Marley has a cut on his foot. The salt on the roadways gets into the cut and he limps along. This injury, however, hasn't completely sidelined him. He found a gap in our backyard fence (since fixed) and has gone on some memorable adventures, including barking matches with other dogs on the street.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy introduced the concept of the total perspective vortex. It's a way that humans keep their world imaginable. To try to comprehend the whole of everything is to run the risk of having your brain disintegrate, a sort of mental singularity.

Humor aside, this world is often too much for us to comtemplate for any significant amount of time. On the other side of this earth, 100,000 people have died, millions more are injured, homeless, or mourning. It took a great tragedy to push the war in Iraq off the front pages. We watch the images and we grieve. We try to take it all in and imagine what it must be like. And then we come back to our home, our familiar little corner, to our dog's injured foot. Rare are the people who can think about very important things for very long.