Love among the ruins
- a selection from Mr. Cobblesworth's
Midnight Meditations (published pseudonomynously under the name M. Ecclesia Cludleigh)
If, as has been asserted, the chihuahua is a "glorified rat" then it seems to me the further observation that a human is but a glorified ape must also be noted.
However, contrary to the ape - in all its majestic and noble simplicity, in its willingness to merely
be - the human can never simply be, but rather is a creature constantly driven and derided by vanity.
Indeed, it is only the patience of a superior being - a veritable buddha in the city of man - that allows for the contemplation of this frankly dismaying spectacle with any degree of equanimity and, even, compassion.
And it is only this compassion which, in turns, permits a further, dispositive insight: the true cage, a tormenting consciousness of self, entraps the observed; only the observer, however real the steel bars around him might be, is free.