Ode to Pablo, Ranie, Manouck ... and all the others

With all our logic, with all the strength that whispers within us, we can imagine that one day our companion will run away to a canine paradise of green meadows and eternal hunts, but all our certainties, all our illusions of strength, will suddenly shatter just for an old forgotten bone or a cruelly empty seat next to our armchair.

We'll tell ourselves, to patch ourselves up, that he's better off where he is, back in the light, and the tears that will rise will be for the Thank you for having been loved, for having been alive... Thank you for having broken the scientific laws that have made us human and separated us from things and beings, but above all for having rediscovered, for the space of a lifetime, through the bridges of love, this path that is fading between us and the beasts.

It's a strange term to use for these animals who, like us, have come to our era through the 350 million years that precede us, with their own solutions, and would survive us if we didn't drag them into our destruction.

But we are, for the moment, the masters of the world, the most evolved, the most intelligent... the ones in charge!

At least, we shout it loud, demonstrating it constantly, fearlessly attacking the equatorial forests or atomic fission, that we end up believing ourselves.

Suddenly, we're overwhelmed because the body of an animal lies still warm in our heavy arms. And this heart-wrenching solitude is as much due to our powerlessness in the face of irremediable eternity as it is to the gaping void filled by an animal.

This luminous love that suddenly fades, surprising us for having taken up so much space.

This thick fur, where the hand gets lost, leaves us with pieces of mystery in our fingers, after having been able to love so much, to have given of herself unvarnished and just for herself, to have been loved, and these shared pleasures made from a glance, a beat of the tail, a beat of the heart, and to keep it all inside like a secret, with the sole certainty of having touched a law of this world, the only one that justifies... that of having shared.

Then, a little older, a little heavier, we think of the magic of two beings who pass by and linger for a moment so that we're no longer alone ... when he leaves, our pot' or when this discreet confidante leaves us, we remain stunned, stooped under grief and placed by emptiness.

Then one morning, we feel stronger, richer still... much more than a memory, they leave us something more than regret, like a new hope, as if gold had flowed from their eyes, but more beautiful and greater than the yellow scrap metal that makes us shine and perhaps prouder.

Astaffort September 20, 2006