Five years ago, on the heels of a few setbacks and a sorry breakup, I got a dog. My first.
The decision was as thought out as anything life changing can be, as in, not very well thought out at all because how can you decide on the unknown? I realized that I don't get along with people, I live a life with no responsibilities beyond getting myself out of bed and washed in the morning (and getting out of bed proves harder to do than you'd think), a life of utter self-indulgence when you look at it. I was living a life very much as I'd lived it since the age of 18, as a student....relentless "what do I want now, how can I make ME happy now?" and it was frankly boring.
So, with no partner and no children to look after I decided on a dog, a very small one because I am actually afraid of dogs. I thought tiny would be easier. I have had a great many cats in my life and a cat didn't answer the urge -- they are too independent, I wanted something that needed me. Some reason NOT to head to a bar after work. I needed a reason to go home and to like it there.
Enter Bear, as seen to your right, a very teeny beast and one, I'm given to understand, only her owner could love. She is haphazard in terms of obedience, annoyingly yappy, and a bit of a fright to look at with her long hair that is almost constantly in dreadlocks because she despises being brushed and prefers to wash her own face. In fact, though her teeth are all of 1/8 of an inch long she can indeed draw blood if you have a brush in your hand. However, despite her flawed character she is decidedly my dog, never fully happy when I'm not with her (or so I try to believe). She likes to be nearby at all times, content to watch me read books if that's what's going on; when she sees the mascara come out she starts to cry at the bathroom door by way of persuasion, "please please take me with you". When I was most depressed over yet another hard breakup she sat at my feet and stared into my face, whimpering and crying as I did not allow myself to do. My only fear in life now is that somehow I will not perfectly look after her, and if real harm were to come to her, it would kill me. I don't know how people have courage to have children -- it must be terrifying to love anything or anyone that much.
And so we come to Edgar Sawtelle, a wonderful book sometimes told from a dog's perspective, about a relationship between a silent boy and man's (and a boy's) best friend. When the boy forgets himself and Almondine can lick his face, the dog spins with joy. The dog is the boy's voice and protector, the dog is thrilled to have a job to do.
Permeating this story is a sense of dread, quiet and almost hidden but there. You know that maybe on the next page or the one after it, something will break your heart. This is the way of mute beings whether they are silent because they cannot speak or silent because they don't know the words to use. They will break your heart because you want to protect them from what they cannot comprehend or communicate, and as such they are a victim to it.
I don't know what doom is impending, just that I feel it. I have not finished this gorgeous book. But you should start it as well.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Friday, October 24, 2008
Signs of the times
It is very difficult to read a book when current events are so compelling.
You won't know this because no one cared and no one voted and nothing changed but Canada had its own attempt at an election. But off course the real extravaganza is the American one.
Here we have America choosing its prejudice as much as its president, selecting between a white woman of girlish affectation and gargantuan ambition and a black(ish) man who felt glorious enough himself to pen not one but as I count it three memoirs already at the ripe old age of 47.
Though this choice would seem to suggest that America will be forced to take a step forward toward enlightenment regardless of who becomes president, one half of the choice is a big step back.
Sarah Palin is no modern woman; rather she is All About Eve, the duplicitous bitch from high school, that catty Joan Collins character in a TV show, an archetype we'd hoped had disappeared.
She has spent $150,000 since August on clothes and make-up and why not, it's showtime. The self-described hockey mom is running her campaign exactly as she ran them as a would-be beauty queen -- all cute winks and charming "you betcha"'s, answering those tough questions about foreign and economic policy as cleverly as any Miss America contestant who is required to be prepped for that sort of thing to show dimension, to show that she is not merely just another pretty face. And Palin, as vice presidential candidate for a man The Lancet suggests is medically fragile, is sitting in that cat-bird seat -- as any beauty pageant watcher knows, first runner up will ascend to Queen should the winner be unable to complete her rein.
For we women raised to assume the radical feminists just before us had strafed the chauvinistic world so we could live without having to turn the world on with our smile, it is disconcerting to see a woman succeed on the basis of a wink and a prayer. She uses all the wiles we thought, or hoped, would have no further resonance anywhere but a dinner party. Like so many Cassandras we say that such tactics don't really work anymore but we are wrong, they do work, we still live in a world that likes its women perky and cute -- and substance, well, that's great for people doing the boring stuff like foreign secretary work or something. What we have here is someone doing Sexy Secretary, up-do, glasses and pencil skirt included. She exhibits a calculating, raw ambition and for all her claimed affection for Joe Six-pack seems about as warm as her native state.
That "cute" works is depressing. But it works all over the show -- in a recent article, Kate Moss describes her relationship with her boss as one where she has merely to wheedle "please Uncle Phil" and her wish is his command. To connect a model with a presidential candidate may seem crazy but look at it -- Moss is supposedly one of the most successful entrepreneurs in history, a self-made success story, cleverly turning her stylishness into money by partnering with Topshop. Sadly she is a business woman who gets by on cute as much as acumen but perhaps it is excusable if not laudable -- she does get by on her looks. It makes you appreciate Madonna more, another savvy businesswoman who would bust a ball as much as play it. Thank heaven for her, one of the few girl-powerhouses who, we suspect, never wheedles.
It's a troubling time to be female. I would say it is a troubling time to be American, but sadly, the significance is larger than that. Imagine Palin, defender of the free world, in discussions with Putin. Let's hope he has a kid in hockey or we're toast.
You won't know this because no one cared and no one voted and nothing changed but Canada had its own attempt at an election. But off course the real extravaganza is the American one.
Here we have America choosing its prejudice as much as its president, selecting between a white woman of girlish affectation and gargantuan ambition and a black(ish) man who felt glorious enough himself to pen not one but as I count it three memoirs already at the ripe old age of 47.
Though this choice would seem to suggest that America will be forced to take a step forward toward enlightenment regardless of who becomes president, one half of the choice is a big step back.
Sarah Palin is no modern woman; rather she is All About Eve, the duplicitous bitch from high school, that catty Joan Collins character in a TV show, an archetype we'd hoped had disappeared.
She has spent $150,000 since August on clothes and make-up and why not, it's showtime. The self-described hockey mom is running her campaign exactly as she ran them as a would-be beauty queen -- all cute winks and charming "you betcha"'s, answering those tough questions about foreign and economic policy as cleverly as any Miss America contestant who is required to be prepped for that sort of thing to show dimension, to show that she is not merely just another pretty face. And Palin, as vice presidential candidate for a man The Lancet suggests is medically fragile, is sitting in that cat-bird seat -- as any beauty pageant watcher knows, first runner up will ascend to Queen should the winner be unable to complete her rein.
For we women raised to assume the radical feminists just before us had strafed the chauvinistic world so we could live without having to turn the world on with our smile, it is disconcerting to see a woman succeed on the basis of a wink and a prayer. She uses all the wiles we thought, or hoped, would have no further resonance anywhere but a dinner party. Like so many Cassandras we say that such tactics don't really work anymore but we are wrong, they do work, we still live in a world that likes its women perky and cute -- and substance, well, that's great for people doing the boring stuff like foreign secretary work or something. What we have here is someone doing Sexy Secretary, up-do, glasses and pencil skirt included. She exhibits a calculating, raw ambition and for all her claimed affection for Joe Six-pack seems about as warm as her native state.
That "cute" works is depressing. But it works all over the show -- in a recent article, Kate Moss describes her relationship with her boss as one where she has merely to wheedle "please Uncle Phil" and her wish is his command. To connect a model with a presidential candidate may seem crazy but look at it -- Moss is supposedly one of the most successful entrepreneurs in history, a self-made success story, cleverly turning her stylishness into money by partnering with Topshop. Sadly she is a business woman who gets by on cute as much as acumen but perhaps it is excusable if not laudable -- she does get by on her looks. It makes you appreciate Madonna more, another savvy businesswoman who would bust a ball as much as play it. Thank heaven for her, one of the few girl-powerhouses who, we suspect, never wheedles.
It's a troubling time to be female. I would say it is a troubling time to be American, but sadly, the significance is larger than that. Imagine Palin, defender of the free world, in discussions with Putin. Let's hope he has a kid in hockey or we're toast.
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