.

I suddenly recall Raphael’s depiction of Plato and Aristotle in Scuola di Atene:

These two central figures gesture along different dimensions: Plato vertically, upward along the picture-plane, into the beautiful vault above; Aristotle on the horizontal plane at right-angles to the picture-plane, initiating a powerful flow of space toward viewers.  It is popularly thought that their gestures indicate central aspects of their philosophies ... However Plato’s Timaeus was, even in the Renaissance, a very influential treatise on the cosmos, whereas Aristotle insisted that the purpose of ethics is “practical” rather than “theoretical” or “speculative”: not knowledge for its own sake, as he considered cosmology to be.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_School_of_Athens, 9pm today)

“How are you going to remember me?”

Two months ago I saw a Hong Kong film, Echoes of the Rainbow (literally Time, the Thief): a young man tells his first love during their date at the aquarium that goldfish are never bored because their memory only lasts 3 seconds, which makes each turn at either end of the glass the start of a completely new adventure.  They hence wonder whether human beings could be permanently happy as well if they had the goldfish’s memory.

I wonder how long a dog’s memory lasts.

Last Thursday our department secretary paid a brief visit to Ozzy, whom she took care of and got acquainted with some time ago.  To my surprise, Ozzy barked at her as she showed up and made every effort to prevent me from getting closer to her.  “He is just overprotective of you,” the secretary tried to relieve my embarrassment.  But I nonetheless had to see her off immediately.  “We’ll see what happens when your friend comes back,” she said before her departure. 

I, too, am curious about it. 

In “A Few of My Favorite Things” I talked about the unconventional and unconditional brotherhood between Vinnie (an undercover FBI agent) and Sonny (the leader of Atlantic City Mafia) in Wiseguy, an 80s TV show.  In the climactic scene of the final episode, No One Gets Out of Here Alive, Sonny bumped into a Moody Blues record and played it; it was “Night in White Satin.”  In that music and mood, he turned to Vinnie:

“Remember the 60s, Vinnie?”

“Yea.”

“How are you going to remember this?”  

(Silence)

“How are you going to remember me, Vinnie?”

Upon my friend’s return, I’d like to ask, “How are you going to remember me, Ozzie?” 

  "How are you going to remember me, Huiwen?"