![\"1000P1030765\"](\"http:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/1000P1030765.jpg\")
<\/a>pedigrees, lure coursing material, I got stopped for a while. In Sortia’s file, our second Irish Wolfhound, a black bitch that weighed 150 pounds, I found a letter from the University of Minnesota Veterinary Hospital. Sortia was euthanized there against our wishes during an overnight stay.<\/p>\n(Rigel and Vega taking the sun on our new deck)<\/p>\n
Though the care our dogs have gotten at the U was\u00a0usually exemplary, this event prevented us from saying good-bye to Sortia. Reading this letter about the incident brought it back to me in a flash. A wave of sudden sadness and deep grief gripped me for a moment, so strong that I had to put down the file and sit back while I stabilized. This feeling surprised me, came up strong from dead stop.<\/p>\n
I also had an\u00a0unexpected response a few weeks back while watching How To Train Your Dragon II. \u00a0In a\u00a0reunion between the lead character, a young man,\u00a0and his mother whom he thought dead, a wave of yearning swept through me. I wanted my mother to hug me.\u00a0She’s been dead 50 years this year and I can not recall a feeling this strong about her in decades.<\/p>\n
Here’s what I’m wondering. Do these strong feelings lie waiting for the right triggers, somewhat like PTSD? Or, do they swim around in the neural soup, always this strong, but engaged in another part of our psychic economy? How many of these knots of emotion exist within us, still tied to their original sources, and what significance do they have?<\/p>\n
I may not be saying this well. As a general rule, I’m not in the grip of strong emotion unless something political is going on or I haven’t had enough sleep.\u00a0Politics taps into something primal,\u00a0as if a god within wakes and demands action. (I use this analogy with some reservation because I don’t believe my politics are divinely inspired, but it gives the right tone to the depth of my political feelings.) Being sleep deprived makes me irritable and far from my best self, so anger comes more easily then.<\/p>\n
Now, maybe strong emotion could ride me more often. \u00a0Maybe I’m missing out on some part of life that flies those colors with some regularity. \u00a0But as a white middle-class guy, educated and with northern european ancestry, friends and spouse of the same, my emotional range is muted and these events, like the ones I describe, are rare.<\/p>\n
No conclusion here. Only questions.<\/p>\n
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Lughnasa \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Lughnasa Moon Clearing out files this morning. When I came to a group of dog related files, vet records, pedigrees, lure coursing … Continue reading What Lies Beneath?<\/span>