Bonne Saint-Valentin!

 

There's a special connection between a child and their dog. 

"Children are the only ones who can tell us apart. They know things: we like being in their company." (457)

          Ok, folks. I'm going to keep this as succinct as Mariah-ly possible. I'm really going to try.

        First of all, may I just admit that "Blue" pretty much encapsulated my childhood exposure to/dilemma in all things "dog"?  That "plague of feral housecats at the place, strayed outward from the city or dumped along the roads by the kind of people who do that sort of thing" (429) that he described--- that would be my home. People don't buy pets where I come from. We acquire via dump-offs. Moreover, much like Graves' Blue, my childhood pet, Scooter, along with the motley crew of mutts, shepherds, and hounds at my grandparents' home---"fond of the whole family and loved by all"-- together we  would go "swim at the creek or on horseback jaunts across the hills." (443) That was the reality of my formative years. We all terrorized the countryside as one big, happy family. In that way, I really connected not only with Blue, but with Graves' idea of what his upbringing was.

Brownie and Spot--- my Granny and Papa's "farm dogs" that I ran around with as a child. I will say this, though: they are part of why I am who I am today, a little freer and uninhibited than most, and for that I thank them. 

          Moreover, that means that I experienced those less-than-attractive qualities and some of the overly-"pragmatic" cruelty Graves hinted at, as well-- where "my residual kid sentimentality" was knocked hard by "living in the country where realism is forced upon you." (436) However, luckily, I never let it go. My dad used to tell me to not get too attached to any of our dogs, because you never knew when a crazy driver or a farmer was going to help them meet their end. Yet I still brought every stray home, and piled them into my bed at night. Even worse, I was traumatized by my godfather's stories about how his dad would drown kittens in the old cistern. Needless to say I hope that my kids are raised in a world in which they will not be exposed to such stories. Then again, I remember classmates having puppies at their house one week that we'd all go play with... and then inexplicably not having them the next. Those kids never had the heart to tell me what had actually happened.

"He took one pup after another, and right there, before his children and my poor distracted mother, put an end to their lives.... My mother never seemed the same after this." (481)

 This is what should happen to you if you try to drown cats. Just saying.

May those who love us love us,
And those who don't love us,
May God turn their hearts,
And if He doesn't turn their hearts,
May He turn their ankles, (or make them fall in pools)
So we'll know them by their limping. (or bruises from aforementioned cement side of pool)
An Irish Blessing

Note: I do not condone this either. I'm not really "for" pain of anybody, but I think the kid's ok, so we'll call this a learning experience he is better off for having had. 

 

        The dogs mother "never seemed the same after this." The  point that I thought I should make that Graves had ended with is the idea of how human and animal lives dovetail. Do we experience life the same? And if not-- how is it different? Does it matter that it's different? He describes his various pets' smiles, their antics, their senses of humor and joy, their neuroses, but by no means does he put them on the same plane.

"And dogs are nothing but dogs and I know it better than most... Nor was there anything humanly unique about the loss, or about the emptiness that came in the searching's wake, which comes sooner or later to all people foolish enough to give an animal space in their lives. But if you are built to be such a fool, you are, and if the animal is to you what Blue was to me the space he leaves empty is big." (450)

What I am saying here is that animals are not humans. They are, well, each of their own nature and have different needs. Therefore, you should probably not do this to your pet:

 It's cute, yes, and probably not mentally demoralizing or morally wrong or anything-- I just think it might make one forget what an animal needs (which usually isn't clothes or people up in their face or someone touching them all the time). Some people do not care enough. Some people identify and care perhaps too much (or at least act upon that care in unhelpful ways.) Perhaps this article has swayed me: The Human Dog.
Or perhaps I'm just thinking about the fact that I'm having to retrain my roommates to accept that they should not, (for their own well-being and out of respect for my bunny) under any circumstances,taunt my rabbit when she is cornered in her cage. Just like you don't look a dog who might see you as a threat in the eye, you just respect that an animal has a body language all it's own. Anyways, I digress. The point is:

         Dogs are dogs. Cats are cats. Horses are horses. Do you see where I am going with this? Animals deserve to be treated not only as individuals for their various personalities and likes/dislikes, but as their breed, their species, and their particular locale would denote. Still, I'm not saying at all that animals are somehow incapable of feeling things in some way that we can identify with. I mean, in various selections here, told from the 1st person, we place ourselves in the mind of an animal narrator, probably with the intent to "enter the animal world, and... to see as animals see, and to feel as animals feel... "how to live in sympathy with the animal world; how to understand the languages of the creatures." (475) Still, maybe as a human and someone who has some kind of personal stance against making animals fit into our definitions, I have to point out that we really haven't quite been able to find a forum or medium to explain animal emotions other than in human descriptions and words of emotion. So where do I think animals fit in the grand scheme of things? My idea of the world looks a little something like these:

 Disney Animal Kingdom's Tree of Life, with over 325 animals intertwined and supporting each other (yes, I know that that is nowhere near a representation of life, but I'll get over it. The tree in my mind is much bigger and does.) to form the trunk.



 Why do I at once find myself cringing with real pain and compassion as if I feel the emotions of the animals in this story, but at the same time have that human voice in the back of my mind reminding me that I am not truly experiencing it as they do? Just as animals differ from us in ways as diverse as--- well, the flora and fauna--- they still experience many, many things that we do, living in the same world.





M.C. Escher and an interwoven existence of man and animal

From these readings, for example, animals feel hatred for what they call "murder" of their parents. They attempt to understand us and our language, for example when it was said of the dog Jim that a "hard word hurt him more than a blow" (491) (debatable, but since I met my brother's dog Bud, I have seen that this is the truth.)

 My brother's ex-girlfriend with their dog, Bud. This, I think, was after I told him that he was being mean and that he should go to "Mommy" because I didn't want to play with him anymore. He did, and as you can see, he was still pouting. That's 200 pounds of over-sensitivity right there.

Elephants mourn the loss of dead friends and family members. Animals of different species will take in the young of another in some inherent gesture of maternal instinct. Animals feel loneliness and abandonment members of their family leave (for example, in "Devotion). Story after story recounts how animals experience the world and rationalize what is going on around them.

"Devotion" by Susan Minot

"You left. One by one there were less of you. Less bicycles tipping off their stands. Less leftovers I would get... Less and less shouts and then fewer hands to pull back my ears and smooth at my head... Some of you changed tastes, slept with cats instead... You went, not I, with a suitcase shut... I could only stray so far. What I was attached to in you would not stretch or bend." (465)

 This is all I could think of when I read these lines, my baby Scooter.This face just breaks my heart. This was the last picture I took of him before I left for my post-grad trip. In fact, it is the last picture I have of him at all. He got sick while I was gone and passed 2 weeks after I got back.

But rather than just dwell on the negatives, it should be said that animals celebrate life, too.

"All of these things are life. All of these things are a gift from him to us, and from us back to him. Someone has to be alive to see all this... It's said that dogs can't see color, but we can feel it, like leaves, like heat, like cool drafts, and warm scents." (460)

This sounds a bit like King Lear again, doesn't it? This is such a motto for the class. "How do you see the world? I see it feelingly."

"I was made to experience this world. It was created for me--- I was meant to move across it. Not forever and ever, but for a few years. A few good sweet years; I will not be denied this life." (462)

"Buster's Visitation" by Stephen Dunn 

"But clarities come when the body goes. For whatever it's worth you should know-- you who think so much--- only what's been smelled or felt gets remembered." (471)

            Perhaps we should learn something from these stories. Perhaps we should remember to stop and experience life for what it is--- its smells, feelings, and ephemeralness. Kids certainly know how to do this. Maybe that's why I always felt more like a dog or a cheetah or a wild brumby (or fill in the blank here) when I was younger. I identified with that sentiment-- the one of just being alive. Maybe that's why I still want to be a kid.

 Still, I loved Saunder's following sentiment, as a human being, an aunt, and a possible teacher:

"We're thinking too much about educating the mind, and forgetting about the heart and soul... So I say now, let us try to slip in something between the geography, and history, and grammar that will go a little deeper, and touch them so much, that when they are grown up and go out in the world, they will carry with them lessons of love and good-will to men." (493)

"I have heard her say that if all the boys and girls in the world were to rise up and say that there should be no more cruelty to animals, they could put a stop to it." (479) 

Books like these can change the world: (Hoot, The Rats of Nimh stories, Charlotte's Web, anything by Brian Jacques)
You can bet that if I'm ever a teacher, they will be in the curriculum.

Alright, I've put you through enough. I leave you with these:

"People pull their punches, refer to dogs' love with words such as loyalty, obedience, or even submissiveness, but it is love." (463) I have to agree. The feeling of love goes beyond species. It is life at its highest form. Or so sayeth the dreamers of the world like me.

Chaucer (c. 1382/2383) 

from "The Parliament of Fowls", perhaps the 1st Valentines poem ever written (lines 183-203)

    A garden saw I, full of blossomy boughs
    Upon a river, in a green mead,
    There as sweetness evermore enough is,
    With flowers white, blue, yellow, and red,
    And cold well-streams, nothing dead,
    That swimming full of small fishes light,
    With fins red and scales silver bright.

    On every bough the birds heard I sing,
    With voice of angels in their harmony;
    Some busied themselves birds forth to bring;
    The little coneys to here play did hie.
    And further all about I could see
    The dread filled roe, the buck, the hart and hind,
    Squirrels, and beasts small of gentle kind.

    Of instruments of strings in accord
    Heard I so play a ravishing sweetness,
    That God, that maker is of all and lord,
    Had heard never better, as I guess.
    Therewith a wind, scarcely it might be less,
    Made in the leaves green a noise soft
    Accordant to the fowls' song aloft.

Have a wonderful, wonderful Valentine's Day, dearies. 

EL FIN