Zeppelin Parable

Everybody knows "The Caravan Barks And The Dogs Move On." Fewer know "The Zeppelin Sails And The Dogs Sniff The Gas Nozzles." This is how it goes:

The potential zeppelin is in the field, lying sagged and helpless along the grass, a membrane painted with gay colors, struggling to assert itself, expecting to fly, unable yet.

The dogs are kept at bay in the parking lot in anticipation of the great moment. They pick boogers, call their spouses on cell phones, solve crossword puzzles, crack puns, speculate, lap from water bowls, etcetera. In this they resemble the irascible poker-playing reporters killing time as they wait for the execution of the convicted murderer in "His Girl Friday".

The gas flows from the pipes, which are laid in long sections of hose and fitted with nozzles. The nozzles connect to the inflow nodules of the vast baggy zeppelin.

The gas comes from underground, from purportedly 'great deep secret sources'. The gas would certainly stay underground unless it had a zeppelin to fill, because the gas is by nature bashful, deferential, conflicted.

Slowly the zeppelin inflates, taking succor and inspiration from the munificence of the gas.

Lift Is Achieved.

Ropes Are Loosened.

Hoses Disconnected From Valves.

Many Shouts.

Hurry, it's in the air!

No one can pinpoint the moment the bag becomes truly a zeppelin, thanks to the gas, but after so long a wait, a water-boiling interlude, this phase transition in fact seems to elude even the closest watcher: suddenly. Now there is much to do. We all adore the zeppelin when it sails, do we not? We are all ready to have our hearts broken.

The dogs are loosed and rush baying into the field.

The zeppelin is unbound from earth now, unfixed, a thing of the sky and beyond. It wants to go to outer space - not as a rocket would, but by drifting, by departing this world with our amazed and yearning eyeballs in gentle tow.

There could never be enough of this.

If only X were here to see it!

The dogs have joined us now where we stand under the zeppelin's fuzzy shadow, the zeppelin soaring so gradually, yet now already beginning to depart the field, to incline for the mountains, there to be lost in the higher air -

Look!

Great god, look! It's the mothership!

Look!

But the dogs have their noses to the ground. They're chasing traces, sniffing hoses, rooting for nozzles.

No, dogs, that's beside the point! The gas was only to fill the zeppelin - please, look, before it is too late.

One dog whines, finding a nozzle, and rolls over it in his excitement. Others come growling and grumbling, wanting a piece of the action. He's got a good one! This dog can really detect a strong whiff of gas, a tendril left behind in the quick disconnection of nozzle from socket.

Yummy, the dogs all say. Nasty, yummy gas. Gotta gotta get me some of that.

No, look in the air! we shout.

It's so beautiful!

Too late, gone. They missed it.

The Zeppelin Sails, And The Dogs Sniff The Gas Nozzles.

Twas ever thus.

Hey, man, these dogs don't even LIKE zeppelins! They like gas.

Cut 'em some slack.

Yeah, what were we thinking?

 

McSweeney's, 2003