MAKING SOMEONE ELSE HAPPY
COLLABORATION NO. 319
Saturday, October 23rd, 2021
It took an extra few days, but here we are, Louise and I, with a quote worthy of rumination.
This offering of Louise’s combines several of her most constant preoccupations. She introduced it this way:
Alors j’ai trouvé la phrase de Jane Goodall que je voulais te faire partager afin de l’utiliser dans Aubade! (LC)
LA CITATION:
“It is good to have at least one walk a day” said Jane, after a few steps. “Though I don’t like to go for a walk without a dog.”
“Why is that?”
“A dog gives a walk a purpose.”
“How?”
“Well, you are making someone else happy.”
Jane Goodall, The Book of Hope, Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams, 2021
It’s a passage drawn from The Book of Hope, which is a collection of long and probing essays and conversations from the minds of Jane Goodall and Douglas Adams. (see link).
While its main focus is, unsurprisingly, the climate crisis and the loss of biodiversity–even in a pandemic–it also meanders to the smaller elements of life which nourish hope and. perhaps, galvanize.
Louise, who is still struggling to overcome the blues that weigh her down since the loss of her beloved companion of fifteen years, Pouchekin, her Wheaten terrier (and the unwelcome arrival of the COVID pandemic) has been searching for reading material and music to help elevate her mood…and her spirit.
It has come as an affecting surprise to me that someone as radiant, as active and as dynamic as Louise (who is such an independent spirit, a force of nature) should suffer so terribly from the effects of prolonged isolation and grief.
And so, with her daily routines and adventures out in the world already curtailed and even crushed by COVID, there has been little to pull her away from the incalculable absences of Pouchkine, sewn into even the smallest moments of every day.
It’s especially poignant, then, that Louise chose a quote that turns our perspective around. Perhaps her grief will only subside when she has found another companion, a friend to make happy.
ART:
- “Julian Walking a Dog”, by Mary Fedden (1915-2012)
- “Matchstick Man and his Dog”, by Tom Elliott (b.1965) and Apprentices from the WEC Group
- “Christine Sumner (d. 1992)”, by Bohuslav Barlow (b.1947)
Aubade 