It’s not that I didn’t believe the stories I’d heard.
It’s just that I witnessed only two instances of such destruction.
Specifically, I got my chocolate lab Belle from my sister when she was just past puppyhood and therefore less inclined to chew everything in her path.
During the first fifteen years we spent together, there were only two such lapses.
The first — back in the days when Netflix still operated via DVDs in the mail — was when I found her gnawing on the case for the Academy Award–winning March of the Penguins.
This seemed fitting, given that as a retriever she was naturally a birder.
The second moment was when I found her playfully tossing a Prada wallet into the air, a gift from a dear friend and private yoga client after a trip to Milan.
I found the light indents of her teeth marks on the wallet quite charming, yet sadly lost it late one night during a fateful Manhattan cab ride — but that’s a story for another day…
Both incidents occurred in our first few months together.
The third and final time, however, came well over a decade later.
Almost all the decks of oracle cards I draw from every day — ranging from Angels to Tarot to I-Ching symbols — have been gifts.
One of my favorites, given to me by my friend Robbie, is The Wild Unknown Archetype deck by the artist Kim Krans.
It consists of 78 circular cards with poetic images, accompanied by a guidebook.
The images of Jungian-influenced archetypes range from those related to the Self (The Mother, The Healer, The Shadow); to Places (The Cave, The Mountain, The Underworld); to Tools (The Flame, The Riddle, The Sword); and finally to Initiations (Eros, Agape, and Thanatos).
One day Belle — who, again, hadn’t chewed up anything inappropriate for over a decade — shortly before she went to her heavenly reward, decided to nibble on one card:
The Bridge.
Note: Those little teeth marks at the top
During my grieving after she transition, as much as anything could, the last stanza of this poem by the great Mary Oliver really helped me.
In Blackwater Woods
To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it
go,
to let it go.
The painting above was given to me by my wonderful artist friend Jennifer Grims (her work HERE) a few months after Belle moved on.
Through the years, while we were teaching at the same yoga center, Jen would often give me watercolors of Belle and her cat Whale — who never met in real life — hanging out together in whimsical settings.
The archetype guidebook for the Bridge card suggests going deeper and learning more about Bifröst — the burning rainbow bridge of Norse mythology — but the Rainbow Bridge associated with pets and their passing is a more recent phenomenon.
In 1959, Edna Clyne-Rekhy, a teenager in Scotland, wrote a poem to mourn the death of her dog Major.
The poem was circulated privately without her name for years, becoming a sensation when reproduced in 1994 in a “Dear Abby” advice column.
Consistent with her previous displays of good taste — an Oscar-winning documentary and a high-fashion accessory — Belle picked a singularly perfect item on which to leave her final mark.
A favorite portrait of her, in SARK’s Magical Cottage
Allow me to quote from Krans’s guidebook on the meaning of the archetype:
Archetype: The Bridge
The Connection, The Link, The Gate
Bridges are built to connect two worlds. They create flow, allowing us to travel between realms, ideologies, personalities.
This archetype is the gesture of acceptance, of saying YES rather than withdrawing, separating, and saying no. When we cross a bridge to an unknown land, we are led magically into a new reality.
We open up to otherness. Healing and communication are made possible. We enter a state of curiosity, wonder, and learning.
Remember that a bridge can’t be forced.
It must be made with love, or this structure will not withstand the inevitable weather of life.
Decorating the sides of the page, however, was some advice that I’d read many times, but never actually taken.
Lie on the floor and listen to “Bridge Over Troubled Water.”
Notice the ease and acceptance within the melody,
the feeling of rising above the muck.
And finally, this week, I did exactly that.
I remember several lifetimes ago listening to the Aretha Franklin version of Bridge Over Troubled Wateron repeat during a particularly turbulent time.
There’s one recording from Aretha Live at Fillmore West, a concert album from 1971, that’s stunning, but I always listened to the studio version HERE.
The original Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel recording is from the same year, one in which they swept the Grammys.
They won Record of the Year and Song of the Year, while the album also took Album of the Year.
This week, I discovered a new version, by one of my favorite musicians, Jacob Collier, that really helped me — as the archetype card suggested — rise above the muck.
Jacob Collier is famous for reharmonization, but it’s much more than that.
His recording of Bridge Over Troubled Water embodies the song’s gospel-flavored DNA — carried through by John Legend and Tori Kelly’s vocals.
Yes, there are extended jazz harmonies and chromatic suspensions, but it’s that he lets all the chords lean a bit so that you can really feel the ache before they resolve.
If traditional pop harmony is composed of clear sentences with commas and periods, it’s like he’s communicating with lots of long clauses full of parentheses and em dashes, punctuation that takes you on an unexpected journey to new territory.
He treats harmony as motion, where resolutions often arrive late (or are implied), forcing your ear to trust that everything is going somewhere.
There’s a subtle but beautiful symmetry in the fact that Bridge Over Troubled Water won all its Grammys in 1971 and — 51 years later, in 2022 — Collier’s version won for Best Vocal Arrangement.
In troubled times like these — when we’re living with so much passing dissonance that feels as though it might never resolve — I find this profoundly comforting.
You can listen to it HERE.
I’m so glad I finally took the Bridge card’s advice.
Honestly lying down on the floor and listening to any recording of it — there are so many great ones, including those of Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash — really helps a lot.
It’s a message I’ve stupidly been ignoring.
I may write about this more in the future, but I spent an hour or two running the maths with my friend ChatGPT.
Even accounting for deviations such as imperfect shuffling or other statistical anomalies, while almost all the cards fit within the predictable range of randomness in my daily draws, four archetypes do not.
By far the most significant of these is the Bridge card; I’ve drawn it with a 6.75× deviation from expectation.
(If you want to nerd out about it, apparently that’s about 1 in 110 trillion odds.)
It simply falls out of the deck, as though trying to help me (just like Belle.)
Finally, this week I let it — and maybe it can help you, too.
Tell A New Story. Transform Your Life