The Ramones - Pet Cemetery
I remember the room. I remember the woman, frail with glasses, standing in front of us and kind speaking of God. I remember a picture on the wall of a man holding Jesus above the water, cradled. I remember someone asking the woman if animals go to Heaven.
"No," she said, "animals don't have souls like people have so they don't go to Heaven."
I went home and hugged my dog, Susie. She had been roaming the house, waiting for me when I was away for as long remembered and I loved her, she sat next to me when I was picked on by my brothers, when my parents fought, when my friend couldn't play. She loved and anticipated love. I was young and she was the closest thing to humanity I knew.
A friend asked me today, "How many books do you read a year?" and I did the math and figure it around a hundred. I've read Dostoevsky and Henry Miller, immersed myself in Shakespeare and the brothers Grimm, have known the words of Emily Dickinson and Sylvia Plath, Garcia Marquez and Garcia Lorca. I think I've had enough of a foundation laid that I can finally read the Bible and not tell young children that their most holy of loved family will not join them in the magical made-up land they can look forward to when they die.
I've begun. It is the corner stone of our form of literature and I've begun.
No comments:
Post a Comment