Today, not far from where I saw the eagle, I came across a dog dying in the road. He had just been hit by an SUV, and I pulled over and started wildly honking my horn, hoping that someone would come out of the houses and claim the dog. But nobody came.
The SUV, an old model plastered with Obama bumper stickers, slowed down and stopped when it heard me honking. I guess maybe it read an accusation into the car horn but that wasn't the intent.
The dog was still writhing in a pool of blood. I never knew blood was so thick. I didn't know what to do so I just crouched down by it and laid my hand on its neck and spoke to it until it died, in Italian, of course. That's the language for kids and dogs. The SUV guy came up and asked about it and I told him to go knock on the doors until he found the owners, which he did, except nobody came to the doors. They were all out at the sales, I suppose. Here the stores opened at 4 a.m.
The SUV guy came back as I was gently trying to move the dog's body to the shoulder of the road. He just matter-of-factly picked it up by its neck and the skin of its back and laid it down in somebody's yard but I made him move it closer to the road so that it could be seen and claimed.
"It wasn't my fault," he said. I implied heavily that it was and that he should have been more careful. There was perfect visibility and nobody on the road. He got kind of mad. He wanted me to say it wasn't his fault, but it was.
I know I'm judgmental. I was named for a judge in the Bible. If I had hit the dog, I would have judged myself. I wouldn't have said it wasn't my fault. That dog was somebody's joy and now it's somebody's heartbreak.
I was coming from the music school and I was singing in the car, an air by Handel. "Lascia ch'io pianga," which was in that movie Farinelli, about the castrato. It means, "Let me weep, my cruel fate, and let me breathe in freedom." I swear that I was singing that aria when I came over the hill and found the dog. What were the eagle and dog telling me? I don't know. Both times I cried, in my mom's minivan, which aroused the concern of Buddy Black Jack the Dog. Buddy's preferred therapeutic mode is to put his cold, wet nose on some part of your body and wait for you to feel better.
Yesterday, Pluto, the planet of death and transformation, moved into Capricorn, my Sun sign. One of the legends about the Eagle is that it would fly so close to the sun that all its feathers would be singed off, and it would fall to the ground, only to be born again. Maybe the dog was a Capricorn. But I don't feel like divining today. I feel sad. It could have been me in the red SUV, except for the Obama stickers and the fact that I object to SUV's. (I actually like Obama, but I don't like getting yelled at by a sticker). But we all get distracted behind the wheel, we're all in a hurry to go somewhere, we don't think of the consequences until it's too late.
And the owners, why did they let the dog run loose? Maybe it escaped. Maybe it just wanted to be free. My stepfather used to say, when Inga got loose, that he could hear her humming "Born free" on her way to the golf course. Freedom is a need, like food and air. Or maybe the owners were too busy trampling Walmart employees to care where their dog was. But I want to believe that the dog achieved its desire, and now he breathes in freedom.
Lascia ch'io pianga
mia cruda sorte
e che sospiri la liberta'.
mia cruda sorte
e che sospiri la liberta'.
