secret world

I get the feeling sometimes that there are really two worlds. Of course, there is the one I always interact with. It is basically decent and full of wonders and dragonflies and the sound of jazz. This world has the polished look of a model home for a brand-new housing development.

The other world, the secret world, is actually the real world. I feel insulated from it most of the time. I work indirectly to insulate my family from it as well. The real world is an untidy place where all of the neat, rounded off numbers have to be reconciled to the last decimal place.

In a way, maybe we all participate in the secret world. We all do work that most people don't see. We smooth things over for others so they can get on with whatever it is they are doing, but I think there is a category of activities that are meant to be hidden from us so that we can believe they don't take place.

What I saw today was incongruous with the high-fructose world I live in day-to-day. It occurred when I was walking my dog from a vet checkup and I stopped while she sniffed at the sidewalk for a moment. I looked up at the vehicle next to me. It was a pickup truck with a camper top. The tailgate was open and there were several garbage bags in the back.

If I could sustain the belief that the sunset sky is really made of cotton candy, I might be tempted. Obviously, it would interfere with air travel and the fact that planes fly at dusk would present a problem for me.

On the other hand, if I wanted to believe that the loyal dog from my childhood really was taken to live out his days on a farm somewhere, there is not going to be obvious evidence refuting that idea. The guy who drives this truck is supposed to make sure of that.

Even the non-descript plastic bags of various sizes weren't overtly disturbing. I went right along and saw them only as non-descript garbage bags. The trouble was that one of these had a small tear. From this hole, there was a tan and white colored paw and foreleg extending perhaps five or six inches. Suddenly I the contents of the remaining bags revealed themselves as if I had x-ray vision.

Of course I am an adult. It makes perfect sense to me that this truck is performing a service that needs to be performed, but I can honestly say that I have never given very much time to the question of what happens to Rover after he is euthanized. I am sure the vet offers to "take care of the remains" and that a small charge is added to the bill for the service, but odds are good that even Rover's master doesn't think too hard about what that entails.

There are certainly less-trivial examples of this. It was just something I was clearly not meant to see. It brought to mind the layers of insulation we build up around ourselves as we try to function in our modern world