Helen Walne’s Human League
My guru is hairy and smelly. He seldom bathes, likes to eat organic matter, and communes with the neighbourhood cats.
He is fond of Pink Floyd, enjoys walks in nature, and likes nothing better than rolling on the grass under trees. He is fashionable, my guru. He looks good in beads and is so practised in yoga that he automatically launches into the dog stretch.
He has been known to chat up dreadlocked women at Cape To Cuba, he walks everywhere and is penniless yet happy. His breath smells like dark cupboard.
While he normally lies at my feet, I have started to lie at his. I tried strewing some marigold petals around him, but he ate them. I chanted “ohm”, and he gave me a quizzical look.
He is not your average guru. He has never been to India. He is not partial to lentils. He has not changed his name from Norman to Rainbeau River.
Yet every day he teaches me. He has taught me to be nice to people: the postman; the lady in the park with the yellow shoes; my mother-in-law.
He lives unconditionally. If someone scorns him, he accepts it and lets it pass. If a friend goes for the jugular, he forgives him.
My guru has also taught me to hang on to the people I love. When friends come over for wine and old cheese, he sits cross-legged before them, beaming. He fusses over them. He inhales them. He hangs on their every word. He makes them feel interesting.
He has also taught me to trust my instincts. That man who comes to the gate and whispers about East London is not all he seems. Those gooseberries nestled within their papery cocoons are not yet ripe. The American version of The Office is funnier than the British one.
My guru is so instinctual he’s like Sharon Stone’s knickers. He sleeps with one eye open, can sniff out a fraud from two blocks away, and knows that ginger smells better than it tastes. He can also detect a storm before it hits, is in touch with his hunger, and is acutely aware that Chris de Burgh is a human desperate to be a caterpillar.
My guru has made me appreciate every moment. Even when I’m snotting my way through a cold, I feel lucky to be alive. When I’m queuing to pay a traffic fine behind a fat man with spider veins, I feel happy.
On rainy mornings, I laugh in the face of the sky. Like all gurus, mine lives in the present. He doesn’t remember yesterday. He does not fear tomorrow. His bowl is always open to receiving.
Finally, my guru hath not fake humility – and he’s a good listener. If you tell him he looks nice, he accepts it – even when he smells like 15-day-old feta. Tell him he’s good, and he doesn’t get coy. And when I tell him my problems, he tilts his head and moves closer. He blesses me with his whiskers.
Ryan O’ Meara backs up all this information in his book Clever Dog. Okay, he’s probably a down-and-out journalist with an unhealthy relationship with his border collie, but you can’t help feeling that what he says makes sense.
Out of all our pets, dogs are something to aspire to. Goldfish? Too trapped in a bowl. Rabbits? Too randy and pink-eyed. Hamsters? Too often on a wheel. Cats? Too seduced by the neighbours. But dogs – now they have traits we can learn from.
Every evening, our cat breezes in smelling of Other People’s fireplaces. It’s as though he’s rubbing in the fact that our wall heating panels make our pond of a house only marginally warmer than an ice rink. Yet Joey the dog lies on his back in a stew of stinky blankets, as content as a hippie at a falafel convention. He loves me when I’m grumpy. He loves me when I’m eating broccoli. He even loves me when I’m openly reading heat!
Unlike O’Meara, however, I have learnt not to blindly follow all the beliefs of our hairy gurus.
At social gatherings, I do not smell the bottoms of strangers. I refuse to roll in hadeda poo, and no matter how charming it is, I am not compelled to consummate my relationship with the local lamppost.
And, unlike Joey, I will never chew the mattress of our bed or dig up half a ton of plectranthus – no matter how much forgiveness it brings.
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