Being a regular

about a dog, a practice, and fear i didn't know i had

Since the first week of January, when the madness of December began to settle but I was still buzzing, I started going to the park near my house a couple times a week every morning. Every winter I’m reminded of how beautiful it feels to be outside in the morning in January and this year I just wanted to experience it as much as possible before the weather started to get warmer. Today is the first day I’ve had the fan on during the day and haven’t worn socks in the house. It is sad but such is February.

At the park I’ve made some friends. Among them is a lady who feeds the dogs sometimes, and one is one of the dogs. I haven’t seen the lady in a few weeks, but she has my number now, and she also has only one daughter, and one day we walked the length of the park together instead of conversing in one static awkward spot as I tried to reassure her that it was a good thing her daughter didn’t get into KGS.

The dog is small and black and beyond friendly and trusting and full of beans. One day I saw him being chased away by the other dogs in the park and making crying sounds and I felt so sad for him and I broke my walk and tried to enter his vicinity and I didn’t even call him but he saw me and ran towards me and half jumped onto my lap, leaving paw marks all over my leggings. He began to do this every morning I went and said hello to him. If I took the time to sit with him, he would be very excited for 3 minutes and then decide it was time for a nap. I always wondered where his family went and why he was alone. And then one day I saw him sleeping very close to two big dogs the same colour as him, and I take it they were his parents.

The last couple times I’ve gone, I’ve seen the two big dogs, but not the small one. I wonder where he is. In December, there was a litter of young puppies living in the park, who the lady with the daughter used to feed, and then one fine day they weren’t there. After a few weeks of their absence, the lady told me some regular frequenter of the park didn’t like them and asked to have them ‘removed’. A part of me knew something like this must have happened, but I was choosing to ignore it, thinking maybe the mother dog took them away. But in fact an old Pakistani man with two ounces of influence was just scared of puppies.

Now that my young black doggy friend has been missing, my mind is once again avoiding a possible reality and is hopeful that he will be back the next time I go. I can’t know yet. And at the same time I realize this is just a byproduct of being a regular to a place. I always wondered about people I’d see without fail at parks and at gyms, and other places that invite ritual-like attendance, indications that they are here everyday, this is their life, and it is me that they see sporadically. So frequenting a place often means becoming almost intimate with its rhythms. I can separate the people who come on weekdays vs the weekend. I know that the cat with her tongue perpetually sticking out of her mouth will always be by the entrance slowly and patiently grooming herself. And I know that when a favourite dog goes missing, I will notice, and I will be in denial about what the reality of things might be.

There are other things that happen when I do something regularly, like painting. I’ve noticed that nearly every time I make a new painting, it feels much better than the last one I made, and therefore the one before that and before that. I don’t know if it’s some form of impostor syndrome, but it makes me feel like everything I had ever made before this new thing is not even worth the portfolio anymore. And not necessarily in a super harsh self critical kind of way, but in a way that makes me think that’s great motivation to keep working and making things. It will only get better. Not always a linear getting better, but most definitely an upward trend. This inspires me. And I can’t know what I’ll make next exactly, let alone how it’ll turn out, and this frightens but also excites me. Unknowns.

I’m beginning to wonder if committing to a practice, or a place (or even a person?), can feel scary simply because I can’t predict how it will change. Which it always will. But I couldn’t have predicted the happy interactions either, and I’m glad to have experienced those. So I suppose I’ll keep going - come what may.