It seems I've created a minor sensation with my post last Thursday about Takamitsu, my fellow volunteer at the food bank.

In the past 24 hours, over 300 people have visited my blog (well above the daily average of 26). My hit counter logs indicate that about 90% of those have been first-time visitors who've arrived via a direct link to last Thursday's post. They also indicate that a few of those links were included in posts on other people's blogs (thanks!), but the vast majority appear to have been links contained in e-mails, I presume from people who saw the post and wanted to share it.

A few of those newcomers to my blog have lingered to browse around and a few have even left comments, but most have stayed only long enough to read the post about Takamitsu.

This morning, my e-mail inbox was overflowing. I've received no fewer than 32 e-mail messages commenting on the post. Some have simply thanked me for sharing the story of Takamitsu's kind gesture. Some have described Takamitsu as a "good Christian" (he's actually Buddhist - though the food bank is run by a faith-based organization, it's a secular operation with volunteers from all sorts of faiths and backgrounds). The authors of some have even stated their wish that they could be more like him (Go ahead! I'm not stopping you!).

What really threw me, though, is that five of the e-mails were from news reporters from television stations around the country (New York, Indiana, Texas, Florida, and California) who had evidently received e-mails about the post. They each wanted to run a news story about it. They requested interviews with either me or Takamitsu (or both), and one reporter even wanted to interview the woman and child and asked how they could be contacted. I sent each a polite reply stating that I'd ask him next time I saw him and let them know.

Amazing.

I thought about simply ignoring the apparent hype that's arisen. These types of things tend to die quick deaths and I knew it would eventually pass. I certainly didn't care to be interviewed, and I suspected Takamitsu would be too humble about it to want to either. However, it's his story and I felt that the decision should be up to him.

Today was one of my days to help with serving lunch, so I printed out a copy of the post and took it with me. As soon as I saw Takamitsu, I told him about the post and the reaction it had garnered and told him there were television reporters that wanted to interview him. I gave him the copy of the post and he just smiled and pocketed it. There was work to be done, after all, and I took his reaction to mean that he'd think about it and let me know later.

After we finished serving lunch, I was in the kitchen helping clean up when I noticed Takamitsu sit down at a table in the far corner of the room and pull the paper out of his pocket. I watched him read it twice.

A little while later, he came up to me in the kitchen and I was startled to realize he'd been crying. He gave me a hug and then, without saying a word, smiled at me and left to go home. He never said anything one way or the other about the news story.

We finished cleaning up, and as I was leaving, I stopped at the garbage can to haul the garbage out to the dumpster on my way to my car. When I removed the lid, I saw my post balled up on top of the trash in the trash bag and knew my earlier suspicions about Takamitsu's humility were correct.

The answer was no.

When blog lurkers finally break their silence, they sometimes do so in significant ways. Witness this e-mail I received yesterday:

For the past few weeks I've been reading what you've written on your blog My Pet Shadow and you seem to be a person who really has yourself pulled together. I was wondering what do you think the secret of happiness is?

I have always thought of myself as more a student of life than a teacher - more sponge than fountain, as I've described it before - so when I first read this e-mail, my immediate reaction was to blurt out a muffled, "Yikes!" I thought myself wholly unqualified to undertake such a philosophical task (I shall leave alone, for now, the impression I might convey that I am, in fact, "pulled together").

The more I thought about it, however, the more I began to recognize that everyone likely has his or her own concept of what happiness is, and at least some inkling of an idea how it might be attained. With that premise in mind, I've been turning the question over and over in my brain for the past 24 hours or so, and I think I've arrived at a workable answer, at least for me.

If there is, in fact, any sort of roadmap that might direct one into the general neighborhood of happiness, it would provide a means by which to prioritize one's needs. Answering the following six questions would, I think, provide some insight. Go ahead, grab a sheet of paper and pen and write down your answers.

1. What do you need to survive the next minute?
2. What do you need to survive the next hour?
3. What do you need to survive until the end of the day?
4. What do you need to survive until next month?
5. What do you need to survive until next year?
6. What do you need to survive indefinitely?

Now, look at your responses. If yours are anything like mine, then there are far fewer items listed in your response to the first question than there are for the second, and far fewer items listed in answer to the second question than there are for the third. The more remote the future in question, it appears, the more necessities there are for survival.

To give an example, my response to the first question is left blank. I had considered listing "air" as a possible answer, but I'm capable of holding my breath for more than a minute. Air, then, wouldn't appear to be an immediate necessity for me. I would suffocate within a few minutes, however, were I to attempt to go without air for an hour. Likewise, were I to forgo eating or drinking for the remainder of the day, the worst that might happen is that I might go to bed hungry. To forgo food or water for a month, though, would likely be a danger to my health.

This small exercise demonstrates that the more immediate a need might be, the more important it is, a premise that would seem obvious. It certainly doesn't take any complicated thought to arrive at that conclusion, but it's the kind of thing most people likely don't actively consider. If you took the time to write out your answers, then before you lies something that most people don't have: a prioritized list of life's necessities.

Here's a little secret, though, as to how to use it. As long as you manage to cover the needs you listed for the first three questions, you'll be okay. If you can manage to survive until the end of the day, you've got plenty of time to work on the rest of the list.

This morning atop the mountain.

(click image to enlarge)

He was the classic image of a blues man, sitting on stage leaning back in a simple wooden chair under the spotlight in the smoke-filled bar. It was open mike night at the Poetry Slam and he was the first to lay claim to the microphone.

He wore a black suit, narrow black tie, and a hat that hovered over his dark glasses. He pulled a battered acoustic guitar from its case, hoisted the strap over his head, crossed his legs, and rested the guitar in his lap. He reached for his drink, which sat on a wooden stool serving as a makeshift table to his left, took a puff off his cigarette, and commented on the prerequisites of a good guitar:

He was right.

I witnessed something spectacular today.

Twice a week, I volunteer a couple of hours of my time to feed the needy through a food bank in the area. On an average day, 30 people will walk through our doors and be served lunch. Many are regulars who come every day. Some appear only briefly, for a few days in a row, and then we never see them again. Still others only come once.

These are people at their most difficult times. Some have lost jobs and been evicted from their homes when rent has gone unpaid. Many have disabilities that prevent them from working. Many are elderly and subsist solely on meager government funding. For each who walk through our door, there is a different story of foul luck. The most heart-rending are those of the children.

Whatever the catalyst that caused them to be here, though, they all share one thing in common: society doesn't like seeing them. There is a self-described nickname among the homeless; they call themselves "ghosts." They are the lost spirits that walk alone in shadow at night. For most, this will be the day's only meal. We know this, and we strive to make their time with us a brief respite from ignominy.

I have volunteered with several different organizations dedicated to the cause of feeding the masses. This one, however, stands out by far. The warm fuzzies are a little toastier and furrier here. We make every effort to avoid any appearance that our clientele are untouchables segregated from the rest of the us. There are no specially designated tables in a far corner of the room at which they are asked to sit, and we don't serve them on paper plates or trays and make them eat with "sporks," but rather on real china and with real silverware.

We don't make them line up at a counter or walk through a cafeteria-style assembly line to be served. When they first walk in the door, they are each greeted personally with a warm smile by a member of the day's team and told to take a seat at a table wherever they like. Then, we wait on them, just as in a restaurant. We take their orders, bring them beverages, and serve their meals to them at the table.

Then, we sit and eat with them, and in so doing, we become them, and they become us (in fact, it has been especially difficult to write this from a stylistic standpoint, as the words they and them are not used within this organization, but instead, the terms we and us are employed, as in "We are having roast beef and steamed veggies today," or "Fourty-two of us had lunch today."). When "they" finish their plates, we clear their places and offer to get another helping. This is an all-you-can-eat affair; no one leaves until they are completely stuffed and in jeopardy of bursting.

All of this, though - all of these fine touches we employ to give a feeling of acceptance and remove any stain associated with charity or need - is mere window-dressing compared with what I saw today.

One of the volunteers is a Japanese immigrant named Takamitsu. He is a quiet man, with warm eyes and a kindly smile. He has suffered unthinkable hardship of his own - he was orphaned in the bombing of Nagasaki, had a child who died of cancer at six years of age, and lost a wife who died young - and despite his own past, he takes the time to help others. Empathy, I suppose, comes easily to those who have suffered and survived their own trial by ordeal.

Today, two of those with whom we ate lunch were newcomers, a young mother and her six- or seven-year-old son. After lunch, Takamitsu stopped at their table, squatted down so that he was at eye level with the child, and began folding a sheet of paper. While he did so, Takamitsu enchanted the child by telling a story of a young Japanese girl named Sadako Sasaki who gave rise to a modern legend that has spread worldwide.

Sadako was a hibakusha, a survivor of the bombing of Hiroshima during World War II. Only two years old on the day the war ended, she was stricken with leukemia a decade later as an after-effect of radiation exposure. Sadako heard of an old Japanese tradition holding that anyone who folds a thousand origami cranes would have their greatest wish granted. She began folding cranes, telling everyone that her wish, once she reached a thousand, would be for healing, not only for her, but for the world. Her wish was for peace and an end to war and suffering for all.

She never reached her goal, however. She died when she was 12 years old after folding 644 cranes. Inspired by her effort, though, her classmates took up the cause and completed her senbazuru - as a group of 1,000 cranes became known. The story of Sadako and her classmates spread, and now, children all over Japan fold origami cranes in hopes of creating a senbazuru. Though Sadako never lived to see her own wish granted, her message has become a modern legacy of hope.

It was this message that Takamitsu gave to the child, and in folding the crane and giving it to him, Takamitsu was giving him a gift of hope.

When he finished, the child's mother leaned down and whispered in her son's ear, "What do you say?" and the child barked out a heartfelt "Thank you!" and began showing off his new toy.

A few minutes later, though, Takamitsu left me dumbfounded. I watched him take the mother's arm when he thought no one was looking and silently lead her aside. He then looked straight into her eyes, smiled, and without a word spoken, held up his hand. In his palm, he held a small origami crane just for her.

It suddenly dawned on me that the message of hope he'd given the child was really intended for her. By explaining the crane's symbolism to the child as she looked on, he had premeditatedly slipped the message right into her heart without her knowing it until he later sprung the trap. What a loud and powerful message from such a quiet little man.

This, friends, is how the pros do it.

Since early this summer, there has been a construction project underway across the cove from me. Shortly after I have taken my seat on the deck with my morning Mug-O-Darjeeling and my newspaper each day, the sound of hammering and power tools has commenced. Last Thursday morning, however, there was only silence. I peered through the trees and saw that where there was once nothing but an empty lot, there now stands a house.

On Monday morning, I found an envelope stuck in the door. I opened it and learned that the new neighbors were breaking in their home by inviting everyone in the vicinity over for a cocktail party. I think it might have been a peace offering as an apology for all the noise.

Earlier this week, I learned from one of my neighbors that the newcomers are a young couple, mid-30's I'd guess, which makes them less than half as old as most of the other people living in the vicinity. I also learned that the husband had started a business of some sort several years ago and built it into something that someone with lots of money eventually wanted to buy. He sold it, and with gobs of cash in hand, he and his wife decided to move somewhere nice and build their dream house. Apparently, where I live is somewhere nice, and now there's a dream house here.

I have just returned from the party, but was only able to meet one-half of the couple. By the time I got there, the husband had retreated indoors with some friends to watch a baseball game on his new IMAX-sized TV. I spoke to the wife, however, long enough to recognize that she is the stereotypical ditzy blonde. She looks like an animated Barbie doll. She speaks faster and bubblier than anyone else I've ever met and talking with her feels a lot like exercise. Before long, all the other women in attendance were saying snide things about her behind her back and then jabbing their husbands in the ribs with their elbows to elicit nods of agreement (and also possibly to get them to stop staring at her tits).

"Idle hands," an old adage has it, "are the Devil's tools." That trite old saying now has special meaning for me after tonight. Without a beer to occupy one hand and a cigarette to occupy the other (both are hobbies in which I no longer engage), I found that my hands were free to do as they pleased. It wasn't long before they discovered some roguery with which to entertain themselves.

On the lakefront side of the new house, there is a huge spotlight that illuminates the yard. I have no idea how much candlepower it might emit, but one can barely look in its direction without risking permanent retinal scarring. From this day forward, when I hear someone who has survived a near-death experience tell of seeing a bright light and hearing disembodied voices chant "Go toward the light!" I will immediately form a mental picture of the survivor standing in this couple's back yard.

It was this spotlight that my idle hands employed in their quest to become satanic utensils. Late in the evening, I found myself standing with my back to the light, facing the lake. Around me were a few of the neighborhood men, all much older than I, who'd somehow slipped the surly bonds of their wives' gravitational pull, broken free from their orbits, and joined together to talk about golf while they pretended not to ogle the nubile newcomer standing 15 yards away from us.

Bored with the conversation, I yawned and stretched and was suddenly startled by a shocking vision of something I saw before me. When I had stretched, I had extended my hands into the air straight up over my head. In this location, my hands were situated directly between the spotlight behind me and our hostess's white shirt in front of me. The shadow cast by my hands had fallen directly upon her breasts, and the illusion it gave was that a pair of dark, mischievous hands had reached up from some unknown place of concealment and given her boobs a honk.

Normally, this would have been a sight which I would have kept to myself and laughed privately. The hour was late, however, and I was tired, and in that state, I shared the joke with the men surrounding me. I nudged the man next to me in his ribs (he winced, so I must've gotten him right where his wife had earlier), said, "Watch this!" and repeated the trick. He didn't notice at first, but when my shadow-puppet hands gave her nipples a little pinch and did the "radio-knob twist," the laughter fairly burst forth from his lungs. He nudged the next fellow and pointed. Soon, all the men clustered around me had joined in the chorus of merriment.

I was asked to repeat it over and over as more of the male partygoers joined our group, and through it all, amazingly, our hostess remained completely oblivious. How the man to whom she was talking failed to notice, I'll never know, but he and our hostess continued their conversation unfazed. Only when the loudest of our neighbors unleashed a baritone explosion of mirth did we attract their attention enough that they glanced at us, immediately causing us to pretend that someone in our midst had just told the funniest joke in history. The ruse was successful; after a few momentary seconds, they resumed their conversation.

Actor/comedian Billy Crystal was once asked if he had been the class clown when he was in high school. His reply was that he was the class comedian, rather than the class clown, and then described the difference thusly: "The class clown is the guy who drops his pants and moons everyone at a pep rally. The class comedian is the one who gave him the idea to do it." You may wonder, dear readers, what point I may be attempting to make by inserting this seemingly unrelated quotation into the story. My purpose in doing so is to tell you that the role I ended up playing this night was that of the comedian.

Every member of the group felt compelled to try the trick, each demonstrating his own gentle caressing technique for the others. Fueled as they were by alcohol, however, they failed to bear in mind that such a prank is best practiced in stealth. Their laughter grew more voluminous as each took his turn until, eventually, the man to whom our hostess had been speaking noticed the shadow puppet cinema being projected onto the front of the poor woman's shirt. When he did, he abruptly interrupted her in mid-sentence and apparently informed her of the nature of the prank to which she had fallen victim. Her eyes dropped suddenly to her own chest, and then she looked up and caught her assailant red-handed (no pun). With her eyes blazing in anger and with giant puffs of forced steam billowing from her nostrils, she marched toward the suddenly-hushed group.

There was some shouting that ensued, from which I learned that the man who had brought the prank to her attention was her father. I can guess what the remainder of the yelling might have been, but I couldn't hear it clearly. By that time, I was innocently climbing in my car to head home.

Time spent at the lake is time spent in solitude, the quiet nights serenaded by cicadas and staring at the stars, the days spent tapping the computer keys with the familiar background hum of powerboats flashing by on the lake. It is very far away from everywhere. I like it that way, but it can get lonesome at times.

It is an hour's drive to the grocery store, so my foraging pilgrimages are planned meticulously. For the first time in my life, I have begun making grocery lists. It is an odd and aimless poetry, short lines of necessities scratched out on a notepad as I mentally walk through the house to see what's almost empty. I catch myself trying to force the lists into rhyme - poetry is a compulsive habit - so when I get to the store, I read:

Soap, aspirin, peppercorns,
Seven-grain bread,
Ice cream, butter,
Shampoo for my head.

Roast beef, bottled water
(the tap tastes like metal),
Shaving cream, toothpaste,
Some tea (for the kettle).

Post-It notes, lemonade,
Some really good cheese,
Something to rid the boat
of the mildew smell - Fabreze?

A little more than a week ago, I returned from one of my outings to the store and discovered that I had left the basement door slightly ajar. It doesn't latch properly in summer - something about the heat, I think. I walked in from the garage with an armload of groceries and set them on the counter next to a black and white cat stretched out in the afternoon sun streaming in through the skylight. The cat yawned, stood up, and began sniffing critically at my purchases.

I was halfway down the hall on my way to the garage for a second load of groceries when I suddenly thought, "I don't have a cat." It was then that I surmised that I must have failed to pull the basement door closed behind me the previous evening.

He wore no collar, so I assumed he was a stray (among the animal kingdom, a collar is a status symbol which conveys to other animals that its bearer has a home and owns some people). I called the neighbors, in case he was AWOL from one of their homes, but none claimed him. I tried to discern from what other quarters he might have come. The house is surrounded by water on three sides, so he must have come down the drive, but past that, I hadn't a clue. If he did come via the drive, he had to pass several houses with dogs who surely wouldn't have let him pass, but cats have secret sneaky feet, so he may well have made the trip undetected. My house is the last on the lane, so being unable to go any further without swimming, he must have sniffed around until he found an open door and come inside to make himself at home.

Completely depleted of ideas as to where he might live, I realized my earlier assumption about his being a stray must have been correct. As I set down the telephone after calling the last of my neighbors, I turned to him and asked, "So, will you be staying for dinner?" He emitted a close-mouthed trill and rubbed up against my leg.

He is fascinated by the mouse cursor on the computer monitor, and types out his own kitty language on the keyboard when he climbs onto the desk to investigate it. When I write, he curls and purrs in my lap (as he is now) and grumbles his annoyance whenever I attempt to stand, so in that regard, he is of some use around here. He keeps me disciplined in my writing.

He sleeps on the pillow above my head at night, and I have grown accustomed to the somnolent buzz of his purr. In the mornings, he accompanies me to the newspaper box and joins me in a cup of tea on the deck before the day's writing commences. He prefers Earl Gray.

I thought he would have moved on by now, but he has become fast in his habits about the house, and in that, I can see that he has no intentions on leaving. I have a strong preference for dogs, but there is a soft place in my heart for all lost creatures.

When I went back to the store today, I bought him a collar.

I have made a new canine acquaintance. He's a farm dog that joins Bucephalus and I whenever we ride the mountain trail. He's a large dog who is clearly devoid of anything akin to refinement. He wears no collar, barks constantly, has absolutely no manners, and serves as a shining example of one who lives by the Junkyard Dog's Creed.* The route to the horse trail takes us up a dusty road, where he joins us at the intersection of a driveway leading to a barn. I assume the dog lives in the barn, but I could be wrong. The barn undoubtedly contains many things in which a dog might be tempted to roll, so perhaps he only works there.

His ancestry is difficult to discern, but were I forced to opine as to his parentage, I would estimate his genetic makeup to be a blend of Pointer, Springer Spaniel, and Chow, with a fair bit of Labrador Retriever interspersed periodically between generations (Labs apparently have one of the animal kingdom's randier sex lives. Its breed, it seems, makes up at least some percentage of the heritage of all mutts).

As a humorous aside, I cannot resist the urge to relate a conversation between an American and an Englishman overheard on my flight to Europe a few weeks ago:

On with the dog's tale...

The first day we encountered him, he was clearly hostile. He sprinted to the end of the drive, barking with a ferocity equal to that of a Hound of Hell. This, I would concede, would be an honorable trait in a dog; guarding one's property is a celebrated American pastime (witness the steady market for handguns in our country), but he took it to the extreme. His offense was not quenched, as it would be with most dogs, by our passing without breaching the boundary line. Dauntless Defender of Democracy that he was, his hostilities did not end when we retreated up the road. Instead, he gave chase.

Bucephalus and I were both curious as to when he might consider his territory successfully defended, and we were both astounded that he continued his pursuit, strafing us with barked oaths, all the way to the top of the mountain. It brought to mind the heroic sheriff of many a western film escorting the bad guys to the edge of town to ensure their departure, except in this instance, the sheriff's escort continued for a distance of three states. It made us question how effective his office as a guard dog was being performed, since his diligence in thwarting our perceived invasion left his property completely unguarded against possible invasion from other aggressors for several hours.

Bucephalus and I reached the conclusion that he is a moron. We were correct. On every occasion when we've ridden by the barn since, the dog has harrassed us in the same manner. As we have grown to know him, we have seen more and more evidence of his lack of intelligence.

Fatigue, we have learned, does not deter him. No matter how hot or tired he might be, if we are moving, he follows. When we stop halfway up the mountain at a stream so that Bucephalus can irrigate his dusty windpipes, the dog perceives it as a sort of truce. He lies down on his side, ribcage heaving and lungs wheezing, in the middle of the road, where his tongue lolls out of his mouth and rests upon the dirt. When I resume the saddle, the dog springs to life, leaving no sign of his presence save for a small pond of foamy slobber where he lay.

On our afternoons atop the mountain, Bucephalus and I have grown to enjoy sitting among the trees and looking out upon the lake, recounting hero stories from our younger days, stories of our athletic accomplishments, of the women (or fillies) we have loved, of embarrassing moments upon which we now look back and laugh, and of the heartbreaks we have suffered. Those quiet talks atop the mountain, when the openness of friendship and comraderie are at their highest (no pun), are moments we both cherish.

The dog, however, gains his second wind when he reaches the summit. Perhaps there is something rejuvenating in the sparse mountain air, or possibly it is the view itself which inspires him, or, more likely, without us to chase, he becomes distracted and can't think of anything better to do. Whatever the catalyst might be, he sets off on an aimless and berserk sprint about the mountaintop. What he does or where he goes, I cannot tell. I would surmise that, given the distance he must cover, such data could only be collected through use of the latest GPS tracking technology. One could also speculate that, given his Labrador heritage, he might be busily attempting to impreganate the mountaintop flora and fauna and considers the task incomplete until every bobcat, bear, and buzzard who resides on high is with child.

Regardless of his motives and lack of manners, Bucephalus and I have recognized that a bit of tolerant charity is necessary when our Fido-friend accompanies us on our rides. Carelessness is characteristic of imbecility, and we feel compelled to keep watch, lest our romantic Rover cause himself harm during his speedy circuit of the peaks. Neither of us could bear the guilt, should he meet his fate atop the hill in our absence were we to leave without him. Thus, we remain until his return, and only then do we begin our descent.

This afternoon, Bucephalus was entertaining me with a bawdy story of some mischievous mare of his acquaintance when, above the treetops off to our left, we saw the bough of a tree suddenly shake violently and a dozen or so startled blackbirds burst into squawking flight from its branches. We both realized that our companion had run headlong into its trunk and would soon be returning, dizzy and out of sorts, to our clearing and it would be time to go.

Good thing he only hit it with his head.
--------------
* The Junkyard Dog's Creed: "If you can neither eat it nor fuck it, then piss on it."