A Straight Road and a Dog's Tale

[Mari Thompson]

Love this! Great story.

[Vikki Mount]

Thanks for sharing.

Although I felt the story had potential, you lost me right here: -

"But one day there was a man with a dog." This is a God or third person point of view.

"When night would come, and it was too dark and cold to chase leaves, he would sit with me and read." Suddenly we have switched to a dog's point of view out of nowhere.

I found myself asking - "Was there another dog in this picture? Did we have a dog observing the world and a man who was with his dog and then I, another dog, wandered up for a pat?"

Once I realised there was only one dog in this story I was like, "Nup. You need to fix that. This weird viewpoint jump, without any form of a break, is wrecking the whole thing."

Sorry, but you did ask.

All the best with it and have a great day.

[Belle Belanger]

Dear Scott,

I like the idea behind your story. I think the transition from the 3rd party narrative to the dog narrating is a little ruff (rough).
The idea of starting from far off and working in is great. I think it would add a great deal to the story if you reversed this at the end.
Something about the people dancing, as the planet dances around the sun and the sun dances in the galaxy and the galaxy dances in the universe, the universe dances within the mutliverse. All of creation dances and it is beautiful. You get the idea.
Thank you for sharing.

[Sobek auswan]

The message behind this short story is food for thought

[Sam Muller 1]

Scott,
Thanks for sending this my way. I'm predisposed to like any story with a dog in it. This has a nice zen quality to it.
Sam

[Shirley Ann Riddern Labzentis]

Nice story. I can picture the dog running around and scattering the leaves and the man being aggravated.

[Scott]

I love it. I'm curious about why you changed from past and present tense, but that's just a technical question.

Hi, @KJJohnson_24,

Thank you for your question!

I wrote the story three and a half years ago, so I'm not sure I remember my exact reasoning if there was any.

However, knowing myself, the switch is presumably meant to emphasis this line, which by no conscience since is precisely where the switch occurs:

"Until they saw the man and his dog standing quietly, in the present."


The concept that the man is present in the present is important especially for those who have read my non-fiction book. In It Together, which delves deep into my literal actual views on presence and being present (and by extension discusses the stubbornly persistent illusion that is time). In my view, time isn't real, but presence--i.e. consciousness--is real.

I think we could, in a manner of speaking, say the man lives in the real world (i.e. the present) while the rest of the humans around him are all still battling entropy in the illusion of space and time.

On the other hand, this is 37-year-old Scott writing this, and 34-year-old Scott is a completely different person with different memories, different beliefs, different atoms in his body, and so on. So I can't say for sure what he meant, and I can't speak for him.

Thanks for the awesome thought-provoking question!


With love,
Scott
a.k.a. Eckhart Aurelius Hughes

"The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."
- Albert Einstein

Time is an illusion..png (2.61 MiB) Viewed 3230 times

[Seetha E]

enjoy the journey, it is as important, satisfying, and worthy as the destination...

[Seetha E]

Beautifully developed. Inspiring and inviting us to wait, take a moment, appreciate, and cultivate a sense of gratitude for all the delights dancing around us all the time. We "brainy, focused, target-oriented" humans often overlook the simple joys in our everyday experiences. Pause and wholeheartedly embrace these enriching moments of joy.

[Vicki M. Taylor]

I enjoyed the story with the dog’s perspective. The man and the dog were close. Almost as one.

[Christal Merkey]

Wow, this is an awesome short story! A man and his dog are just enjoying watching the leaves do their thing while everyone else is trying to control nature.

[Eva-M Young]

It was interesting how you went from an overarching perspective to that of the dog. It was from the eyes of the dog that we watched a man reach enlightenment, after he stopped trying to fix the chaos around him and fixed the chaos within.