Confraternité

Yesterday on the way to watch 12th Night in the park, Zoogle, Babe and I found ourselves surrounded by dog owners. (I confess that I don't actually don't know that they were owners. They could have been borrowers. Let's call them Dogowners, au sense plus grande du terme.) I find the Relationship between Man and Dog a source of endless fascination, not as an evolutionary abstraction, but as it plays itself out concretely on the level of particular pairings. The eery mirroring between the chubby jowls of the accountant and the slack gumtissue of his hound represents for me a kind of Weltschlüssel, a key that opens a door into the soul of the world. I don't wish to exaggerate my powers as a psychologist (or expose my weakness for stereotype), but I feel as if one glimpse of such a pairing reveals the whole romantic, economic, and social history of the Man (I judiciously make no attempt to analyze the Dog.) In this sense, watching dogowners is like watching Shakespeare: if you do it well, you regain the entirety of the human experience, played out within a small but complete subset of the species, filtered by circumstance and costume (doublets and codpieces; leashes and frisbees) but undistorted, microcosmically preserved in all its essential, secretious squalor.

If I ever write a book on the topic, I will call it something like "Woah, Cover Up: How Your Beast Exposes You." The slack jawed setter with gingivitus, betraying an old house, rusting firearms, family money, and in some cases, kindness as weakness, though it depends on the context; the socially ackward techie with his robust shorthair, a sign of functional dexterity, comfortable bottom lines, limited wants and achievable dreams; the hoary cigar smoker, name and fortune in the bag, allied to one of the Noble Rats, a miniature grayhound or some such abomination, because he can, because his dignity is ossified enough to take it; the financial analyst with her terrier, small but expensive, an ostentatious constraint; the adolescent girl with the family mutt on a leash that's just a little too tight. The list goes on. Oh what fun.

Normally, I would wince hello and walk on. After all, what do I have in common with urban dogowners? The only reason to live in the city is to devote all your time to a job, or art, or culture; the only reason to have a dog is to devote all your time to the dog. Urban dogowners are fundamentally confused; they pursue ends that are mutually exclusive and psychologically injurious. Lfe is quite complicated enough without these doomed, quixotic dogfriends.

But yesterday, for the first time, I found myself looking at dog owners with new eyes. As I crossed paths with a thirty something, long haired, unshaven bohemian in the tow of a joyous golden retriever, I tried to take his measure with my usual unerring mixture of scorn, irony, and contempt. What I noticed was that he was taking mine: that he was looking at the thirty something, long haired, unshaved bohemian going the other way with a baby boy stashed in a garish purple sling, and thinking, ah the old Maya wrap, clearly a hippy math guy. Our eyes met, two smiles bloomed: spotted people spotting. We passed without a word.

I bet that guy is writing a book. I bet it's called "Whoa, Cover Up: How Your Baby Exposes You". I wonder if we could collaborate?