• The Other Me

    The Other Me

    ‘Shut In’ iii. The one problem with my sphere of comfort was that inside it, time was almost static – at least for me. Things happened, to indicate time was passing: Wolf grew from a puppy to a dog, we all got older, the clock kept ticking, but when you’re inside the world where these things happen, everything moves along almost imperceptibly, or at least in a way where you don’t question it. It was a lot of work to function in any sort of social capacity. One time, my friend Bruce visited. Bruce had visited so often in the past – I’d known him for over fifteen years. Now,…

  • The Other Me

    The Other Me

    ‘Shut In’ ii. When I was little, Nick showed me the illustrations of the dog breeds in the D encyclopaedia. The pictures – for a kid of about five who hadn’t seen a lot of dogs – fascinated me. I marvelled at the size of the Great Dane, the austerity of the German Shepherd, and the inquisitive look of the Beagle. But the dog that really drew my attention was the Siberian Husky. It was just so wolf-like. As a kid, I owned a couple of mongrels. One – a Shepherd/Cocker Spaniel cross (when I was about eight or nine) – ran away with a pack of stray dogs that…