I guess I took the time and looked at most of if not all of the photos of Falca and Gala in the Facebook album of my good friend, N29. She has a collection of photographs of her dogs in both color and black and white. I have to say how moved I was by the beautiful photographs displayed there. For me, there are three parts to the album. First, the beauty of her borzoi, so special in their own way; second her stunning talent as a photographer; and third the surreal landscape, that being Idaho, where she lives. It is radically different from the NE United States she knows well because it is where she grew up, in fact, only a few short miles from my house. Sadly, although we are the same age and shared the same passions, we never met as children but only later through borzoi.
I enjoyed looking at her photos on all three levels, and felt for a while as if I was swept away to that far away place. I was consumed by wishes for what could have been in my life, such as wide open spaces where dogs can run free, compared to what is, urban scrawl and gridlock. I wondered as I often do how it ever turned out this way when I tried so hard for it to be otherwise. Although I suffocate with loneliness in the crushing crowds, I know I should be grateful for my home and environs, meager though they are, and my two ageing borzoi, like me, walking on the trails and roads available to us, spending what is left of our days. I so not feel at liberty to display her photographs here, but they can be found easily on Facebook by typing in their names.