Borderless

In Denver for readings -- at Metro College today, which has the surprising distinction of being adjacent to an amusement park, so that from the campus you can see this big white roller coaster undulating in front of the distant mountains. Tonight I read at the Tattered Cover, one of the stalwarts of independent bookselling. After two readings and a talk, I can barely put a sentence together, and the whole day blurs. But there's this single image I want to keep: a woman brought a four month old golden retriever puppy to the reading, a dog who was in training to become to become a service animal for diabetics. Who knew? It turns out dogs can be trained to sense (via smell?) when there's a blood sugar problem for the person they're guarding. I think of young golden retrievers (from experience) as being wide-eyed, borderless little blobs of living jelly. But this one was self-contained, sober, and even when she was lifted up off the ground, off-duty for a moment so that I was allowed to pet her, she never dissolved into a wiggling puddle of fur, but maintained this beautiful reserve. I, on the other hand, after three events, am basically a pool of fur myself.