He called me selfish!

The antecedents of he and me hardly need mentioning to regular readers of this spew. And if not regular, why? Would you favor an enclave for exclusively canine litterature? Who wouldn’t? The difficulty is insufficient fluency. The Internet values quantity almost as much as quality. Constancy of utterance promotes its producers to personalities in amenable intellects. Transmit intermittently and one risks being whooshed out of mind by the incessant torrent of online verbiage. This premium on garrulity suits Carll, who can’t shut up. I am less desperate to be known. Who am I if not Henry! Henry from himself can “ne’er be ta’en away.” Henry is not Hamlet.

Nor am I selfish. Self-attentive, who isn’t? Self-enthused? How can I help it? But to be “selfish” is to opt for less creditable conduct, to “hog” what’s due to others, “pig out” on community provisions, even “cat around,” violating pledges of fidelity. We dogs cannot be other than we are. We’ve no self to be tempted onto the wrong road. One road opens before us and that’s the right one. Already best, how can I be better? That I’m perfect sounds vain in Human but natural in Dog.

Self’s a human innovation and not a good one. One Self presumes others, maybe many, which get to bickering. Shakespeare had this disease big-time. Characters in his plays and poems keep wondering who they are. Richard II isn’t the only one to bellyache,

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedThus play I in one person many people,And none contented

or the equivalent.

I can hardly conceive a contention of multiple Henrys. This Henry wants to eat, another to sleep, another to chase a squirrel, another to lick Carll’s Camembert feet, another to cuddle Jane. How to decide? Who’s in charge? Vying interests proliferate with their laws, lawyers, boundaries, weaponry, Republicans, the whole nine yards. No selves, no wars – what will be will be – why fuss. Carll has occasionally cited this collision of Carlls as the cause of his ghastly garrulity (though that’s only one of many theories).

I enjoy composing the occasional missive. Your likes and comments buoy me and by their fervor irk Carll, which I also enjoy. As my translator and lexical enabler, Carll rejoices in my popularity – up to a point. But then his smile stiffens to a rictus and you can hear him muttering, “What am I, chopped liver?” Carll relishes competition as long as he wins.

So thanks for the thought, but I’m not up to suffusing your inbox daily, even fortnightly’s a lot. In literature as in life, I hold with Adam Smith, “The value of any commodity… depends upon its scarcity.” Less may not be more, but more would be a bore.

And that’s not being selfish, unless selfish is synonym for sage. Think, if all humans pursued their sensible self-interest, how sane the world would be. No one would need skyboxes or drones or yachts or candidates or other moral pollutants. No need for morality or Carll gassing about it. If creatures vied only for their necessities – “nature red in tooth and claw” – they’d kill what they required, not store it in their lion-freezer or monopolize the antelope trade.

You know that painting by Edward Hicks (1780-1849) called “The Peaceable Kingdom”? He made about sixty versions, so you’ve likely seen one. All those complacent creatures with nary a spat between them. He’d have included a cockapoo, I’m sure, if we’d been invented.