The reincarnation of Big Foot

It’s been nearly a year since one of my Doberman’s passed on. His name was Big Foot. Big Foot wasn’t like any of my other guard dogs. He was just very undoberman. Abnormal even which I tried to change at first. Only eventually to throw up my hands because I realized he probably realized what made him perfectly normal from all other dogs in my pack, was the pride he took from being unlike all of them.

Big Foot was really just a human pretending to be a canine.

But Big Foot’s was bitten by a cobra that must have wandered into the compound in the cover darkness – from the looks of it, it was full bite and by the second day his breathe was labored as the venom had spread to the rest of her organs and he was in great pain.

I did everything I could to drain out the venom including severing the veins and suturing them up again…but it was too late….it had gone to far and deep.

On the third day. I put on a pair of rubber gloves and held his head lovingly in my arms and snapped it. It was lightning fast and painless. I’ve missed Big Foot since then.

Recently Big Foot’s other twin, Turbo gave birth to a puppy – even at three weeks and a bit. I can tell this he bears certain similarities to Big Foot – for instance, this puppy has a habit of holding out it’s paw like one of the those gold plated battery cats that one sees from time to time in shops. Big Foot used to do that…..maybe Big Foot has finally returned.

The buddhist believe everything is predestined. Even a chance meetings is the result of karma…..Things in life are fated by our previous lives. So much so that even in the smallest events that may seem improbable, coincidental and even down right impossible – there’s no such thing as coincidence…it’s karma.

I am not by nature a religious person. Maybe it’s the tragic way Big Foot once departed that left an empty chamber in my heart that makes me want to believe in reincarnation.

Welcome back Big Foot.

————————————————————

‘By just the simple act of living, we run the risk of getting hurt. I am not even talking about the sort of living that requires one to operate heavy machinery or to hang for dear life tethered to a rope in a mountaineering expedition.

Just living. Ordinary living. You know the sort where you wake up, brush your teeth, dress, gulp down your Milo and make it out of the house to join the rest of humanity with roughly the same automatic processing power it takes to tie your shoes laces.

Plain ordinary living. True as this might be can leave a hole in your heart….because this is what it means to live and be a human – it is the one truth we all eventually learn and hopefully can find the courage to come to terms with. That’s what I learned from Big Foot’s sudden death.

May seem strange to you. But when a farmer spends so much time in the desolation of the wild with only his dogs and the nearest human is fifteen minutes drive away – then a bond forms – where at times, it may not even be incredulous to have a profound debate about macroeconomics or quantum physics with Big Foot….those who there all the time…in the good and bad, sweet and better can on grow on you…very much in the way people who come into our lives and fill it with laughter and joy can only grow on us as well.

That’s what it means to live. That’s what it means to be alive.

Often we say to ourselves in hope of staving off grief. Oh well, he’s there and I am here. I am safe in my hermetically sealed digital bunker. After all. There’s thousand of miles of co-axial cables that separate me from him…..there’s no possible way that he can whirl himself into my life. I am me and he is he….over there. The nearest we will ever get is like two ships passing each other in the dark with the lights turned off!

We say this to ourselves not to spare us all from grief that we don’t need. Rather it’s due to our false belief that if we can somehow hold back – that’s the best way to get by.

But life isn’t like that – one doesn’t nearly go around bubble wrapped not especially when others choose to come into our lives – not even if they happen to be a different species. Not if they can make you laugh at yourself, shed a tear and even stimulate your mind to see the world slightly differently from the way you have always seen it.

That’s what happens when one life reaches out and touches another.

Something moves….shifts…creeps…maybe ever so slightly that you don’t even notice it. But trust me you’ve moved closer. A door in your heart has flung opened and soon – you become one.

Call it what you want…community…solidarity. Or maybe just two souls that share a common bond.

Like my relationship with Big Foot – it doesn’t have to be a discourse. Sometimes it’s just one where one person talks and another has the patience to bear out the words. At other times it’s the words that live on and they become alive that makes the connection.

You see, hear and think the things he does. Or rather you think you do – and even if you don’t quite manage to get all of that together. At least you say to yourself from time to time – though you wouldn’t really care to admit it to anyone else…I am glad you came into my life.

I am glad you’re always there for me.

And one day when that person suddenly leaves – no truth can cure that sorrow. No strength, no understanding, No amount of sagacity can fill that inexplicable void in your life. All you can really do is go around the best you can like damaged goods with this profound sensation of loss that no one can ever sense or even understand even if they really strived too – because that relationship was so special – it’s as though you’re marooned in your own skull….but slowly with the chastening passage of time by just the mere act of living.

Yes ordinary living…the sort that doesn’t even require you to chop carrots fast and furious. Or even require you to stick your neck out for anyone In the office….just plain ordinary living.

The sort of everydayness – where the only thing you hope for at half past seven after work is to get a seat next to the glass on the MRT to get some shut eye. The sort of ordinariness that permeates the marrow of each passing day uneventfully and the only the thing that marks time is the diminishing size of your toothpaste or you suddenly realized that you have finally discovered the very first white pubic hair in your entire life on your body – through that tunnel of unending litany that stretches out like a long road beyond the horizon of time at the end of it all….you will gain the courage to hope again and soon like a seed germinating inside that no man’s land that was once was barren and windswept with sorrow something will grow again and that which you once lost will return in yet another form….in life we all live and learn. Welcome back again Big Foot.

I want to believe….for today at least in reincarnation. I so want too.’