🌱
There's something about dogs that I can't quite put my fingers on. Something about the way they're a bit more human than other animals - yet completely, inestricably inhuman. A sort of dog theory, if you will.
It's something that has to do with not belonging - or maybe belonging, but in a different way to the way others around you do. It has something to do, maybe, with being autistic - or otherwise "othered", but still somehow loved. Maybe conditionally? I'm still figuring this out.
Here's some "data" I collected.
:Nicky Case: Why all the trans furry programmers?
HOW TO BE A DOG
Andrew Kane —from Rattle #69, Fall 2020
If you want to be a dog, first you must learn to wait. You must wait
all day until somebody returns, and if somebody returns late, you
must learn to wait until then. Then you must learn to speak in one
of the voices available to you, high and light or mellow thick and
low or middle-range and terse. Whichever voice you learn to speak,
you will meet somebody who does not like you because of it, they
will be wary or annoyed or you will remind them of something or
someone else. Once you have learned to speak you must learn not to
speak unless you absolutely must, or to speak as much as you feel
you must regardless of how many times you are told to stop, or sit,
or placed behind a door—this will depend on what kind of a dog you
want to be. And indeed there are many kinds. It may not feel as though
you get to choose, and that too is a kind of dog. Next you must learn
to relinquish all control over everything you might wish to control. You
must learn to prefer to be led about by the neck on a piece of string,
or staked to a neglected lawn by a length of chain. You must learn, once
you have sampled the freedom of a life without a chain, that it is better
to return and be chained again. Or you may learn that it is not—
a fugitive is also a kind of dog. Of course you must learn to love, to
love always and love entirely and to be wounded by nothing so much
as the violence of your own love. You must learn to be confused but
never disappointed by a deficiency of love. You must give up your
children and not know why. You must lose yourself wholly in activity;
you must never feel an itch that you do not scratch. You must learn how
to wait at the foot of the bed and hope, silently, that somebody is drunk
enough or lonely enough to invite you up, and you must learn not to show
your excitement too much or overplay your hand. If you want to be a dog,
you must learn to believe that you are not in fact a dog at all.
by strongerpotions
Transcript
Please do not fault your dog for his nature. He is not privy to the human rules by which you live.
When he barks he does not mean to hurt your ears; he has not your gift of speech. He cannot express himself as beautifully as you would like him to. But he will try.
He does not mean to scratch you when he jumps up to greet you. He is so happy to see you. He waited all day. He does not mean to cause you pain. He cannot know he's made of sharp edges and pointed teeth. He is too cherished to know how to use them.
So please do not fault him, scold him and scorn him, when he comes to you, tail wagging, knocking every thing off the coffee table, his only trespass being that he does not know how to be anything other than a dog, and his only sin being that
he loves you.