Have some time to kill before dinner, so I’ve come to the cemetery, which is quite extensive and doubles as a dog park. Phones, dogs, and picnics are permitted. Drones, barbecues, and alcohol are not. Some gravestones appear to matter more than others. The most elegant are neglected and overgrown, with a hint of cement peeping out from underneath. Others dominate the terrain above ground as brutalist tombs; obnoxious, imposing, even in death. This might have been an opportune moment to blend in. Any attempt to prolong the inevitable conversion into compost is futile. Perhaps I’ll come back here tomorrow to jog, alongside the acquiescent and the resentful. I won’t slow down for any of them. All before a morning cup of coffee, before the fullness of waking, among the dog walkers. I don’t want a dog. Though there is no doubt that dogs have rich conscious lives and exhibit preferences, I am aware enough to know that I can barely attend to myself. Closer to the mentality of a cat, I derive pleasure in the foliage of solitude. I suspect people procure dogs because they are capable of high-level self-sufficiency and patience. They are incentivized by the desire to have a companion to kith with, a perpetually needy infant to pick up after, an earthling to discipline and to abandon on a daily basis, who will almost certainly go before them.