Who Knows Where…
/Who Knows Where the Black Dog Goes
Dark unknowing that happens beyond the pale.
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He never tells. He can't. Even if he could, he wouldn't. Wild things don't discuss what they do in the wild. He returns by morning light. Matted fur, fatigue, and traces of blood, betray shadowy adventures known only to himself. Better not to ask. He rests, now. By nightfall he'll be off again, driven by desires beyond civilized understanding.
Black Dog delights in crunch of bone and spurting blood. Fiends from hell relish the
same. Except it's not the same. Fiends from hell relish pain and violence; their pleasure is
destruction. Black Dog knows nothing of that.
Black Dog knows only chase and catch.
Black dog takes no pleasure in wreaking violent painful destruction. He's blissfully
unconscious of that part. Black Dog thrills only to the throbbing fulfillment of primordial
impulse: chase and catch.
It's nothing personal. The bloody broken bodies are incidental.
Black Dog's dark quest isn't dark at all - human imagination makes it so.
Tennyson famously described the wild-world as, "red in tooth and claw", implying
cruel impetuous chaos. The idea preceded Tennyson by millennium. It's always been wrong.
The natural world, the wild-world, is incapable of cruelty. Cruelty requires volition.
Cruelty is only possible for the human animal. So too, chaos and impetuous raving.
The natural world has rules.
Human ideas about the wild-world reflect human state-of-mind. Civilized humans have
a love/hate conception of wildness. They are repelled by, "cruelty". They are romantically
attracted to the unfettered possibilities of wildness.
Jack London's book, Call of the Wild, is an adult romance of wildness. Maurice Sendak's,
Where the Wild Things Are, is a children's book of unfettered possibilities. Call of the Wild,
is full of adventure and blood. Where the Wild Things Are, is full of adventure and wild
silly romping.
Jack London knows where the Black Dog goes. Maurice Sendak knows where the child
in all of us would like to go.
Jessie Winchester wrote the song whose title I appropriated as title for this piece. Jessie's
Black Dog is metaphor for the dark unknowing that happens beyond the pale. The question
implies an answer not answerable - along with an undercurrent of envy for the wild run.
No one knows where the Black Dog goes.
Everyone has an idea.
By K. L. Shipley