hundsskotta

I can hear the neighbors' dog going up and down the stairs just on the other side of this wall. I hear him jouncing down and scrambling up again. I cannot see him, but I hear him clearly. The wall is shared between the two apartments. It is a duplex. The two sides are in all regards the same as to layout, only reversed. The neighbor's apartment is a mirror image of mine. It's a very fertile image.

When the Tuatha De Danaan and the sons of Mil fought over Ireland, neither side got the upper hand. They called a truce and reached a settlement. Ireland would be divided, and each people would get half. The sons of Mil would have the half above the earth's surface, and the Tuatha De Danaan would have the half below. Later, they became known as the Fair Folk. Occassionally a human would be invited or stumble into their realm, often as not though a door in a hill, and always their side of Ireland would seem very like the world of men, except different. An Otherworld.

I listen to the dog ascending and decending and I think about the ingenious truce reached in Ireland thousands of years ago, in the age of heroes and magic. Is it really the neighbors' dog I hear, or it is my own dream of a dog, the ghost of a dog, always on the other side of the wall separating the world as it is from the world as it almost is?