In Continuum.

Dirty White Dog

Smeared black ink
Your palms are sweaty
And I'm barely listening
To last demands
I'm staring at the asphalt wondering
What's buried underneath where I am

A pack of hungry dogs haunted the streets at night, like wild ghosts in the shadows, looking for fresh blood and flesh. Their growls can be heard even in the early hours of the morning, as they roamed the empty streets below our home. Looking out into the empty street between my estate and the row of warehouses beyond, there was an eerie sensation of being separated from the rest of the world. It was as if the road was an imaginary line that divided this side of the world from the other, where the evil and the desperate dwells. In reality, things aren't nearly half as bad as I mentioned above, but the warehouses with their rusted rooftops and blackened windows do give me that sense of dread, the kind of feeling you get when you look upon an abandoned home. In the streets, wild dogs roamed different sectors that they drew out with their own urine, puddles of their bodily fluids mark the area in which they are allowed to go, and areas where others are not allowed to enter. One night, that shaky truce was rudely broken on the empty streets.

It was a November night in Taiwan a few years ago, and the midnight television program was interrupted by the furious barking of the dogs downstairs. It has been a commonplace for the residence in the area to hear such an uproar. But it was a little different that night, the barking of a single dog pierced through the rest, as if it was calling out desperately for help. I turned off the television and pulled open the window to receive the chilly winter night air. It all smell too familiar, with the wind brushing up the dust from the empty road and bringing it upwards into my nostrils. But there in the corner was the usual pack of dogs, barking at a helpless white dog curled up in the corner. It made a desperate attempt to escape, but the rest of the dogs rounded it up next to a row of motorbikes, and threatened to tear the fur and skin off. I started banging at the windows, trying to distract the stray dogs from harming that white dog, and it worked miraculously. The dogs away with their tails between their legs, like defeated soldiers running back home to their masters. Only, they didn't have masters to run home to, and neither did the white dog had anybody to hold on to.

I'll wear my badge
A vinyl sticker with big block letters
Adherent to my chest
That tells your new friends
I am a visitor here: I am not permanent
And the only thing keeping me dry is where I am

I can only imagine how it must have been like for her, being pushed out of her group so roughly like that. But then again, with a leader with politics in mind, it is not difficult to imagine such a thing happening. Like a friend so aptly described to me earlier, social politics in school is just like a game of mahjong, and we are the tiles used in the game. We all start out in the same box, piled on top of one another until we are being poured out onto the table. People bring the tiles in on random and put them into groups, and throughout the game we start to kick tiles out because we don't need them, or we do not like the way they look in our hand. So the tile that was kicked out remains on the table until somebody decides to pick it up and put it into their hands. The same happens to this owner though, because once you feel that this tile is useless, you throw the tile out when it is your turn and the same cycle goes on and on throughout the game until the very end.

At least that was what happened to her at the end of the last semester, when her group started to crumble under their own pride. In any argument or disagreement, there cannot be a single party that is at fault, even if one person is so obviously at fault. There are times when the person in your project group causes disputes and provides a negative energy to the group. I suppose in the context of a group work, such things are inevitable in nature. However, I don't think it is right to kick a person out like a bag of trash just because he or she is of no use, or no interest to you anymore. Perhaps it is the sentimentalist inside of me speaking, but I am sure you wouldn't want people to treat you the same, if the day should come whereby others make the decision about you, instead of you making decisions about others. The truth is, I do not approve of her being in my group. But at the same time, I do not approve of what you did to her either.

You seem so out of context
In this gaudy apartment complex
A stranger with your door key
Explaining that I am just visiting
And I am finally seeing
Why I was the one worth leaving

D.C. sleeps alone tonight

Days passed without a trace of those pack of dogs again. Peace was restored to the lonely streets downstairs, with the same lamp post providing the only source of line along the road. Cars were parked with their bumpers to bumpers, the heat of the engine could still be felt from the hood of the car. In between those cars, a familiar white shadow emerged carefully. Threading its way cautiously through the open plaza, it came to the bottom of the window where I was just a few nights ago. I was there again, looking out into the distance when I saw the white dog again, this time with a better view than a few nights before. I could see the battle scars that it had suffered from the numerous fights it must have had throughout the days out there, wandering the streets. The dirt that coated the dog must have been there for ages, not even the rainwater could wash away the filth that covered the dog then. It staggered a little up the stairs, sniffing the air as if it could smell my presence there, and with its head raised up high it saw me and started wagging its tail.

I don't know why I did it, but I waved at the dog as if it was a friend of mine. It was no different from a dog on the streets we see, the way they all look and smell the same as they ran through the streets and the gutters. Yet, there was something about that white dog that caught my attention then. It crept closer towards the bottom of the window and started circling the ground, like a dog would as it prepares to go to sleep on a certain spot. It was already close to midnight, and I don't suppose the rest of the dogs would come back to bully this white dog any time soon. So it remained there peacefully for the rest of the night, and probably the first good sleep it had in a very long time. I've never went downstairs before, always looking from the safety of my window. After all, it was a stray dog and it's not like you want to be too close to anything foreign. But somehow, there has always been a tint of sympathy for the dog from me, a feeling that is hard for me to explain.

You seem so out of context
In this gaudy apartment complex
A stranger with your door key
Explaining that I am just visiting
And I finally seeing
Why I was the one worth leaving

I have seen my fair share of groups dissembling, cliques falling apart because the bond between the individuals crashed after a period of time. The problem arises when there are some people who are more attached to the group than the others. You see, there are people who are so attached to the group initially, that when it breaks up, they have nowhere else to go. I understand that these people might have caused you a lot of trouble, that there must have been disagreements along the way that must have caused you to let this person go. But at the same time - like I mentioned in the thread titled The Politician - I don't think what you did to the person is right; is humane at all. It'd be like throwing a sailor out into the vast ocean without a life jacket because he has been stealing food from the kitchen. I'm sure he has done wrong, but is it worthwhile to dump him out in the open and allow him to die like that?

I was a part of that group of people once, the kind of people that others would dump out into the ocean. It'd be hard to imagine for the new friends that I have made, but I wasn't the kind of person back in the high school days. In truth, I am still used to the concept that a group may break at any time, that people are going to change sooner or later. They are not going to remain the same just because they feel comfortable in where they are, because there is always somewhere out there which may have better opportunities. I've been 'let go' a lot of times in the past, sometimes without a life jacket as well. Being out there in the ocean, I learned to live on my own and breathe on my own, without the need of other boats to pick me up. It was the pride inside of me speaking, telling myself that being picked up was the most pathetic thing in the world to happen to me. But in truth, being picked up and cared for was exactly what I wanted to have and to feel. But no one came back in Junior College, nobody came to my rescue. And I continued to drift, and I remained that way for the longest time. I entered army afterwards, few people remembered - and even fewer cared.

The district sleeps alone tonight
After the bars turn out their lights
And send the autos swerving
Into the loneliest evening
And I am finally seeing
Why I was the one worth leaving

For the next couple of nights, the white dog came to the window often. I threw leftovers from the dinner down to the dog, and it would happily nibble on the bone. It never asked for more, or barked at me for giving too little. My aunt warned me about stray dogs, telling me never to touch it if I do see it downstairs. I understood her warnings, and stayed as far as I could whenever the dog tried to follow me into the car. I knew what kind of trouble it might bring if I become too friendly to the dog, but at the same time I did not approve of how the other dogs were treating it. The way they fought in the night at each other, or the way they threatened to kill each other caused me to be sympathetic to this stray dog. It must have been strange for a young boy like myself, to be throwing food out of the window to a dog I've never actually touched before. But I guess deep inside, I knew how it must have been like to drift in the streets, to be cared and loved by nobody out there. I am better off at least, with a family and a small circle of friends to lean back on. What did the dog have? What did the dog have?

So they fought on in the streets after I left, like dogs would to other dogs. Even in our world - the human world - people still behave very much like wild dogs on the streets, fighting intruders and kicking others out of their social groups. People seldom stop to wonder just how primitive they seem sometimes, how low they make themselves become once they treat others the same. Once again, I must say that I do not approve of her in my group. But at the same time, I do not approve of the way you guys so conveniently disposed of her. Hopefully, she will move on and forget about the things that you did to her. I don't know her, and I have little emotional attachment to her like I do with my current group of friends. But try being cut loose, try being disliked by the group of people you've grown so attached to. It's like begging for food being thrown out of a window in a cold winter night. It's like a dirty white dog curling up in the corner with nothing to hold on to. That is how she feels, and a dog is what you should be feeling about yourselves. You dogs.