Ashes Of Dog - Creatures Of Attachment And The Heart

Photos

Erich Freid . And Dee Dee the Dog from Texas

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uploaded by Art de Rivers

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  uploaded by Art de Rivers | add comment

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  uploaded by Art de Rivers | add comment

By Art De Rivers May 2nd 2009

A old lady who lives on her own in the UK is somewhere around and has special walks sometimes with the past and present in her hands.

In one hand is the dog lead of her current pet and in the other she carries a container in a bag . It holds  the ashes of the dog she loved and that has gone .

I'll never know who she really was - she was a radio presence just for a brief moment when because of that story I collided quickly with the world of deep feeling.

I heard about her only as a snatch of a report and despite that briefness a pulse went out from me into the world  ... I hope she felt  a little part of it .. It was like an organic  prayer of shared warmth .

I also wanted to run up to her when I saw her in my mind's eye and just walk beside her .. Be a shadow of empathy ..It's like  a restorative quiet human honour .. Attachment and loss are so important . It's the other side of love's coin . The deep spirit of humanity  and our nature's need

I then recalled the late  Erich Fried - a poet and a self declared "non-jewish jew" (I've put a picture up of him)  who once argued against an anti-nazi group from stopping a Neo Nazi from promoting his dark views - he believed people should be heard and that open engagement was necessary .

Erich Fried,  lost family in Auschwitz. He collected a small test tube of "bone sands" from there once on a vist . He needed some ashes . Particles of people to remember ..

He kept his own mother's ashes too when she died  and although they had a testy relationship he once stated on a film that he kept "her" by him now - until his own end ..

My mind wove into other human maps - a young lady in her 20's who killed herself . I am waiting to hear the cororners reports .  She waited outside a psychiatric unit where she felt "rejected" because they found her "difficult"   ..

She was full of need . Deep need . She waited for a human attachment that did not happen in the often un-rescue-ing NHS mental health services  and so she had nothing to hang onto .. Her self was not enough -  .. Attachment is life saving  .. No attachment creates a nothing-ed self ...

I asked a lady in Texas if I could use a picture of a loved dog  she had for this story ..

I wanted to uphold us all,  and the "Ashes of the Dog" .

My own uncle fought for his life this year and lost - he had dogs.  The bone cancer went to his brain and he gritted his survival teeth all the way . I did not know I would feel his struggle and death to the core  as I did . 

Its attachment  -  part of the deeper soul of Time,  memory,  and transience that you feel when things and people go .....

The lady in texas who allowed me to use her dog picture lost her son when  he was only 16 . He and his brother were eletrocuted .

Attachment and its pain needs a story to hold it . 

She was so kind when I told her why I wanted the picture for use with this story .. Its really about the art of being us and making it sacred again once in a while .. 

Other people's stories and attachments focus ours and transform us and remind us of who we are. When people do not have successful attachments they are often pained so badly the mental health services become the place where that failure is dramatically picked up - often poorly ..

When people have successful attachments,  they can love,  and go beyond themselves and finally let  each other go in a bigger sense of natural being and change ..

Memory holds onto love and love lets go at a personally sacred speed  . Its good to be reminded of it all  . We are all attached .

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