My Dog’s Life

I 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.

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