Entries from June 2005 ↓

Dinnertime hasn’t been the same since the Beagle entered our lives. It is a well-known fact that these creatures (genus species proboscis insatiabalious) are eating machines. It’s not just that they’ll eat anything; they’ll eat as much of anything as they can find, no matter how disgusting, sick or depraved, and then ask for seconds. There have been documented cases of beagles eating entire crates of styrofoam peanuts, whole bins of reprocessed dingo fat, vast canisters of pickled bat guano; and, in the most extreme cases, small children who have just eaten something that the beagle was particularly interested in.

But Beauregard’s diminutive stature has been our salvation. Ever since the dog arrived, our household motto has been Eat High (Latin: masticus eleavatious), as he has trouble getting to anything above five feet. We’ve taken to eating our meals standing up, watching TV, while the dog leaps around us in circles, like a giant nose on a pogo stick. He’s been known to clamber up on the kneewall behind our couch and hurl himself at us, crashing into our plates like a dense, floppy-eared meteorite, in his frantic efforts to get at whatever we’re eating. He can’t help it. If you were to map out his brain, the MUST EAT NOW region would be a continent about the size of Africa, while the rest would be a tiny little Florida-shaped peninsula hanging off the side, like a deflated Christmas stocking. And even that miniscule holdout goes over to the dark side when there are hamburgers in the house.

His technique, whenever he gets ahold of something, is to quickly shuttle it toward the back of his mouth, no matter how large it is, and try to masticate it into something that will fit down his throat, using back teeth and sheer force of will. He does this because he knows I’ll be going in after it. Once he swallowed a large hunk of bread, and forced it so far back down that I was up to my elbow before I managed to reach it.

But don’t just take my word for it. We have some photographic evidence of a recent incident in the park, involving my wife, the dog, and an innocent grapefruit that was just minding its own business, not bothering anybody. We’d decided to go on a picnic (an entirely rational, reasonable thing to do on a beautiful Saturday afternoon) and to take the dog with us (a completely insane, inexplicable, batshit crazy thing to do on any day). There were no tables involved, just a blanket that we were determined to loll on while eating; as a result, we were forced to wolf down our lunch with one hand while fighting off a crazy berzerker beagle with the other.

The pictures below were taken after we’d finished the main meal. My wife took out a grapefruit and began to peel it while gazing out at the beautiful, shimmering lake before us. Which was a mistake, because Beauregard was doing some gazing of his own:

Gee, he thinks. That’s kind of orange. Like an orange. I like oranges. But this … this is bigger than an orange. And juicier. And roundier. Any yummier. And MINE. MINE MINE MINE MINE MINE.

And so he sidles in a little closer … and closer … and closer …

… and then, finally, he goes in for the kill.

Sadly, I wasn’t quite quick enough on the shutter to get the actual event. And, really, he only managed to rip off a small piece before my wife went into her defensive crouch. We’ve had a lot of practice.

That night, he swallowed half a muffin, and then got through most of a kite. This morning, he threw up shiny bits of an unknown metallic substance.

Somebody help us. Please.

From CS Lewis:

You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.

And this:

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

The dude could write. Beauty fades, cleverness wanes, but eloquence lasts forever.

Yesterday, on the way back from a meeting, padding softly through the sepulchral hush of late-afternoon office corridors, Jasper and I discussed the nature of happiness.

“My ass is killing me,” I said.

“You have a homicidal ass,” agreed Jasper. “But, then again, I’d want to kill you too if you sat on me all day.”

“Yeah, but that’s its job. My ass’s job is to be sat on by me.”

“I’m not disagreeing. An ass is to be sat on. But it’s a question of degree. I’m merely suggesting that the amount of time you spend sitting on it is, perhaps, excessive.”

We walked.

“God damn it,” I said, shifting my bag onto my other shoulder, “I hate meetings in the other building. It takes forever to get back.”

“Define forever.”

“Forever is longer than immediately.”

“Ah. Then I agree.”

“Maybe,” I said, “it’s a question of perspective. I’m focusing on the destination: my cube, the place where I can finally transfer the weight of my burgeoning middle-aged body from my feet to my ass.”

“The place of middle-aged body-weight transference.”

“Right. But that’s bad for two reasons.” I count them off. “One: During the process of striving toward my cube, I’m anxious and unfulfilled because I haven’t yet reached it. Two: once I reach it, I’m anxious and unfulfilled because, as destinations go, my cube isn’t exactly Aruba.”

“Aruba isn’t exactly Aruba either,” said Japser.

I think about this for a minute. “You’re saying that no destination can be everything you hope it to be. That striving after any thing automatically renders that thing unstriveworthy.”

Jasper shrugged. “I’m just saying I don’t believe in Aruba.”

“It’s on the map, though.”

“So’s Greenland. Does that mean I should believe in Greenland?”

I think about this too. “Yes?”

“Well then,” said Jasper, who was clearly trying to confuse me into silence. “I guess I believe in Greenland.”

“But here’s the thing,” I said. “There is a point of view that says that this journey on which we have embarked, this interminable walk from the conference room to my cube, is the thing we should be enjoying. The destination is important only insofar as it is an endpoint; a thing that makes the journey possible.”

“Is there a contest for boring?” said Jasper. “Because if there is, you should totally enter.”

“So how to solve this problem? The ideal life is a series of journeys without destinations. But we’ve already established that there’s no such thing as destinationless journey. It’s like trying to draw a line between one point.”

“Seriously. Did you go to boring school?”

“I’m working my way through an existential crisis here, dude.”

“You could walk in circles.”

“True,” I said. “But I’d get tired of that eventually. I’d feel unfulfilled. You can’t play pacman forever.”

“You can if you have a short memory.”

“So you’re saying we should maintain the illusion of a destination. One that’s nonexistent, unreachable.”

“The illusion of progress.”

“Of purpose.”

“Of happiness.”

“So you’re saying that happiness is self-deception.”

“I’m not saying anything,” said Jasper, ducking into his office. “Oh look! A destination.” He sat down, and smiled. “I feel great.”

“You’re just saying that to ruin my theory.”

He put his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes in mock bliss. “I’m self-deceiving myself into euphoria.”

“No you’re not.”

“Now I’m self-deceiving myself that you’re not here.”

“It’s not that easy.”

“Now I’m enjoying my illusory and entirely self-deceptive belief that you’re gone, because I don’t have to listen to you babbling anymore.”

I left him, and walked to my cube, and then past my cube, and then back to the conference room, and then back to my cube. I did this three more times, extending the journey. Then I went in the cube and sat down. My walls towered over me in beige silence. My monitor blinked into life. My mail spilled onto the screen.

My ass twinged, and sent a bolt of pain up my back. It doesn’t like destinations either.

I think I’ve run out of outrage.

Nowadays, whenever I read about some inexpressibly horrible thing that the Bush administration wants to do, or has done, or is about to do, I’ll shake my head, make unhappy noises, maybe even murmer a couple of shopworn lamentations … but that’s it. I don’t call my congressman, or write letters to newspapers, or run outside screaming and shaking my fist at the uncaring heavens. Mostly I just go on to next thing. Maybe I walk my dog, or finish up that unit test I’m working on, or go downstairs to buy a coke. Maybe I watch TV.

This sounds a lot like apathy, but I think it’s something else. I’m starting to believe that we’re issued a certain allotment of everything when we’re born, and, once we’ve used it up, it’s gone. I was doing fairly well on my outrage inventory until Bush got elected, and then I started burning through it with crazy abandon. I probably drained half my stock when he won again in 2004. And now there’s nothing left. I can feel my outrage engine turning over, I can hear it trying to start, but there’s no fuel. You could walk up to me in a bar and start pinning Bush/Cheney buttons to my forehead and I probably wouldn’t get too excited about it.

It’s the same with everything else. Happily married people who decide to go their separate ways haven’t fallen out of love; they’ve run out of love. Jaded millionaires run out of joy. Inveterate mourners run out of despair. Romantic poets burn through life like stars, and run out of everything by the time they’re thirty.

Even worse than the profligates, though, are the hoarders. The ones who shun experience and flee from emotion and duck commitment because they don’t want to use up any of their supplies. So that by the time they’re old and feeble they’ve still got full tanks of everything, but have run out of ways to use it.