The Log Dog Day 869

 I had an experience this weekend where I was working in my yard when I noticed a mottled brown form partially hidden by some spring growth in one of my day lily beds. I stopped and looked at it for a moment, from a distance. 

It looked like a curled up dog. A few years earlier a raccoon was wondering in my yard in broad daylight. I allowed it, but kept an eye on it. Raccoons don't tend to move about during the day, as they have become more nocturnal. It was something extraordinary.  It ended up curling up into a ball and dying on the edge of the property. Obviously, it was sick, which accounted for its odd behavior. 

Hence, when I saw what I thought was a curled up dog I decided to not get too close. A hurt animal can be aggressive. I went and looked at it from another angle, keeping my distance. It continued to look like a curled up dog to me. 

I went inside and called the animal control officer. Because it was Sunday, the police came. The moment they arrived, I walked right up to the " curled up dog " and realized it was a log. lol

I had recently removed a large tree that was covering up a shed. The shed always smelled a bit moldy and I noticed parts of it were beginning to become infested with wood eating bugs. My insurance company wanted me to remedy the situation. I had the tree cut down. The logs were dispersed in one localized area to be organized once they dried out for a few days. One log had rolled over into another area and was embedded in this flower bed, separate from the others. 

The moment I approached the " dog" I realized instantly that it was a log. 

During the previous week, an issue had come up in my life that was occupying my mind. I had done a lot of research into the issue and found contradictions in laws. This was disturbing me, as I realized these contradictions, and the pressures of belief within the system. Despite the laws being clear, and precedents set, it appeared local municipalities were doing the opposite. I encountered some aggression and at the same time passivity from local law enforcement. I felt like I was standing in a huge grey area of beliefs subtly voiced through some verbal aggression but passed by when encountering local law enforcement. Even chat GPT voiced the contradictions and cited the Supreme Court's rulings that directly addressed these issues. It appears that both sides of the issue exist. Is it that these ordinances exist and yet are not enforced, like a mirage in the system to attempt to normalize something contrary to fundamental rights? 

I think of Thomas Paine's first paragraph in his writing Common Sense;  “ Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason. “

It this a game of slow acceptance to have " laws " contrary to principled directives?  To have the opposite of such laws in place despite their contrariness to principle? And does this exist to slowly make such things common place? Somewhere I seem to remember that this has been done in the medical system in America.  That simply because something has been inculcated, meaning repeated again and again, with suggested subtle possible worst case scenario outcomes, the practice is habituated and as that basically turned into law, into something accepted by the collective? And is there outcry when someone comes and counters what has been inculcated ( fear and repetition ) to be a norm? Anyway, I have a fear of this. That " spin" of this dilemma is so resonant within me, that when I encountered this situation with the " log dog " I was easily more in a state of fear than in any common sense.

lol, The police officer was hesitant to approach the " log dog, or dog log." Even he thought it looked like a curled up dog. I was the one that approached the dog.  Something about two humans lends courage, or so I distract myself with these minimizing internal distinctions. lol

The whole point here, within this experience, shows me the limiting effects of worry and fear. It shows me the extent to which I can have a moment of complete projection, of disconnect, of warping reality. It is that my emotional state was in conflict and unsettled. And that ended up effecting other areas of my life. 

And overall, this same that I was being, is the same thing that is inherent in this contradictory information within the greater society around me. Like the society has a warp, and that warp has anger, and aggressiveness, and righteousness, despite principles being made clear and actions stated that inhibit such activities as being shown to be restrictive and unnecessary. It is a fear of that kind of a situation that was leading me into being separate from the practical reality. In the moment of discovering the log I suddenly noticed the resonant " thing" around me of myself being in reaction to this whole situation. 

I remember being a child and attempting to run away from this. I knew it was building. I sat under a tree and attempted to squeeze it away, and yet at the same time I knew it was building. And I knew it was unacceptable. It was what was in my parents. My parents that I always knew where they were in the house because of that same thing. Like hiding from it.  And within that, watching my mother fade as she died, as her mind consciousness fell away and all memories were lost, that thing, that resonance thing that builds and consumes the flesh. That thing of no real authenticity. I dread having to face such constructions, such internal constructions. And that dread itself inflames the whole situation because at the end of the day, all there is is to stand in that and sort it out. There really is nothing else. And that means facing that projection, that resonant wall of internalized limiting and stagnant belief that hinders perception of the practical reality, and in the case of my issue, the suppression of free and unencumbered speech. 

I am in many ways thankful for the log-dog moment, as it showed me the difference once again. That extent to which we fool ourselves because of what is resonant within us.