awesome things

Just discovered The Book of Awesome, which is a fun collection of descriptions of lucky events, such as finding the short line in the grocery store, not getting a parking ticket when you could have, and showing up late but finding that the other person is later. It also makes note of a variety of potentially precious or enjoyable experiences, such as summer nights, fun moments with others, or getting close to the weekend. Overall, it is a good reminder about being grateful for small joys, such as finding a cool book like that. It makes me want to list some awesome things myself:

1. Sharing genuine love and affection with your significant other.

2. Babbling back and forth with a child who likes nothing better than to be with you.

3. Reaching your family on the phone when you want to and getting to talk with them a long time.

4. Being in the yard watering plants in the yellow glow of the very late afternoon sun.

5. Coffee, oatmeal, and a blank page, with early morning sun filtering in the windows.

6. A good book and a bunch of pillows in bed.

7. The moment that a song comes on that you absolutely have to get up and dance to, and you do.

8. Feeling very connected with the small group of friends you are with.

9. Sitting in the hottub at night.

10. Browsing in a bookstore on a Sunday afternoon with a cappuccino.

11. Finding a great sushi chef with a fellow sushi fanatic.

12. Being at a beach in any weather on any day at any time.

my dog

Basenjis are barkless dogs from Africa, wrinkly like shar-peis. I had Pretzel from when I was 30 until I was 45, when I started to look like that myself. To get Pretzel, we drove from Jackson, MS, to Houston to pick her up from the breeder. Pretzel was the offspring of conformation champions, but she was small and undershot (had an under-bite). She had an official name on the pedigree papers, which I do not remember all of, but I remember that it had the name Laika in it, which I thought was pretty. I rode in the passenger seat on the drive home, holding Pretzel in my lap. The breeder’s children had named her Pretzel not because of her curly tail, which is characteristic of the breed, but because of the way she would intertwine her front legs. Basenji puppies sleep in a pile; it is really cute.

So we took this tiny 6-week-old dog home, never yet having heard a sound from her. I carried her into the backyard toward the back door, and my German shepherd dog came bounding toward us. Immediately Pretzel starting screaming a human-like shriek, shocking us. However, she quickly adopted Buddy as dad, sleeping on top of him, and at other times grabbing onto his tail with her mouth to ride well off the ground as he fetched tennis balls and frisbees.

I was the constant in Pretzel’s life and she was the constant in mine. She probably did not remember things in the way that humans do, but she knew the taste of licking the salt off my forehead from when she was a puppy. She would stand on my desk while I worked and try to lick my face. As she got older she would sleep nearby me, wherever I was in the house, staying in the sun if she could, or follow us from room to room as we did housework.

Basenjis are very expressive and mischievous, if you can believe that. Expressive in that they show their emotions, such as yodeling when you come home. Hearing a basenji yodel is a delight. The sound is best written as “ba…roo!” We would make a big fuss over her when she did that. As other basenjis, she loved to run in open spaces, even indoors. If a big empty room had carpet to give her traction, and she was in a good mood, she would do laps. Sometimes if she was playing, and there was not good traction, she would start to slide in the turns and hit the wall sideways but just keep on going. Once she was running across a field and ran into a stick, which bruised her, and more than once she ran head-first into a closed glass door. We learned to put stickers on the doors and I think she learned to be a little cautious in tall grass.

For many basenjis, the mischievous part means things like eating the furniture when unhappy about being left alone, or eloping when a door is left open. Pretzel was pretty well behaved on both counts. She could be left uncrated (some basenjis are kept in crates when alone), and would only do one odd thing: If we left a wastebasket uncovered she would shred every tissue in it into little pieces by holding them between her paws and pulling them apart with her teeth. We would indulge this, quietly cleaning up after her. She would only bolt if she saw another dog, in which case she would charge it down, give it a sniff test, and sometimes attack it. That got us into trouble a few times. Because she would happily trot along with me on walks unleashed, it was tempting not to use one, but that was a mistake. Her basenji companion Jag took off after some coyotes on a trail one morning and was never seen again. We searched through the brush until after dark.

With regard to being left alone, Pretzel usually did very well, but less so in a strange place, such as a hotel room. Then she might wail until we came back to the room. However, she did not do so at home. Pretzel only cried, I believe, when she was truly scared.

We bought a 38′ motorhome because of Pretzel. Obviously, we did not have to get something so big, but tent camping with a dog was less than convenient, and fewer places will rent a room if you travel with a dog. We traveled a lot, so we decided to get a motorhome. In order to be able to afford to do so, we sold one car and started carpooling to work. When we shopped for used motorhomes, it was apparent that the lower-end ones showed their wear and tear too much for our taste, and the only one that we felt comfortable with was The Beast, as my dad dubbed it. It had a 2 1/2′ sliding extension of the the living space when parked, and although it was not big enough to run in, Pretzel liked it. While we drove she would sun herself on the large dashboard. At times, her cousin Gadget (we had gone back to the same breeder) would curl up on one end of the dashboard, and Pretzel on the other, to form a pair of basenji bookends.

When she would come in from outside, she would know to wait for us to clean her paws, lifting the first one in anticipation, even though she did not like it being done, and would pull away if it took too long. If she stepped on a spur or got a sharp leaf stuck in her paw on a trail, instead of working on it herself, she would stand like a statue, paw in the air, until I came and removed it. She learned to love a warm shower, and if we said, “Pretzel, do you want a bath?” she would go into the bathroom and stand by the shower stall. The instant we told her she was done being dried off she would tear around the house, doing play bows, and I would play tag with her, though I had to be careful because she could get so excited she would run into things. I don’t remember when she started sleeping in the bed, but that became standard operating procedure at some point.

Things started going downhill in the spring of 2008. She had cushings disease, and kidney failure, and had been in the vet hospital and gotten IV fluids for a few days, which had prolonged things a couple of weeks. We decided not to put her down, but she had lost all appetite and I kept force feeding her food and medicine with the body of a big syringe, thinking that was what she needed. However, I do not think it was being digested, and it was horribly distressing to her and me. On the last night, the feeding seemed to cause a stroke or a heart attack, and she could no longer walk afterwards. She would continuously drift off to sleep and then startle awake, as though she heard something. Early the next morning, as I awoke, she had a small seizure and died as I held her in the bed.

I bathed her for the last time. We wrapped her in a blanket and placed her in a covered laundry basket until the cremation. We lit candles and set out the many photos we had taken of her. She had a happy life, and she certainly enriched our lives beyond measure. I immediately miss her as I walk into my house after work every day: No more yodels.

george carlin

Sunday, June 22, George Carlin died at the age of 71. The author of “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” and “A Place For My Stuff,” the comic who excoriated religion before Bill Maher, host of the first episode of Saturday Night Live and 14 HBO specials is gone. In 2004 Carlin was interviewed on the NPR radio show Fresh Air by Terry Gross. He was a man who had found his calling, and loved what he did. During the interview he said that he could always continue to find happiness as long as he could continue working. He said that if he could speak, or failing that, type, even if the typewriter had to be controlled by eye-movements—he would be able to keep working and would be happy. And he was always gathering material and crafting it into his fascinating monologues, creating his unique rhythmic poetry. He loved his work for its own sake, not the rewards; he frequently ridiculed American consumerism, and despised attachment to material things.

A striking point about Carlin was the way he broke the rules. He made the comment that throughout his childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood he had always been anti-authority. However, as he put it, he had the mainstream dream of becoming a stand-up comic and actor. Thus, as a young man, he was always playing by the rules, doing things the way that others wanted him to. He said it took awhile to realize that there was another way to do it. Hearing Lenny Bruce push the limits of free speech helped him realize you could get onstage and be honest. Carlin found his stride in telling it like it is, seeing irony and hypocrisy from an anti-authoritarian viewpoint, such as in his famous routine about the seven words that you could not say on the air (one radio station played a later version of the bit and got in trouble with the FCC, a fine later upheld by the Supreme Court).

Carlin started working on his career early in life. He knew what he wanted to do by the fifth grade, dropped out of school during ninth grade, and followed a set plan of starting out as a disc jockey and then doing stand-up comedy prior to becoming an actor. The only thing that changed, he said, was that he discovered he was better than he thought he would be at stand-up. And boy, he was good. I am glad to have been able to see the example of someone so dedicated yet so detached, so curious yet so skeptical, such a genius and yet ultimately, so human. The man who would have been willing to live with any infirmity to continue his work was brought down by heart failure. Our loss is therefore tangible—we will not get to hear his next idea. However, what we do have is inspiration: the inspiration to re-dedicate ourselves to what we do–to our own callings, and to have the chutzpa to break the rules.