Ciao amici miei,
Today’s topic’s the impact of puppies on polite interiors. (Don’t you love how those p’s and t’s crackle in the foregoing!) Granted, each domestic denizen deposits defining detritus: humans their tchotchkes and décor, puppies our bones and ballistics. Jane’s and Carll’s wall-hangings, which their polite visitors extol (either from enthusiasm or politeness), leave me cold: flowers and faces, no dogs. My generously sprinkled masticables, by contrast – yes, it’s a word: look it up – placate my vanity by subserviently awaiting my regard. Home is where your chew-toys are.
Have my sprinkle of possessions turned my proprietors’ pristine premises into a chaos as alleged? This I deny. My stuff’s as easily circumvented as my evacuations in the yard. I’m sorry Carll tripped on my happy squeaky serpent and collided with an injurious sideboard but hey, watch your step, gramps!
Toys nudge my meditation toward play. Carll and Jane don’t much, unless beseeched. Bring them my West Paw Zogoflex Qwizl Dog Puzzle or Chuckit! Classic Ball Launcher and instead of yipping and Bacchantically pirouetting as I would, they smile wearily, pityingly almost, and sigh “OK,” as Sisyphus might at the resumption of his umpteenth uphill roll.
“Play is the work of children,” said the great child psychologist Jean Piaget. He might have added, “and dogs.” “Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning,” said the endlessly consoling Fred Rogers; “but for children” – and dogs, Editor’s Note – “play is serious learning.” Einstein, no less, called play “the highest form of research.” “The creation of something new,” said Jung, “is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct.” (Hello, Jung lovers!) “It is a happy talent to know how to play,” said Carll’s pal, Emerson.
The verdict’s in. Play is what the human world ought to be doing instead of scowling, growling, prowling, howling like in the news. Play stretches mind and limb, wakening consciousness to the delight of being. Sit still too long and you forget the privilege of breathing. Zen motionlessness, while chic, strikes me as a hundred-and-eighty degrees the wrong idea. Take a run, get your blood flowing, fetch a stick.
Play is what people like about dogs, puppies especially. All those smiles I get – from passers-by, folks I’ve never met – why? Because I’m cute as all get-out, true, but more, because I play and invite them to and they sigh for the days when they used to before life got so hard. Why should life be hard! “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so,” said Hamlet, who takes three hours to extricate himself from his funk. More colloquially, “Turn that frown upside down.” If I were king – or Speaker of the House – I’d outlaw sighs (if I could muster the votes).
Carll resents this characterization of himself and Jane as dour. (As my translation tool, Carll gets to pre-read me, like it or not.) Play at their age becomes more mental, he explains, less physical. Don’t he and Jane play cribbage over drinks? Aren’t Carll’s daily prose-sprees play? “You’ll slow down too,” he promises direly. “Just wait.”
I’ve never been old, so I wouldn’t know (though I have met a fourteen-year-old dog, whom my energetic amiability seemed to panic). Of this I’m sure: The human urge to tame time, make it safe, predictable, proper (whatever proper means) squeezes the juice out of it. These evangelicals, I’ve heard Carll mutter, want to slam the door and shiver in the dark. Bad thinking! Rejoice in life’s messiness, unknowability, mystery, even if you trip over it and bang your head!