Re: Dave Eggers How We Are Hungry: After I Was Thrown In The River and Before I Drowned

3/5/25

It's a sunny day on the cusp of spring. It's one of those late fall days in Seattle, where it's dry and, of course, sunny but cold enough to keep your jacket on. I’m taking lunch at a playfield in Madison with my coworkers N and E. I’ve been reading again. I’m enjoying Eggers' collection of short stories, “How We Are Hungry”. The thing I love about Eggers is that he maintains a great sense of humor without straying from sentiment. 

I just finished “After I Was Thrown In The River and Before I Drowned,” a story written from the perspective of a dog whose bread we never learn. He’s tender, seemingly patient, and loves to run and jump. 

Eventually, this is his demise- dying after failing in a jump across a ravine. Still conscious in his dead body, he comes to a revelation: “I thought we were all the same, but as I was inside my dead body and looking into the murky river bottom, I knew that some wanted to run and jump and some were afraid to run and jump and maybe they are broken for it.” (Eggers, 217).

I believe this lesson to be true. One becomes embittered watching others live out the ambitions they are too scared to pursue. Others pursue them despite this fatigue, fear, or better judgment it becomes a fatality of its own. Still- they do not regret the jump. I try to live this way; however, it embitters me in my own way.

I look up from the short and see dogs running, jumping, and playing with other dogs who, essentially, are strangers. I hope that for a long time, a playing dog will serve as a reminder to retain a kind lust for life - open with a focus on the “run and jump.” I will often think of Eggers’ passage and the peace that comes from its telling post-mordum. 

In Eggers’ story, once the dog passes on, free from the murky river water, he is happy. He can walk forever and never has to turn back. He sleeps where he stops and does not miss his home. He has learned that the sun is God and realizes, in retrospect, that always should have been obvious: “Why would there be God and also a sun? Of course God is the Sun” (Eggers, 218).

Today, I feel God on my skin. I, like on most sunny days, imagine it entering me. A constant desire for an ineffable warmth from the inside out. With God on my skin, I, too, hope to walk without turning back and to no longer miss home. 

I see a man playing soccer, and it makes me miss you. I actually thought of you as soon as we crossed through the woods and into the field, but I’m trying to get clean. No more yearning. A consistent walk forward. 

A big dog with a golden pelt runs to me, following its ball. It smiles at me while grasping for the round, orange thing. I think it feels God, too. I hear its owner remark that the dog, Lucy, loves soccer balls. Lucy, God - the sun, and you. Soon, I’ll have to go- work to be done, but for now, I’d like to stay close to it all.