Yes, dogs vs birds. Why dogs and not birds? Well really we love birds too. We humans own birds too. We feed them and put them in cages, and train them, and develop relationships with them and apply human characteristics to them. But birds don’t love us. Also, birds can fly away from us. Also, birds can live free in their own nature-given patterns anywhere, and they do so everywhere. Only the worst places in the world have no birds at all. I have no interest in discussing those negative places, so we’ll leave that for the ages.
All other places in the world, birds exist, alongside us humans, but completely separate. Sure they’ll scavenge our garbage. Sure they’ll accept our refuse. Sure they’ll gather around when we drop breadcrumbs or are eating hot dogs. But they remain separate, they remain unconnected to us, they continue raising their own families, flying south for the winter, building nests in our gutters, and painting our cars white.
The birds live among us, but without us. Why compare those birds to you dogs? Because humans love birds, birds sing, birds engage in one of those activities that humans use to express joy. And humans love dogs for similar reasons, for joy finding, for learning how to be present, for learning how to be happy every single time you see the people you love, for learning how to let go of resentment, of anger, in fact for learning how to never resent in the first place.
These are important lessons and are reasons why I find it unnecessary during this morning to discuss and compare cats, even though “cats & dogs” have grown to be this common pairing of pets. Cats are devilish creatures, beautiful as kittens, but as adults they bear the mark of Satan. No I’m not a devil worshipper nor am I fearful of the devil. Just that it must be acknowledged that those beautiful feline creature were placed on this earth by Satan in order to monitor us humans. We are the devil’s reality TV show, and cats are his video cameras, that’s all. Nothing to freak about. But there’s nothing inspiring, nothing emotionally uplifting about cats. That’s why the comparison between dogs and cats is bunk and materialistic.
That’s why I am focusing on birds instead, those joyful flighty creatures of the skies. How I often wish to be able to fly around like birds, to hop from tree to tree, to enjoy eating worms and feeding them to my young.
But I must get to a real point here. I must discuss the real reasons for birds being used to leverage my mission to bring equality to dogs. What is it? What’s the connection? How can I thread this line of thought from birds, living free and with their family structure fully intact right in our midst while dogs have been so deconstructed and reconstructed that they surely would die if simply let loose in the streets.
Although not for long.
In Budapest, dogs live wild on the streets and frequently pack up together, running around, terrorizing small animals, but often posing a significant threat to the humans of Budapest. This is the other end of the extreme, of what happens when dogs are simply let loose, set wild. After they die and get hit by cars and starve, the ones whose instincts haven’t been too smooshed learn how to live, and it is by engaging their inner wolf that they survive.
And THIS is the flip side of why we humans have domesticated dogs, an act undertaken so long ago. Truly it is an interesting conundrum, dogs can be happy and joyful when living amongst humans, but are vicious and threatening when their deep anger is engaged.
In fact, that anger, that attacking nature is not squelched at all during captivity. Dog bites, guard dogs, dog attacks, these are normal everyday occurrences in our world.
So what is the conclusion we can draw? What is even the hypothesis to posit? Have I connected enough dots here? Have I laid to rest enough unnecessaries, put to bed enough inconsequentials? No, I fear not. I fear this meandering of mine has let wild some suspicions that my intentions might be somewhat hazy, that I may in fact not really be onto some revolutionary thread after all.
It is highly likely that, upon having read these words, where I’ve let you believe some crystallizing conclusion would burst upon your consciousness, you are now feeling wary, feeling possibly even agitated for having waded through these thoughts, pulled apart the entrenched meanings, and found some semblance of an idea, although no idea worth printing on a t-Shirt or bumper Sticker.
So I’ll leave off today with an attempt at a bumper sticker slogan, one that can in fact make this entire reading sessions all worth it for you.
The purpose of Dog Island, the reason we have built it in the first place, is because it answers the problems of both ends of the extreme. On one end, dogs’ nature, deep wild beautiful nature, is sublimated to the values of domestication. On the other end, dogs are wild, vicious creatures who truly pose a threat to the well-being of humans. Therefore, Dog Island provides the venue for dogs to work out their anger, to work through their pack behavioral instincts, to duke it out on the island, to learn how to communicate properly, and to eventually be reinfused into the standard worlds, acting as beacons for other dogs who will be released in the coming redemption.
Captain’s Log of Sunday, June 13, 2010 11:23 am
Year #32, Month #395, Week #1,717, Day #12,004
3 Kings Cabin, Dog Island
