(I've been asked to clarify a few points from my bio.  This may, or may not, help.)

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The dog and I were walking along the abandoned tracks in the woods next to the river.  It was early Spring.  The quartz and calcite were in bloom and the acrid taste of ozone drifted in on the wind occasionally from plump thunderstorms that marshalled along the horizon. 

Things had not been going well lately.  I had lost my way and I was staring down the barrel of discontent. Nothing made sense, there were no patterns, nothing to count on, nothing to believe in….

I needed a fresh outlook.

Seemingly from some unseen scabbard, the dog pulled an enormous knife.  It gleamed of Swedish steel, with a blade as sharp as an obsidian sliver and a tip that glittered in the river’s reflection. With my attention fixed on the glittering blade, the dog produced – from where I don’t know – a ripe, honeydew melon. 

Incredulous, I uttered: “Where did you get that!?”

“Weis Market”, she replied, “two for three bucks.”

“No, I mean…” But I didn’t mean.  I didn’t know.  I boggled and looked at the dog dumbfounded.

The dog mercifully ignored my confusion.  “This,” she announced as she brandished the knife boldly before her, “is the Great Dichotomous Cleaving Knife of Reason.  It is infinitely sharp and it can reduce anything down to two choices: good or bad, yes or no, this or that.” 

“And this,” she continued as she held the melon aloft, “is the Honeydew Melon of Absolutely Everything That There Is.”

Setting the melon upon the severed stump of a tree, the dog raised the great knife above her head. And then leaping into the air, she brought the knife down upon the melon with Zen-like focus and conviction, slashing it in half.  Where once an ovoid melon had motionlessly occupied a stump, now two melon halves spun slowly to a stop.

“This,” said the dog, holding one half of the melon in her paw, “is the Earth upon which we stand and everything that we know or may someday know.” I knew she would continue. “It is everything that we can touch, sense and know.  It is life, water, family. ”  The melon dripped seeds and entrails from its center.  It looked juicy, sweet and familiar.

“And THIS,” she continued as she held up the other half, “is the rest of the Universe – the billions of galaxies that are screaming away from us in space, countless black holes that we dare not go near, planets in undiscovered orbits and exploding supernovae that are filling us all with complexity. This half is all that we may never know.  It is speculation and imagination.  God and physics live in this piece.  It is melon at the speed of light!”

The dog raised her brow, and with a conspiratorial grin whispered: “Care for a bite?”

“A bite?” I asked.

“Of course a bite, you fool!  A bite of the Universe!  A bite of all that is unknown.  How often does one get a chance to taste the Universe?  Or more importantly, will you ever have another chance?”

The dog’s eyes flashed like the serpent of the garden.  She thrust the gleaming knife blade with an impaled piece of melon in my direction.

Timidly, self-consciously, feeling almost foolish, I plucked the melon from the knife. 

“Well…?” she beamed.

Slowly I bit into the melon.  It was sweet.  I let the juice roll across my tongue and down the back of my throat.  I let the sweetness flow up through my sinuses and fill my head.  I swallowed it whole and felt it slide down my throat.  It oozed into my stomach with a satisfied plop and was immediately pounced upon by greedy gastric juices and digested. 

“Well??” she insisted.

“It,” I stopped,  I wanted to be sure, “it tastes like… melon.  I guess.”

“Exactly!” whooped the dog.  (I stepped back to avoid the knife as the dog slashed it triumphantly through the air.)   “It tastes like a melon.  But if you never experience another thing in your life.. if you never think another thought or feel another feeling… if you drop dead in the next minute.. at least now you know!  The Universe tastes like a cheap buck-fifty melon.”

The dog looked at me and winked with a look of I-told-you-so.

“You can take that one to the bank!”

I suppose she’s right… I thought to myself.  I mean, why not?  But honestly, if this proves anything, it’s only that the damn dog spends entirely too much time alone in the house all day while I’m gone. 

And I need to start hanging around with people.