Primeval and Other Times

THE TIME OF DOLLY

The time of animals is always the present.

Dolly is a shaggy, red-haired dog. She has brown eyes that sometimes shine black. Dolly loves Misia best of all, so she always tries to have Misia within range of sight. Then everything is in its place. Dolly follows Misia to the well, into the garden, and goes out with her onto the Highway to take a look at the world. She never lets Misia out of her eyes’ embrace.

Dolly doesn’t think how Misia or any other person thinks. In this way there is a huge gulf between Dolly and Misia, because to think you have to swallow time, internalise the past, the present, the future and their constant changes. Time works inside the human mind. It is nowhere to be found on the outside. In Dolly’s small dog’s brain there is no channel, no organ to filter the passage of time. So Dolly lives in the present. That is why when Misia gets dressed and goes out, Dolly thinks she is leaving forever. Every Sunday she goes to church forever. She goes down to the cellar for potatoes forever. When she disappears from Dolly’s field of vision, she disappears forever. Then Dolly’s grief is boundless, she lays her muzzle on the ground and suffers.

Man harnesses his suffering to time. He suffers as a result of the past and extends his suffering into the future. In this way he creates despair. Dolly only suffers here and now.

Human thinking is inseparably linked with swallowing time. It is a sort of choking. Dolly perceives the world as static images that some God has painted. For animals, God is a painter. He spreads the world before them in the form of panoramic views. The extent of these crude pictures lies in smells, touches, flavours, and sounds, which contain no meaning. Animals do not need meaning. People sometimes feel something similar when they dream. But when they are awake, people need meaning, because they are prisoners of time. Animals dream incessantly and for nothing. For them, waking up from this dream is death.

Dolly thrives on images of the world. She takes part in the images that people create with their minds. When Misia says “Let’s go” and sees Dolly wagging her tail, she thinks Dolly can understand words like a person. But Dolly is wagging her tail not at the word, not at the concept, but at the image that has sprouted from Misia’s mind. This image contains the anticipation of movement, and of landscapes that keep changing, grass swaying, the Wola Road leading to the forest, grasshoppers chirruping, and the rushing of the river. As she lies there staring at Misia, Dolly sees the images that a human unwittingly produces. They can be images full of sorrow or anger. Those images are even more distinct, because they pulsate with passion. Then Dolly is defenceless, because she has nothing in her to protect her from getting lost in those alien, gloomy worlds, there are no magic protective rings of identity, there is no “self” supplied with powerful energy. So she is subdued by them. That is why dogs regard man as their master. And why the lowliest man can feel like a hero in his dog’s eyes.

The ability to experience emotion does not distinguish Dolly from Misia in any way.

An animal’s emotion is even purer, not clouded by any thoughts.

Dolly knows that God exists. She perceives Him all the time, and not, like people, just in rare moments. Dolly can smell His odour in the grass, because she is not separated from God by time. That is why Dolly has more trust in the world than any man could ever have. The Lord Jesus had similar trust inside him as he hung upon the cross.