This is my pup. Normally he is up and at it, bossing me around, insisting on whatever is next in his routine. But not lately. Lately, he’s like this.

If he could talk, I might know more. Meantime, the vet took x-rays and suggested that his “knees” were so sore from torn ACLs over the years that he now was too uncomfortable to run. But he went from full speed to zero so quickly… (?) My medical intuitive friend tells me that it’s because of the lentil sprouts I decided to start sharing with him lately – which have an acid in them that perhaps caused inflammation. I stopped feeding him that snack, which he loved, and slowly he’s detoxing, she tells me. She has never been wrong about my health. I do hope she’s right about the pup. He’s so unlike the pooch I’ve known all these years.

He can’t talk. But you know how he feels. He’s a companion, tuning in to the sense of what’s happening all the time. Alongside. Nonverbal.

Nonverbal communication. Visual art is – well, not always nonverbal. But if you take out the art that contains words, you have art with pictures or symbols. And then, if you go further, and take out all art with those references, you come into abstract art. Within abstract art, there are artists who only care about color. White. Black. Blue.

Lately I’ve been fixated on color. But not one color, but rather, the whole mix of colors that can together be defined as “red” or “blue”. It’s the movement and play of the myriad of hues that have one overall designation – that, THAT is what fascinates me.

I recall hours in the summer, lying on the front of a sailboat and looking over the bow, mesmerised by the constantly changing color of the water as the boat cut through its depths. Blue. Looking down into that whorl for hours. It was moving; it was never the same; it was a gillion colors; it was always blue.

My dog lies quietly beside me. My cloth I’ve dyed is heaped nearby. The quiet of the pooch communicates so much. The color blue never settles.