how do you like it? doesn't my swamp look clean, kids? i will try to keep it clean for mister and all the other lucky swamp dogs. 
i'm back at my dirty digs and reading about henry david thoreau.

in his view, slavery was not a single cause whose cure would solve everything; rather, it was one symptom of a larger sickness preying on a universe of beings, not all of them human.

                                                              henry david thoreau, a life, by laura dassow walls 

on the way back home through harold washington park i was distracted yet aware that mister was also, i could feel him receding behind me into the soggy minutiae on the ground. i kept on and lengthened my pauses between looking back. when i our sightline was blocked by the little red outhouse i looked and saw nelson the pug and his ma and she pointed to mister who was now looking for me rather myopically. i waved and he ran up looking sorry and i said ok mister, you're getting older now, you have to be aware and stay with me, because i could get distracted too, and need your attention to guide me.

then on the sidewalk i was thinking what is the height of imperial hubris? for me now, even granted all the evil the sinister trump and the whole death industry is causing, it's a 235 foot tower in the park. that's the epicenter of arrogance now for me, little inconsequential me, who cleans the little inconsequential swamp and walks the same dog on the same route every day of my life. 
nobody will write that life but me.