Dog musings

I think sometimes that there's a fine line between feeling perfectly free and hopelessly lonely in the world.

My dog Samantha has a band around her neck. Okay, so today she whined all the time. ALL THE TIME. She constantly wanted company and/or food and/or to go outside and/or I'm not sure what she wanted. Also, she has one hell of a liking for beef, because when I cooked 牛丼 today (yes, I cooked 牛丼！(gyuu-don, beef on rice in a bowl)) she would not stop bothering me for it, and I swear she was about to go to sleep when she smelt the gyuudon in the microwave (this is me eating dinner at 2 AM and lunch at 7-8 PM) and approached me with inquiring eyes. No.と伝えて、犬が悲しそうな顔で犬小屋に帰った。 (I communicated "No" to her, and she returned to her dog-home with a face that looked sad.) 何でこの犬はそんなにしつこい？？？ (Why is this dog so persistent?)でも、この場合以外あまり迷惑をかけない犬だ。むしろ、この犬は私にいいじゃん。(But, except for this cake the dog is hardly a bother. She fits me rather well, wouldn't you think?)

Okay, enough Japanese for now. I lied. これは私の亡くしたおじさんの犬で、おじさんが死んでからこの犬を預かってる。でも私が最近ずっと海外にいてたから、そのときは家族（私以外）が犬の世話をしてた。だから、私が犬の預け方が分からないし。。。全然犬に食べ物をやったことがない。(After my uncle died, we started taking care of his dog. But since I was abroad pretty much the whole year, my family's been taking care of the dog since then. Because of that, I don't know how to raise the dog... and for various reasons including that I have never given food to her.)

That was pretty much a direct translation, but the ge~est of what I'm saying is this: I don't really interact much with the dog or take care of her. Yeah. Kind of weird. She's there, and I'm bored, and I know she's more bored than I am...

As I was eating dinner tonight, though, I was reflecting over the fact that all day I had heard that bell ringing from the collar around her neck. Wouldn't it be much more pleasureable for her to be her if I removed that collar from her neck? It would make it impossible for us (well, the older people in our house) to hear her coming, however, and I guess that's why it's still on her. But yeah, freedom. I wondered how long she's been waiting, how much pleasure it would bring her if that collar were gone from her neck. Would she then not go begging for food?

I realized that no. (This is an acceptable sentence in French. As far as I'm concerned.) She would like it for a second and instantly forget that she's been freed.

Sometimes it's easy to forget how much freedom I have. No, it's always easy to forget. But when you're not getting what you know you need, the word "free" can replace itself with "alone." But I have a feeling that, judging by my dad's personality, being free and being alone might be two things that are very close for me in my personality. But not a type of being alone in a crowd. Not a type of being in interactions with a low number of people (which the case seems to be more like for my dad). More like being alone in a small crowd that knows you. And I don't know what's up with that ABBA lyric about "Facing 20,000 of your friends... how could anyone be so lonely?" That doesn't make sense to me. Why would I want 20,000 friends? No, it's not that, it's just that I don't see how that's possible for me.

I wonder what it was like to be a dog before the internet. Haha, funny thing, it's the exact same. In terms of social environments. But wait. How on earth do they get along being so separated from other members of their own species?

Guess I don't get that.

I'm scrolling up, the Japanese on my screen is pretty. It's definitely a significant part of "this is my creation, I'm not going to study how I structured it, I'm just glad I created it."

And I guess I wanted this freewrite to mean a lot at first, but if it means just as much as hitting the "publish post" button, then that's fine too. But that's wrong - I know it means more than that. Much more than that.

What kind of dog is this.