Brave and Strong
Wednesday, July 20th, 2005
Gudrun takes a moment to reflect at the Watts tower…
little girl, brave and strong, poised to conquer the world…
Archive for the ‘Dogs’ Category
Gudrun
Wednesday, June 22nd, 2005
Gudrun is named after the infamous Gudrun Ensslin who was the female leader of the Baader-Meinhof Gang, an art terrorist group from the 70s. Terrorism was different then. It had a chicness to it, which made it seem less like a dangerous menace and more like fashion.
She is also named after the Norse queen who married Attil (mythological representation of Attila the Hun). After Attil killed her brothers, Gudrun murdered all the sons she had by him and served their hearts to her husband. It is a bad girl name for a very good girl. She’s just so small that I thought a strong name would help protect her from the big feet and falling objects of the world.
She was bailed out of South Los Angeles Animal Shelter where she was sharing a cell with all her brothers and sisters. They were all beautiful, and we wished we had room to take the whole family. Gudrun was the one we had to have. One look in her enormous new Chihuahua eyes and we were immediately seduced. Dog eyes are impossible to resist. I can say no to anyone, lovers, friends, relatives – especially relatives, but dogs have their way with me every time. I love everything about dogs. I love when they are eating and they crunch their food, and I can hear their teeth grinding down their food. I love to listen to them drink water. In the mornings, I have hectic dog schedule. Before the big dogs go on their walk, Ralph has to have a long session of ball catching, followed up by Bronwyn’s full body massage and now Gudrun’s “What’s this? Let me try to eat it” hour. It’s hard to keep up with her, because the puppy has the energy and destructive capacity of both of her namesakes put together. it’s amazing to watch the newness of life up so close.
Gudrun is just so recently born, and so everything is a huge discovery. She is learning to come to terms with her shadow, and she is still a little scared of the dog in the mirror. The one who copies her every move, gets close when she does, backs away when she does, won’t stop looking at her until she looks away. I am trying to see the world with as mush freshness as she does.
I am hoping her litter mates made it to a good home, and I hope they get to stay there. Dogs like her are adorable and easily adopted because they are so cute, but then they get a little older and a little less cute and chew one shoe too many and wind up back at the pound within months. Cuteness can only take you so far in life. Or is it that cuteness is a curse?
Dog Blog
Friday, June 10th, 2005We had a little guest staying with us for the past month. Her name is Rosa, a smooth coated Chihuahua mix. Bronwyn and Rosa are best friends, lying out on the deck all day sunbathing, letting their sugar cookie color fur get all warm and toasty. Ralph likes to cuddle up in Rosa’s bed, even though he is much too big for it. The bed disappears under his masses of black fur. Rosa is good to have around. She livens up the place. The dogs seem to want to play more, they stay outside longer, begrudgingly coming in for dinner when called.
Last week, Rosa’s mom came back home, and even though Rosa was very glad to see her, we were all sad to see her go. We decided we needed a Chihuahua in our lives on a more permanent basis. Looking at animal shelter websites, we came across several and decided to go down to the shelter nearest us to investigate. I’m a regular at many Southern California animal shelters. I have helped friends look for lost pets and adopted Ralph at one. Bronwyn was found downtown, so she never really got to see the inside of a shelter, I think, but we’ll never know. She’s as good as any other shelter rescue dog though, and as grateful.
Animal shelters are sad places. You pass by dog after dog pent up in cages, a little sheet of paper stuck onto the bars, with the name of the dog, breed, age, where they were found or why they were given up.. That is the worst. when you read why they were given up.
I saw a pair of beautiful shepherd mixes, tan and black, with big root beer eyes. They were together in one cage and curled up against each other. I called them Husband and Wife dogs. When they saw me, they both got up, as if to introduce themselves. Their eyes were wide and hopeful. I looked onto their little sheet. Underneath their stats was a hastily written - “no longer wanted.” I burst into tears. I wanted them, but we didn’t have room for two more big dogs, even lovely husband and wife dogs like this. They were well mannered, very polite, not jumping at the bars or barking for attention like the other dogs in the kennel, desperate for someone to notice them and love them and maybe take them home. The Husband and Wife dogs sat quietly, paws underneath them. If they had hands, they’d be folded. “No longer wanted.” I turned around to leave and the Husband dog stood up because a gentleman always stands up when a lady is about to leave him. I felt their eyes follow me as I walked out through the steel door and just before it shut, I saw him curl up against his wife dog, warming her on the concrete floor, nuzzling her, as if to say, “Don’t worry dear, maybe the next person to come through that door will want us.”
I hate this. I am sickened by the sight of so many animals who are abandoned and wind up in shelters, hoping to be rescued. There is a scary corridor at the shelter, like a dog death row, where the dogs who have bit people or are dangerous to other dogs are kept. There is a high turnover rate because dogs like that are never adopted and the shelters cannot keep up with their numbers. You walk by them and the dogs are angry! Mad at you, mad at their irresponsible owners, mad at themselves, mad because they know they will soon be killed. I want to talk to them even though they might be dangerous. I want to pick up a telephone and talk to them on the other side of a glass partition. I want to hold my hand up to the glass and have them put their paw on it. I wish I had the space and the money and the time to take them all home.
We did find a little one. There are way too many of those too. Because Chihuahuas are so ‘chic’, and girls wanting to emulate Paris Hilton or Britney Spears get them thinking they are fashion accessories or ‘toys’ discard them as soon as they realize that these fragile creatures are not toys at all but living beings that they don’t want to deal with. The shelters are full of tiny ones needing a real home, not a fashion shoot. They are not models! They are dogs!
We need to go back next week to pick up our new addition.* She’s just a baby, and she needs to be there for a while longer, but thankfully, not too much longer. I wish I could take them all home. For now, I can only fit them all in my heart, where they will stay. Stay! Good dog.
Tibetan Dog Monastery
Tuesday, June 29th, 2004I recalled a distant memory today, when pressed by sunny quiet. I told the story to friends over a late lunch. It was the kind of tale you start to tell before you know you’re going to, when remembrance takes over thought and appears like magic before your casual beloved.
On a trip to Tibet, some years ago, I had visited an amazing monastery. Sacred art is commonplace on the rooftop of the world. The air is thin, but the devotion is given weight by the political oppression heaved upon it.
Everything smells of yak butter, much like the lobby of a multiplex movie theatre, because it is used in every aspect of monastic life, from sustenance to tribute. Tea is made from it, elaborately detailed sculptures are carved from it, candles are given substance from it; it is the physical manifestation of God.
We were many miles outside of the city of Lhasa, where we could order oxygen from room service, and I carried a spray can of air with me everywhere. To be short of breath constantly is to understand true needy desire. Headaches from altitude sickness were debilitating and we, the sea level Westerners, took to our beds or ventured out to brief shopping excursions, but you couldn’t really buy your air outside the grand hotel, so inevitably we would return empty handed and winded from walking.
When the group had acclimated enough for travel we hired a driver, Dorje, a quiet and very tanned man, who looked like a Jack o’ Lantern when he laughed, partly because he was so orange and he had few teeth.
Dorje navigated the unpaved roads to a tiny village at 15,000 feet. He was incredibly brave, and we sped through and up into the Himalayas at a terrifying clip. I don’t remember the name of the place, it was something impossible to pronounce, but it had a sinister feel to it. The streets were empty, but the shops were all open, selling row after row of plastic women’s shoes on racks set outside, as if the sandals and pumps were alluring enough to pull you into the store.
I walked out of the main street to the monastery, which sat huge and ornate, but covered in dust. I had sought it out, for the story about the place was that it was a special monastery for dogs. When wayward monks had been reincarnated and demoted from human life into canine existence, they were welcome here. There were a few monks there, who looked after the monastery full time, but it was the dogs who came to worship.
Upon entering, I was handed a ball of dough made with flour and yak butter. Gentle dogs, all colors and sizes, slowly rising from meditation, would walk toward me and wait patiently for their offering. I would feed each a piece of dough and the dog monk would bow in thanks and move back to allow the dog behind him to take his piece. Sometimes one would lick my hand in gratitude, but mostly the dogs were more concerned with returning to their individual and private conversations with the divine.
It was quiet, and the grounds around the temple were clean, even though under every awning there was a warm, furry swarm of puppies sleeping against the belly of another dog monk. You would walk by these animals, and they would look you in the eye, in sincere acknowledgement. “Yes, we are all here. Yes, we are all sharing this moment. Yes, we are all part of the eternal mystery of life.” There was no barking, no fighting, no nipping, no chewing on shoes or chasing of cars. There were just dogs, of every hue and stripe, with cold, wet noses and sweetly sloping furry faces, sharing the wealth of mystical knowledge with scholars in saffron robes and shaved heads.
They were dogs that had not the karma of household pets, or strays at the pound, but that of the seekers of ecumenical truth. Even though they were no longer human, they yearned still to know God, and lived within the walls of this special house, built just for them.
My Dog’s Life
Thursday, December 18th, 2003I am an overreacher. I am and have always been. It is not a function of my nature, which is probably less ambitious and more prone to lying in the pool of sunlight as my blonde dog Bronwyn is so fond of doing. I look at her, past my storyboards, dress dummy flocked with aging textiles and trims to be sewn together, flashing message machine, Bedazzler (yes, I really do have one, and it isn’t a joke, it isn’t meant to be, it is when art is meant to dazzle, therefore “Be - Dazzled”), ticking clocks all set fifteen minutes ahead, stacks of paper, computers winking at me with the promises of email from long lost friends that will be too long to answer in the fashion in which they should be, and then upon opening, revealing unfinished scripts that must be films before the momentum has left me, lists of ideas for essays, books, religions - did you know that George W. Bush was a cheerleader in college? I find that to be strange as well as stirring and I think there is a sitcom in there.
There are buttons, so many findings and clasps, unopened mail, unread books, unreturned gifts, unwrapped gifts, unwanted gifts waiting to be wrapped and given to a third party, unwatched dvds, all regions too. I don’t play when it comes to my foreign films, which do not play on all dvd players, which is worrisome, because they should. There is not a reason in the world for them not to. Some earlier models of the machine have a way to crack the code that would make you all region, but film is made unavailable as ideas are sometimes and for that there is much to grieve for, if only there were time.
I wish I could be like my dogs. They worry about little else but the vet. If ‘walk’ is said, does that mean a walk is imminent? Is that sound outside that awful home groomer who will trim our hair and blow dry it after, or the wonderful friend who comes to stay and pays more attention to us than anyone else? They live full lives, I believe, and they try to assure me that I do too, as I sleep in my too cold for comfort bed, with them curling underneath and around me, with blankets and coats piled on. I might as well add hay bales and a dozen children. I live like a farmer from the 16th Century. But I don’t sleep well, what with all the chaos in the world, the sleep apnea around me, my yet unopened “Unexpurgated Diaries of Cecil Beaton.”"Criminal.” That is what I hear from the book, while it sits on my nightstand, as if it were the famed margarine tub from television commercials past, claiming itself to be butter, yet the book is not as flirtatious as the Parkay, for it is more of an indictment, a searing accusation. “Criminal” - as I had it special ordered for me weeks ago, had worked the clerks over with whiny blather, over and over -
“You don’t understand. I need this book. I must have this book. Why do you not have this book?”
“We can special order it for you.”
“No, I want it now. I don’t want it to be special
ordered. I want it to be here. NOW. WHY IS THIS
HAPPENING TO ME???!!!!!”
They were forgiving, as they are always, for they know my history as an overreacher and have heard me give the same soliloquy many times.
I am taking the day today, to catch up. You know, the book here, this special ordered, hand cut, linen papered, literary exquisite and expensive monster - is meant to be read. The film in the player - special ordered also from Italy - is meant to be watched. “Teorema,” by Pasolini, featuring a pansexual Terence Stamp, circa 1968, will have not lived up to its potential if I do not see it today, so I will have failed both genius yet tragically and mysteriously murdered director and ever changing always perfect actor - as well as the rare chance to witness the important challenging of the systemic morality of the status quo of that era.
Or maybe I can just pop in that “Beef” documentary one more time - I cannot seem to get enough of it - narrated by Ving Rhames, a historical recount of rapper battles from old school to new school.
That sounds really really really good to me.
Life is not always about reaching, doing, forward, more, going, over, over, more, more. So I will lie down in the sunlight today, overlooking all that is undone around me, and remember that overlooking is a kind of overreaching. I will tell myself this, and I suggest you do the same.
Oh shit, I think I hear the mobile groomer.
Roy
Tuesday, October 7th, 2003I’m destroyed over the Roy mauling incident. It is horrifying. I can barely speak of the tragedy. It makes me terrified, angry that I am able to do nothing but wait, and see how he will heal this. Will he be ok? He had lost a lot of blood, and is in critical care. I want to hold Seigfried. There is no longer a show, the theatre is dark, and The Mirage ironically lives up to its name. It wasn’t real at all, they couldn’t tame nature, make it do their will, the white tigers are not human beings. They belong to the animal kingdom, not to Las Vegas.
Do you know where you were when you heard? I got a phone call, at the Baggage Claim at Logan Airport. My friend said only, “Roy.” And I knew. There were some snickers, guffaws. Siegfried and Roy had been the most popular show in Las Vegas, and there was nobody who would share the same iconic status. The ageless, windblown pair, in pirate shirts, looking at the camera, as if they dared the audience to come see the spectacle, and how tan they were in person. It was bound to happen, but no one ever thought it would. The duo seemed invincible, and the tigers were snowy and stuffed animal-like. I think that it was the inimitable Seigfried and Roy hair, motionless and shaped like lion’s manes, one dark, one light, that made them seem like they could commune with the big cats, that they were part of that family. Roy, as he lay bleeding backstage pleaded, “Don’t kill the cat..” They were a pride.
I am aggressively allergic to cats. They are beautiful, always, with their soft fur and pretty, heart shaped faces. Cats seem to all be female to me, with the grace and mystique of femme fatales of the ages. Felines are ancient, knowing, unpredictable, independent. I want to pet them, but if I am to do so, my face will swell up like a basketball, my eyes will turn themselves inside out, my breathing will slow and then gradually stop. To this I am of the belief that cats reject me, and they do not welcome me into their lives. When I moved into my home, a cat had once resided there, and I coughed and sneezed and continued to be haunted by the ghost of that cat until the house was literally purged with ritual and HEPA vacuum cleaners. It was an exorcism of dander.
Dogs however accept me unconditionally, and I give it right back. I am a notorious dogizer, and when I come home, my own Bronwyn and Ralph suspiciously smell my clothes and search for hair for scents of the ‘other’ dog. The phone rings unexpectedly in the night, and Bronwyn pricks up her ears and lifts a dog eyebrow as if to say “Who was that?” If they could afford it, they would hire a private detective, to follow me around the city, catch clandestine encounters with a Black Lab on La Brea and Melrose, me holding an unidentified German Shepherd’s face in my hands near the Beverly Center, at someone’s house, lying on the floor spooning with a Golden Retriever. fortunately, they are dogs, and they don’t know how to use the phone to contact a private dick.
I miss my dogs too much, and my traveling makes them lonely for me. They are well cared for by my family, and just get angry when I start packing. Ralph will put his toys in my bag hopefully. “Should I bring a change of collars?” When I leave, they are sullen, staring at me with disbelief and horror. “How could you? Don’t you know who we are?” Then I come back, and the tails wag so hard that it begins with the middle of their dog bodies. They shake their entire backsides in joy and excitement, like I have come home from the war, and they’d thought that they would never see me again. I hear that when I am on the television, their ears and eyes fly up, and they think that I am home. My dog daughter, Bronwyn, sleeps with me on the bed, and I reach for her in hotel rooms all over the world, and she is not there. It is the emptiness, the void that swallows me for a moment, and I realize I am working, and far from my love. Ralph is unable to get onto the bed without assistance, and he is very image conscious. He will not have anyone see him try to jump on, and tragically fail. Yet, when we are alone, I will encourage him to try, and he looks around to see if anyone is watching. I am cheering him on, telling him he can do it, that anything is possible. finally he believes me, and jumps onto the bed. He circles a few times in heated satisfaction, and lays his body down, warmly pushing into mine.
Who will be with the white tigers if Roy doesn’t return? Will Siegfried take his revenge on them? What happens to the animals, and what do they feel about it? Have the other tigers ostracized the one who bit Roy? Do they gossip about him around the waterfall, or do they see him as their hero? Or is there much more to it all. Perhaps there is a tiger conspiracy, and the one who bit will be mauled by another tiger, or shot by Jack Ruby, making the biter merely a patsy in the greatest tiger crime and cover up ever.