My soul is a dark place
And my soul is a lonely one
And I'm not alone
I'm not alone ~ Wild Wolves, Athlete

Wild Wolves

Danny's favorite animal was a wolf. I wonder what that says about him. Dog people are "honest", "open", "friendly". Cat people are "independent". "Wily". I wonder what wolf people are like? Wolves run in packs. Danny didn't run in a pack. "The lone wolf cannot survive." But of course he wasn't. And he didn't.

I have his film and photographs. He took them on his travels with Ivo – to New Mexico and Alaska and places I don't recognize, places I have never been. Photos of wolves stalking prey, fleeing predators; clips of them approaching - warily but unafraid, unaccustomed to the presence of man, perhaps, or perhaps just perplexed by the camera. There were black ones with eerie gold eyes and white ones with deadly black eyes, grey ones with thick winter coats and tawny ones with ratty fur falling off. One kissed the nose of a water buffalo calf and one ran away with a watermelon rind. One ducked from an angry raven's assault and another accepted food from a human hand. They played and fought with him in their midst but they were wild through and through.

Is that what it says about Danny?

Ivo believes adamantly that animals are meant to be wild. He refuses to have a pet. Isabel says pets make people happy, that they offer the unconditional love human beings can not. I never had a pet as a child. My parents were older when I came along and a child was already an imposition. My father seemed fond of animals, though; he used to say he hated Dostoevsky for not being able to go ten pages without beating a horse to death.

I collected rocks as a boy. So I suppose you could say I had pet rocks before it became fashionable for an instant. I didn't name them but I did love their different characteristics and knew each one well from long periods of examining them - the green-and-white variegated ones that resembled tiny cliffs; the polished feel of the purple ones dotted with pink or yellow granite like Callisto; the striped ones that looked like faded miniatures of Saturn. I was fascinated that the same beach could yield so many variations and spent entire afternoons searching for new ones for my collection. I imagned they had come from all over the world, each with its own unique story.

I used to place them in pockets to carry them around. I liked the feel of their weight. I often had so many they made my trousers sag and I had to constantly hitch my pants back up. My mother scolded me for this practice and threw them back onto the beach. I went out later when she was busy and retrieved each and every one of them. I hid them under my bed where I knew she would never look, her house-keeping skills deplorable.

I wonder if there are any universal characteristics for rock people?