Sometimes I just want to play.

I bring Carll a toy. It could be any – I have many. I paw. Carll looks up from his book. What’s up, he mumbles. Am I hungry? Do I need to go out? I don’t, I’ve just been, and while a snack’s always welcome, that’s not my urgency now. I just want to play. But what does that mean, Carll looks puzzled. He’s busy now – with his words, natch – not up for an interruption. On the other hand (or paw), my importunity amuses him. My big brown eyes. The cute cock of my head. My evident affection – not just for a generic human being, but for this human being. I hear the word “love” bandied about. Seems a sloppy locution, too stretched and baggy to contain anything, like a sock with exhausted elastic. Carll sometimes tosses me such socks instead of trashing them. I like his old socks because they smell like him. Humans talk about good and bad smells, but I don’t judge that way. Anything that smells like Carll or Jane is dandy with me, the more pungent the nicer.

Today’s toy is a rawhide bagel. It’s old and stale but no matter, any toy will do. I nudge the leather bagel into Carll’s knee invitingly. I can feel his resistance softening. He has work to do, he growls but not really. Can’t work wait, my cocked-head, brown-eyed importunity persists. With a grunt Carll relents, OK for a minute, taking hold of the grubby bagel for a tussle. Neither of us wish to possess the bagel, it’s the tussle that tempts. Carll recalls Hamlet’s soliloquy about Fortinbras – that might fit here – but he doesn’t want to look it up. Neither does he want to be tugging this bagel with a missive due – he’s wasting time! But then he muses (typical of him), what does that mean, to waste time? Is love ever a waste of time? (That baggy word again!) Isn’t any time wasted that is not love?

Carll’s speculations don’t interest me – do they you? – but they pause him (with a u), which I like. The bagel isn’t the point here, the tussle is, the mouthing and yipping and smelling, tossing and fetching, joining in the goofiness. Love is an active verb: it can’t just be, it must do – together – what, scarcely matters. Playing together is an expression of love. I needed, I guess, at this moment to be reminded of Carll’s devotion. Did he still love me as he used to? I was cuter as a pup, needier anyhow, more vulnerable. The permanence of love – a greeting card trope – is hogwash. Love is a fire, sometimes hotter, sometimes colder. Sometimes it goes out. Any love that’s alive requires fueling. This is what Eliza’s talking about in My Fair Lady when she chews out Professor Higgins:

Carll is not a demonstrative lover – Jane agrees with me about this. In words, maybe, he can get all gooey, but his conduct’s sometimes so reserved it resembles indifference. He blames this on his parents, for whom emotions were bad manners. Instead of saying “I love you,” he stipulates it – and expects that to suffice.

That’s why sometimes I just want to play – to be reminded I matter. It’s a weakness, I suppose, but hey, dogs are people too.