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Or the Gentle Drooling Lick of a Dog

Or the Gentle Drooling Lick of a Dog

Last updated on: April 26, 2026 at 7:24 am by Mark Williams

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Or the Gentle Drooling Lick of a Dog 2026-04-26T07:24:35-07:00 Mark Williams

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The joy of a dog’s snore
williams/Williams

IT KIND OF SEEMS….

It kind of seems like the world is spinning out of control. ‘Seems?’ Maybe that’s the wrong word. Reality seems to have lost its definition. Was is this way in the 1940’s?

How about when Columbus came back to report he ran into a continent?

The empires formed and eaten by other empires through Europe or China?

Why are the buffalo running….

Did those people, wake up and wonder what is going on? Why are the buffalo running or why did the moon in the sky go dark then comes back again? What is this granular product called salt and why does it make that same buffalo taste better and do you know if you put it in your food it lasts longer?

Today—now, we can see to the other side of this planet in real time and see stuff we can not unsee. People start to whisper about the end times like it’s a secret or something. The term has been around for a long time, thousands of years since it was first penned—er, scrolled.

We think we are wonderfully educated, trained, empowered by who we are, where ever we live. We have a tendency to look into ourselves for answers and what would benefit us by cloaking our discussions with what would benefit the world as if the two forms of the same question mattered.

Thousands of years ago, a dishonored Egyptian prince climbed to a top of a mountain because he saw something burning. He came back down changed, carrying two pieces of stone. Ten rules inscribed in solid rock. Do these things.

Ten. That was all.

…Six hundred and thirteen.

Now there are six hundred and thirteen. Those ten have birthed, in Arizona alone, forty-nine ‘titles’ or volumes. All the criminal code is in Title thirteen. And that is just Arizona. California and New York’s laws have got to be something you lift with a forklift.

We don’t get it. We try really hard to govern ourselves but what runs through everything we do, everything we do, is a continuing infection of ‘what’s in it for me?’ Then we wonder why nothing changes in our lives and we try to ride the metaphorical bike faster and farther, only to find ourselves exhausted and heart broken.

…I need to continue….

I am the youngest of siblings in our family. Maybe, I was the accident because who would have a child after over a decade and mid-life set in? That’s okay, I never thought of it growing up. But as I get closer to the corral for the last rodeo, I realize, pending some bad cancer or something falling out, I will be around for a while. But my two brothers won’t be. So, I went and visited them. I determined I need to continue to travel to them rather than they come to me. Besides they live in San Diego, and I live in Phoenix and well, there ya go. Aside from ‘checking’ on them, the three of us got together and played the way old men can. Peacefully laughing about stuff no one cares about. I didn’t want to go, but I did. And it was good.

The world came down to three brothers driving around in an open golf cart and drinking forbidden alcohol and laughing. No rules to follow, maybe even a couple of rules to break.

And God smiled.

…it’s never….

Look, I don’t know where you are in this life. This was a long read to get to the actual message-if there even is one. But it’s never too late to look inside and ask good questions. If you find yourself quiet for a moment, you will hear in the back of your brain a soft voice—answering. Often with questions, causing you to think of answers. They will come, sometimes gently in the night or on a morning walk. Or in the gentle drooling lick of a dog.

But they will come.

Enjoy the ride.

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About Mark Williams

Mark Williams spent the first twenty-one years of his career as a Special Agent for the Organized Crime Division of the State Attorney General’s Office. As part of his duties, he investigated organized crime, homicides, and fraud cases submitted by other agencies to that office. He has traveled across the United States as an instructor for law enforcement in various capacities. After he retired, he became a high school English teacher at an inner-city school in central Phoenix where he is the fourth generation in his family to live in the valley. Mark was married for almost thirty-eight years and is a retired widower. He has three children and ten grandchildren. You can read more about the author here.

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