Dog Years: a Memoir, by Mark Doty

Thoughts on reading Mark Doty’s book Dog Years, a Memoir

I love gay men

Their singular beauty often underscores their somewhat tenuous hold on this planet.

I remember those gentle gay souls

Those rowdy funny gentlemen,

Who, throughout the years have added color to my memories.

More than any lost boyfriends, I recall the friendship of the gays

My memory is more of them,

Their influence on my life returns me to the Arts, to Beauty.

(Not to exclude others, whose rare influence has brought me delight)

But I digress

When I first went to his Web Site, the Doty Poet leapt from the screen

Now cradled in my heart

Oh beautiful man

Entrancing with your poetry

Your look at the obvious unnoticed by us all so clear, so deep so sudden

I had just finished reading

Dog Years, a Memoir

Oh what a book.

As I read, here is what I thought:

Michener could have learned from Mark

How does he see this detail?

Of what magnetic substance are his eyes made?

So deeply in touch with the depths we sail above,

He plumbs to those darkest realms below the sea of culture,

Of what’s acceptably expressed,

Shamelessly expressing what I do not allow myself to feel.

Dead dogs, dying lovers, dead relatives, grief, abandonment, loss, the missing presence

The missing piece

Missing peace

Oh yeah, but I cry and then move on without looking.

I look at memories, I look at the dead faces, I look at the dying, the rising out of body of beloved soul. But I do not examine my feelings. I cry and move on.

Mark finds the words.

Mark bothers to look and see the details of life that we are given

He does them honor through acknowledgement through expression

through speaking of the unspeakable

through ripping out his heart and placing it on the page

Letter by letter, word by word, Mark constructs the meaning of life by finding it somewhat without any given meaning.

Along the way, I say to myself,

I am not worthy to even read this book

This is a Writer.

I’m no more than a former journalist at best.

A mere jotter of simple observations.

Mark is the Summum Bonum of that which I dare not aspire

I do no great honor to all the dogs I have rescued,

for I have not given them the details of my attention

I have not given them my attention to their details

I have given them ‘a good life’ as I am assured by friends and by Russ.

These words are more, I fear, for them than me.

We excuse each other in order to excuse ourselves

There is no excuse for lack of presence.

How I very much want to be present in my now

To be with those that are in my life,

For in relationship, we are.

Outside of which, nothing?

I awoke one morning, my tongue blackened

Teeth aching from clenching through a seizure

My mouth healed. My heart and mind have not.

Where was I? I was no where, therefore, I was not.

No awareness, no consciousness of even darkness,

No light, no dark.

Without one or the other, what is there?

There was simply, no me.

At fifty-nine, the fear of death found me,

and all of my assumptions instantly degenerated into

Depression. Well, there’s another new feeling.

Yet, I continue to skim surfaces,

using words as paddles, keeping me in the current,

glossing along atop the shimmer of the stream

pretending the Stygian depths are not below.

Anyhow, read Mark Doty. He’s amazing.

Read Dog Years.