more from THE CHLOE CHRONICLES: The Canine Cure for the Winter Blues

Hello Beloveds!

If you are new to this newsletter (and I still haven’t explained why it’s called “Inner Necessities” but we’ll get to that): I am currently sharing--week by week--all of my previously published pieces from the late, great BARK magazine, starting with my series “The Chloe Chronicles” about my sweet spaniel mix Chloe, whom I adopted shortly after my Epic Life Change (which included leaving my then-husband, leaving my publishing industry job, leaving my beloved New York City, moving to Colorado to live in a tent at a Buddhist retreat center, and reconstructing myself, chakra-by-chakra.) And anyone who has taken on the task of spiritual reconstruction eventually ends up in Woodstock NY, so here we are.  Et voilà.  

In the coming months, I’ll also share installments from my old “Rex and the City” series and also share new material about self-healing, ancestral trauma, and the creative process, but for now, the focus of this newsletter will be is our shared love of dogs.  

The Chloe Chronicles Part IV: “The Canine Cure for the Winter Blues” was published in the winter of 2012 (but written about the winter of 2004).  I know it’s odd to read about the chill of winter at the height of a heatwave here in the Northeast. But perhaps reading this will be of benefit. And warm your hearts.

This is one of my favorite published Chloe pieces, because it seems to encapsulate an elusive form of perfection; one of those times in life in which everything seemed to make sense, and all activities brought pleasure, and the days contained routine and ritual. I’m sure we’ve all had periods like that in our lives--when you felt in harmony with nature, with your environment, with yourselves. In other words, we’ve all had some version of the good old days. And it’s easy to pine for them, and romanticize them, because we’re human, and humans cling to the beautiful and the good. Kalos kagathos, as the ancient Greeks said. 

That winter of 2003 in Woodstock NY was one such time. It’s hard to believe that almost twenty years have passed since then! Chloe is gone; Rainbow is gone. Clayton--a rambunctious boy of seven at the time of this essay--is now a young man at college. Even Woodstock itself--or at least the Woodstock of 2004 that we so loved, with its hippies-on-the-green and lax leash laws and plenty of parking spaces in town--is long gone, replaced by a mini-Hamptons replica with designer boutiques, elite farm-to-table brasseries, and women who wear Mahlanos to shop at the local farmstand. 

Ah, yes, it’s easy to pine for the good old days. We did not carry smart phones with us, back then. We weren’t IGing everything we did and said, trying to “build platforms” or “brand” our selves and our lives. (In fact, “Instagrammable” was not even an adjective in existence at that point). No, we just were. We were in the moment, out in nature, with our dogs.  Who wouldn’t pine for that? 

And keep in mind that I was incredibly unhappy at that point in my life.  I still have moments of incredible unhappiness even now--still. [And here one could argue that it’s impossible to stay sane in an insane world.] In the realm of new-thought psychology, we are all composed of parts, and there is always a part of me that remains eternally frozen in grief, and I still haven’t found a way to thaw her out. So I just carry that. The way I carry my other parts--the artist, the mystic, the weirdo, etc.  We’re a family. And one of the many things I have learned in this long lifetime is that in order to know true joy, one must also know sorrow. As a Buddhist, of course, much of my training involves bringing the mind to a place of equanimity, free from attachment to joy or aversion to sorrow, but I’m human.  And I like to think this piece I wrote about Chloe in the winter of 2004 captures all the micro joys that emerge when we manage to liberate our minds from sorrow--even for an instant.   

So thank you, Chlothilde. Thank you, Rainbow. Thank you, Clayton and Mindy and Greg.  For a time, you were all my family.

Thanks, also, to the artist Hadley Hooper who created such a beautiful illustration for this piece.  It sums up EVERYTHING.  

And remember: all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.  

Now, on to the CHLOE CHRONICLES PART IV.  As usual, advertisements have been removed from the original print PDF.

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