(no subject)
I've been reading Alan Alda's Never Have Your Dog Stuffed, and other things I've learned, and I came across this section and fell in love with it.
Losing the dog wasn't as bad as getting him back. Now that he was stuffed, he was just a hollow parody of himself. Like a bad nose job or a pair of eyes set surgically in eternal surprise, he was a reminder that things would never again be the way they were. And the longer you looked at his dead skin stretched inaccurately over a wire frame, the less well you could remember him as he was. As time went on, my memory of the real Rhapsody was replaced by the image of him sitting lifeless on the blue velvet board with a hideous look on his face. And anyway, it wasn't memories I wanted; I wanted the dog. I wanted him sitting at the end of the day of our first day in the new house, patiently watching my face while I pulled foxtail burrs from the fur on his long ears.
Yet the effort to keep him had seemed to make him disappear even more. I couldn't understand why. As I did about most things in my life, starting with my mother, I kept asking the same questions: "Why is it like this? What's happening here?" But I couldn't figure it out.
I understand it a little better now, and I see now that stuff your dog is more than what happens when you take a dead body and turn it into a souvenir. It's also what happens when you hold on to any living moment longer than it wants you to.
Memory can be a kind of mental taxidermy, trying to hold on to the present after it's become the past. I didn't know this then. Change was coming, and I was going to have to come out of my cocoon soon. But I wasn't ready for the next stage in my life, and i hung on to the early times as long as I could.
If you're interested in memoirs, I highly recommend this one.
Losing the dog wasn't as bad as getting him back. Now that he was stuffed, he was just a hollow parody of himself. Like a bad nose job or a pair of eyes set surgically in eternal surprise, he was a reminder that things would never again be the way they were. And the longer you looked at his dead skin stretched inaccurately over a wire frame, the less well you could remember him as he was. As time went on, my memory of the real Rhapsody was replaced by the image of him sitting lifeless on the blue velvet board with a hideous look on his face. And anyway, it wasn't memories I wanted; I wanted the dog. I wanted him sitting at the end of the day of our first day in the new house, patiently watching my face while I pulled foxtail burrs from the fur on his long ears.
Yet the effort to keep him had seemed to make him disappear even more. I couldn't understand why. As I did about most things in my life, starting with my mother, I kept asking the same questions: "Why is it like this? What's happening here?" But I couldn't figure it out.
I understand it a little better now, and I see now that stuff your dog is more than what happens when you take a dead body and turn it into a souvenir. It's also what happens when you hold on to any living moment longer than it wants you to.
Memory can be a kind of mental taxidermy, trying to hold on to the present after it's become the past. I didn't know this then. Change was coming, and I was going to have to come out of my cocoon soon. But I wasn't ready for the next stage in my life, and i hung on to the early times as long as I could.
If you're interested in memoirs, I highly recommend this one.