biting the dog

i was digging around some old files and found this, a short story i wrote which came out of a journal entry which was turned into a poem and then another poem and then this ...

i'll tell you that process another time. it's quite interesting, i think. for now, i got it in my head that i want to ask you - the people who read this blog - what you think this story might be about. how it continues, how it ends. nit quite sure why i'm intrigued by that quesion but here we go ...

the other day, some friends and i went to see naomi. we sat by the fireplace. it was evening. the atmosphere was warm and quiet but we all knew that in the back of our heads there was a thought, a question mark: some years ago, naomi had bitten a dog. we never found out what exactly had happened, only that naomi had been in a strange state of mind that time, and we were wondering if she had gotten over it. this managed to give our gathering a bit of an unreal air. i suspect that some of us wondered if they could ever do something like that. could we all of a sudden turn mad? is it something that could happen in a flash? tomorrow? so we sat there, with all those thoughts in our heads, talking little, enjoying the setting sun and the light breeze that came through an open window.

i for my part had been in a dark state that time. i had felt old, dark and cold but somehow also pregnant with the seed of new things to come. totally broke, i couldn't bring myself to make money. once in a while i would admonish myself to pull myself up by the bootstraps but it wouldn't work. it was an uncomfortable situation, but not catastrophic.

so anyway, we were all sitting around in naomi's living room, pondering our thoughts. and then abruptly, naomi started to talk.

"you know, three years ago, or actually, it's almost four now - it was - my life was over. my life was over. i was over. done. finished. i realized that back then, he had trapped me. totally. i was this beautiful, light, colourful butterfly and he came and slammed his net over me."

isabella mori
counselling in vancouver
www.moritherapy.com