04 Dec Writing: The Fresh-eyed Ordinary

Before I got Creature, my idea of dog parenthood was bathed in golden light and made hazy through the lens of hope and fantasy. In my mind, we’d be fast besties. We’d travel the world together, he’s get along with all my friends and lovers, I would paint and draw him, we’d attend art shows. Hand in paw, we’d be an unstoppable duo. He would be my muse.

It was four in the morning when I went to the airport to pick him up six years ago. He was fresh off a plane from Mexico where he’d been a stray, all jutting ribs and hips, even moreso the angular animal he is today. I’d been messaging with his foster mom in Huatulco who, teary-eyed, sent him with one of her socks as a comfort item. She’d insisted on bathing him before he left and lovingly rubbed his fur with lavender oil. I wonder if he felt some kind of way about being perfumed and having his beach sand washed away, evidence of the only home he’d known. Landing back at my apartment with the cool, Pacific February sun coming up, we just stared at each other. The energy of “ok now what?” hung in the air.

He is beautiful, but not in a conventional way. From different angles he is part deer, part rabbit; he sometimes looks like a crocodile or a fox. If he were a person, he’d have a weird, runway-model beauty, like Tilda Swinton. Definitely the kind of beast that shows up in the art I make.

I quickly discovered that Creature makes a bad model though: doesn’t sit still, licks penis a lot. Far from getting along with my friends and lovers, he bullies and herds people who he doesn’t consider part of his pack — some of whom we live with. He lunges at other dogs. My fantasies of our unencumbered life together were quickly stymied by the weight of responsibility. I had to consider him and his needs at every juncture and decision, and though I’m not proud to admit it, I found myself resenting him. For a time I wasn’t sure we’d make it.

But his needs, it turned out, were my needs. Keep a routine. Pay close attention. Go outside. Close the laptop and throw some sticks, you’ll feel better. Dog wisdom is returning to the altar of the every day, the eternal present moment. I can’t make art unless I feel okay being alive, and time with him is a prolonged meditation on how precious life is. I watch his chest rise and fall while he sleeps, and I think about his bones, his lungs, his little heartbeat. I preemptively obsess over his mortality and he re-grounds me by not seeming to think about it at all.

Artists are always trying to see the ordinary with fresh eyes, and Creature has no trouble with this. To him, every day is the first day, every tennis ball the first tennis ball. Creature won’t pose for me, he eats my paintings if I leave them on the floor, and he stays home when I go to gallery shows… but he is teaching me to be a better artist, and a better friend. When I get home to Lupinewood after a day that goes wrong in every way, he lets big, ugly tears fall onto fur that smells like sunlight and compost. And then it’s back to the present moment. Back to our routine. Time to pay close attention, close the laptop, go outside.

Oh Creature. My sweet bud. One more stick throw — I swear, last one. I mean it this time.

story by Makoto, edited in collaboration with Terran