This made me laugh, I hope it will not disturb you, but I could imagine poor
Ken trying to get his dog to do something...
Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
The aim of the poet is to awaken emotions in the soul, not to gather
admirers.
Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky
----- Original Message -----
From: "Kenneth Wolman" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, January 14, 2005 3:32 AM
Subject: "Power"/too late to be a snap, oh well
> POWER
>
> Grant this: the love of animals turns us into the audience for Old Yeller
> or So Dear To My Heart,
> and there are no apologies here save to the insulted and the injured.
>
> Chain your intellect to the fencepost and let it bare its teeth at
> sentimentalism. Know you are wearing a neck chain and your teeth will not
> reach.
>
> This is a dog story, but the dog is not shaggy, he combines Rottweiler,
> Shepherd, and jerk,
> which makes him no more or less a mutt than most human beings.
>
> He is the woman's dog, but I have lately adopted him to the heart.
> He is not an Ours because when it comes to this dog there is no Us.
> In the presence of this canine there is no human love because humans can
> use their brains.
> Apologies to Saint Paul, but love is best experienced by the mentally
disabled,
> by animals, and by their caretakers.
>
> The dog is not community property but two dogs: he is hers and mine in
> different ways.
>
> The core: to start a weekend, an evening, facing three days of only me and
> him, I struck him across the shoulders with his own leash.
>
> I can justify all day: he did not want to take his needed walk with me, he
> slipped his collar when I tried
> to put it back on him, then clamped those jaws onto my hand.
>
> Although he drew no blood, for he had offered me his version of a warning,
> it hurt like hell, and in a flash I envisioned a weekend of him
> shitting on the living room floor, pissing in the corner, reverting to the
> level of
> an Alzheimer's patient in a nursing home.
>
> No: I envisioned myself as I was, control freak defied by an animal, and I
> had to
> establish my topmost place in a food chain I descended in half a second
> when I hit him, then violated another taboo of human and dog by staring
> into his eyes and telling him in a soft voice not to do that, ever.
>
> I who philosophize disgrace: I can say "you have to show the hound who's
boss,"
> "it was only his shoulders" (solid muscle), "I didn't hit him that hard,"
and
> "the look on his face was shock and not anger."
>
> Perhaps all true, but at that second I knew we'd both lost, and that is
when
> I put my arms around his thick Rottie neck, kissed the thick skull
> beneath which are the invisible portals where the human power of amend
> can penetrate--words, the vocabulary and syntax of sweetness beyond all
else--
> to tell him I love him, pet his back where the leash struck--and he
reassumes
> the collar and goes out with me not because I hit him but because I
stopped
> and embraced him.
>
> What is wrong with him, I sometimes wonder? He does not thrive on
> anger. He is forgiving. He is not human.
> Love does that.
>
> KW/1-13-05
>
> -------------------------------------------------
>
>
> Kenneth Wolman www.kenwolman.com kenwolman.blogspot.com
>
>
> "This is the best of all possible worlds only because it is the only one
> that showed up."-- Russell Edson
>
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