Tears of the Dog // Out on the Dunes
"The tigers have found me and I do not care." - Bukowski Three Vietnamese children are playing in a large puddle that has formed on the slip road. Caused by the heavy rain earlier today, yesterday, and the day before that, going back for as long as I can remember. I can’t remember the last time the sea was calm enough to swim in. They are all wearing red Manchester United shirts, they must be cheap here. Everything is cheap here unless you have that strange, but all too common desire to make it expensive. The youngest of my two dogs, Cohen, is on the lead. You have to catch him when you can, the trick is not to give up. Don’t allow that nagging sense of failure to seep too deep. He’s young and relatively stupid, eventually he will blunder. If you don’t get him on the lead then he won’t come home, and if he doesn’t come home he’ll wander the courtyard barking at everyone that walks by. His bark is much older than he is. The three boys take turns to say hello to me in English.