footpad, posts by tag: love - LiveJournal (original) (raw)
| Beloved Mischa | [May. 14th, 2016|11:15 pm]Footpad |
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| [**Tags**|bereavement, dear mischa, farewell, loss, love, mischa]Dear Mischa,You knew that I loved you. Even so I wish I could have been there when you died, so I could have told you one last time.I told you afterwards. I told you when I hold your body, I told you so many times, over and over again. Clutching you, crying helplessly, unable to say anything but, "I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you..."Once upon a time I was afraid that I might not grieve for you when you died. Now I know that that doubt meant just one thing: I couldn't imagine a world without you. And here I am, living it, each day, day by day.A dozen times a day I reach for you in my mind, feeling for those places and routines and emotions where you used to be, and each time it's a shock that you're not there.I told you I'd see you again. That was just shorthand, of course. I don't know if that's how the universe works. But I know with every sinew in my body that wherever you have gone, I follow: to oblivion, to limbo, to Elysium. I could want no part of anywhere after this that didn't have a place for you.We had you cremated. We didn't want to bury you here, where we'll so soon be leaving; we couldn't bear the thought of leaving you alone among strangers. I would rather have dug a place for you, there to lay your body down in the good earth and cover you over forever, but instead we sent your silent still body to the flames. We'll take your ashes with us and when we're settled, when we have a place forever, we'll place you to rest there and plant a tree over you, our Mischa, our beloved and infinitely missed malamute dog.God knows how much I miss you.There you lay in that little room at the crematorium. The people there were kind: they covered the brutal surgical wound in your abdomen, they laid a rose beside you and placed a candle to either side of you. Your fur smelled both of you, that lovely clean aroma that I breathed so many times over the years and which never lost its charm; and it also smelled of death. You were in rigor mortis, your frame cold and hard in a way that conveyed your death even more concretely than your utter motionlessness did. Your eyes were dark and quiet, almost closed, still holding a gentle gleam. Your tongue-tip was peeking out in that goofy adorable way it so often did when you slept.So much of you was still there. The lay of your fur, the cant of your ears, the patterning on your muzzle: all so utterly familiar, all as beautiful to me as they ever were. Surely I knew these things better than I know my own body, so many times did I marvel over them in the nine years we were together. Yet these things were nothing compared to what was lost: your warmth, your supple vitality, your silliness and quirks, your gentleness of heart and your stubborn shining individuality. Even when you were alive I could not know all there was to know of you; how could I fix you in my memory now, now matter how hard I tried? Only one thing in the universe could hold a candle to you, my Mischa, and that was you in the fullness and warmth of the life that you've left behind you.I stroked your face, your cheek, your muzzle, and your eyes narrowed as they had when I stroked you while you drowsed. I kissed your snout as I had so many thousand times. I told you I loved you. I told you I'd never forget you. I told you thank you, thank you, thank you for the joy and the privilege of being your human. I told you you were a good dog. I told you you were my dog, I told you I loved you, and I cried and cried and cried and cried and cried.Then I rose from that place, and turned and looked back at you lying there so still. It was too soon to leave you. It will always be too soon.You were my dog, and I loved you more than I know how to say. Be at rest now. I love you and I always will.—This post was made on dreamwidth.org, here. If you can, please comment there (it's simple with OpenID), because LJ's bugs make it gratuitously hard for me to answer your comments on LJ. | |
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| Dear Mischa. | [Jun. 28th, 2013|12:23 am]Footpad |
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| [Tags**|beauty, dear mischa, love, mischa] [Current Mood** | wistful]Dear Mischa,You know that I love you.Usually when I write that, it's followed by an ghostly evanescent but, after which I go on to describe some strange facet of your behaviour and then digress into a philosophical rumination on your malamute-nature and its ambiguous, tenuous relationship with consensus reality.Tonight I dispense with that. All I have to say to you tonight is that I love you.On Sunday I looked at you as you were snoozing on the cool stones of the terrace. You were lying on your side with your eyes closed and your tail laid down behind you. Your tail's bushy but rather short, you know; did I even mention that before? It's the shedding season: you were in need of a grooming and your coat was looking a bit tufty and unkempt. Since you were lying down, the tuck-up of your belly wasn't particularly in evidence and you had a cylindrical look to you, like the body profile of a slightly overweight Labrador.I tend to think of you, and favour the pictures that portray you, as a lean and lithe and elegant beast, full of majesty and grace, a creature above and removed from the grubby yapping masses of the common Unterhundsch. But in that moment I looked at you and thought, "Dozy, rotund, scruffy... Why, you look just like an ordinary dog. And... I still find you beautiful, and I still love you."I love you for a hundred reasons. Among them, I love you because you're beautiful. But if you weren't beautiful, I'd still love you exactly as much as I do, and that's because I'll always find you beautiful anyway.Love,me. |
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| The capacity for love | [Mar. 31st, 2013|12:41 am]Footpad |
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| [Tags**|dear mischa, dog, love, mischa, snuggles] [Current Mood** | affectionate]Dear Mischa,You know that I love you. Come to think of it, quite a lot of people love you, which is probably why you, just now, you were lying on the plush living-room carpet with people all around you petting and stroking and massaging and grooming you, while you sprawled out with several hands on your body. But presently, without much in the way of prior warning, you scrambled to your feet and padded over to disappear under the table that shelters your dog-bed. That's defined as your private space, where humans aren't allowed to pester you, so going there was a pretty good statement that you'd had enough petting and didn't want any more.The way we see it, you have a finite capacity for affection. We call it your Kraultank or your _Liebestank_—a notional container that periodically needs refuelling with love, but which has clearly-defined limits. When those limits are reached, then it's time for you to reassert your primal malamute Würde.In a way, it would be nice if you were like a Golden Retriever: a dog with an absolute, unquestioning, boundless capacity for affection, which we humans could indulge at our will. But you're not. You have your own agenda, your own self-possession, your own needs and your own space. You both accept and give affection on your own terms. You are our dog, but in a fundamental sense you are your own person, and I find that a wonderful and dignified thing.Much love,me. |
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| Your life, my life, dog's life | [Jan. 4th, 2013|06:40 pm]Footpad |
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| [Tags**|dear mischa, love, mischa, war] [Current Mood** | tenderness for a loved one]Dear Mischa,You know that I love you. The human-dog bond is its own very special thing (even if I am, just perhaps, very slightly more canine than the average human), but there are aspects of our relationship which parallel various human-to-human relationships. I take pleasure your quiet company as I would that of a close friend of many years; I cuddle with you and kiss you on the ears and face much as I might a lover. Finally, I care for your well-being as if you were a child.And you need me to. Though you may be splendid in your predatory instincts, you wouldn't last a day in this modern environment with its trains and cars and dog-proof doors. Sometimes I think of how you might fare if you had to fare for yourself alone, and the thought brings me a chill of horror. If our house burned down, I wouldn't be more than mightily annoyed, but if it burned down with you in it then I'd be tortured by the thought of your last moments. If pandemic flu strikes, then I can take my precautions and my chances, but I blench at the prospect of you left alone in an empty house with no Humans to care for you.I was recently listening to an episode of the beautiful radio show, This American Life, which described the fate of some of the tens of thousands of American household pets that were volunteered by their owners to serve the US Army in the Pacific in World War Two. The favoured breeds included (German) Shepherds, Doberpeople, Huskies and... and Malamutes, and the mention of your breed gave me a sudden pang of realisation that you could have been sent to war—you, my lovely, gentle, peaceful, equable sled-dog, with no more experience of violence than beating up that vile little Labrador who lives down the road. Then the narrator described finding photographs of dogs who'd been trained to wear explosive backpacks and run into enemy bunkers...I console myself with the thought that you'd make a simply appalling kamikaze dog. Your food drive isn't strong enough, your ambling desultory gait would be too easy for people to shoot at, and you'd probably decide you simply weren't interested in going into that smelly little hovel full of things going bang. You're also so handsome and sweet that not even an Army bureaucrat could condone blowing you up.No, probably what would have happened, is, you'd have been sent to Alaska to pull sleds, your handlers would have fallen as much in love with you as I am, you'd have discovered the joys of doing what you were bred for, and you'd hear the Call of the Wild, find your John Thornton, and accompany him to a placid retirement in the wilds.But here we are, in the next millennium, on the outskirts of a small town in Germany. You're eight years old now, a strong healthy happy dog in his serene middle years. I know you can't live forever, or even for especially long. I'm used to that idea. But I really—with all my heart—I want you to live pleasurably, to age contentedly, and to die in peace at what, for you, will be a ripe count of years.I can't promise you that for certain. For all we know, there's an asteroid out there with our ecosystem written on it. There may be upheavals, there may be economic collapse, there may be chaos and terror and starvation. It's entirely conceivable that there'll come a time when there's no food for you, or we can't afford your medical care. But one way or another, through trial or tribulation, I trust we can arrange things so that, in years to come, we can look back and say: yours was anything but a dog's life.Love,me. |
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| The howlistic view | [Mar. 6th, 2012|04:52 pm]Footpad |
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| [**Tags**|dear mischa, dog, love, mischa]Dear Mischa,You know that I love you.I love you in each of your component parts. Your handsome chunky snout, so good to stroke between two palms. Your endlessly thick-pelted and scrufflable throat. Your warm brown eyes with their many thoughtful moods, and their tendency to puzzlement. Your tail, expressive in so many ways and angles; and your haunches; so muscular and good to scruffle. Your throat and its panoply of extraordinary harmonic noises. Your light quick panting, which I've clocked at nearly 6 Hz when we've been out in hot weather. Your dignified friendly charm which has all the neighbours eating out of your hand, or, more literally, you out of theirs. Your extravagantly lavish body warmth. Your gorgeous monochrome pelt, with its sudden flash of chocolate-gold highlights when you pass through the sunlight. Your long smooth gait, as sleek and elegant as a Swiss watch. Your scent, delicious beyond measure when I bury my face in your fur and just breathe. Your paws, so handsome and with a curious and pleasant aroma of their own.You are, in every particular, a lovely dog.Sometimes, when we're together in some way—lying on the carpet with my arm around you, or out running together in the rain—I realise that I'm marvelling at some particular aspect of you, yet somehow entirely forgetting the whole. "How wonderfully strokeable this haunch is," I think, or "how warm this belly," or "how gloriously energy-efficient it is that a half-curled-up dog can be stroked with a continuous circular motion of the hand."I may liken you to a Bach fugue. You are composed of many skeins, each lovely in its own right, and each appreciable to the full. Yet your whole is something infinitely more splendid than your component parts, and its loveliness passeth human understanding. One must seek to understand it both in and of itself, and by contemplation of each of its facets. The whole is only learned through the skeins, and the skeins only through the whole; but the more one learns, the more one's heart is enrichened and the more delight unfolds.In short? Love is at once complicated and very simple, and the reward for love is—more love.Love,me. | |
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| The heart of the hunter | [Jan. 4th, 2011|03:26 pm]Footpad |
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| [Tags**|dear mischa, lol dog, love, mischa, walkies] [Current Mood** | charmed]Dear Mischa,You know that I love you. I want you to be happy, which mostly just means allowing you free expression of your instincts.Some of the instincts I love most are those that show the wolf who lives deep in your heart. On a night walk a few days ago, you found a deer-trail at the edge of a field. There you paused, silhouetted against the midnight snow with your head and tail held high—and for a moment you were a wolf: beautiful, primal, gentle and wholly atavistic, as you set out into the night with every fibre and every sense quivering with alertness in the timeless rapture of the hunt.Of course, if you were really a wolf, you'd know that deer are not found at the bottom of small holes in the snow. You'd know that if you wanted to catch them and eat them, you're not going to get very far by padding from hoofprint to hoofprint in the deep snow, sticking your nose into each one and sniffing ecstatically.Still, you're a happy dog expressing your instincts, and that makes me happy because I love you. And I'm glad you're with me and  akeela, because you'd be hopeless if you ever really had to survive like a wolf.Love,me. |
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| Still Life | [Mar. 29th, 2010|09:03 am]Footpad |
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| [Tags**|dear mischa, dogs, love, mischa, rumination] [Current Mood** | wistful and loving]Dear Mischa,You know that I love you, and so I should, because you're lovely.You're not perfect, of course. You're not the smartest dog in the world, and your stubbornly independent streak has frankly defeated most of my efforts at training. You can hold a vicious grudge against a dog who's earned it, sometimes you make very peculiar loud noises at inopportune moments, and oh boy can you fart. But against these minor flaws you set a gentle heart, a placid disposition, an affectionate demeanour, a beautiful form, a delicious scent, and an easygoing charisma that delights all around you. You're not everything I'd want in a dog, but you're a lot more than I could have wished for. No wonder I love you.Impelled by my affection for you, I arranged with the ever-delightful and wonderfully talented vantid to paint a picture of you, in which she excelled herself and delighted akeela and me. Look, here you are (click for big): |
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| Wascha Mischa | [Mar. 17th, 2010|08:58 pm]Footpad |
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| [**Tags**|bathtime, dear mischa, dogs, love, mischa, soap]Dear Mischa,You know that I love you. My colleagues laugh at me occasionally because I have pictures of you all over the place, and talk more about you than I do about my relations or akeela. Although it turns out that I'm apparently not alone in missing you more than my mate. Anyway.My dear dog, I was thinking about you today. In the three years you've deigned to live with us, we've never bathed you—not once. Your fur's beautifully self-cleaning, and for years you never grew noticeably dirty. But these past few months, I've noticed my hands were grubby after petting you, even though you still smell beautifully sweet and mild, and your fur looks impeccable when it gets a bit of grooming.So, dearly loved dog, it might become necessary to wash you. I hate to say that, because I know how much you hate being put in water—you hate it passionately and viscerally, with a bitterness that's reserved for sled-dogs and the rabid. But it might just become necessary. So I was charmed by this article that avon_deer linked to, about dog-washing machines in Japan.You're a bit too enormous to go in one of the current models, but as soon as I find one big enough to take you, I promise you the pleasure of sitting in one of them through its thirty-five minute cycle. And afterwards you'll be a beautifully clean dog once again.Love,me. |
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| Dear Mischa... | [Feb. 14th, 2009|09:44 am]Footpad |
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| [Tags**|dear mischa, love, mischa, valentine's day] [Current Mood** | wistful]Dear Mischa,You know that I love you. And I do.Today is Valentine's Day. I don't expect you to understand that, since you'd need to know about things like calendars and cynically manipulative card-manufacturing companies, but let's say that it's a day when humans celebrate love. Actually what most of them are celebrating is sexual pair-bonding love, but I'm alone today so I'm going to celebrate human-dog love because I'm missing you most of all.When you first came to akeela and me, I was obsessed with you—at least, after that awful first week while you went through the shock of being removed from your previous pack. A dog! a dog of our very own! a beautiful and sweet-natured dog! a dog on our sofa! a dog in our home! our dog! And I thought that was love.I've never been in love before. I've skirted love's periphery with other humans, most notably akeela of course, but really the closest I've come has been a sort of strong sexual fondness and friendship and trusting mutual solidarity. I'll probably never understand why love has eluded me, but I have a few guesses—pubescent humans can be every bit as nasty as malamute pack politics, and the effects on socialisation can be just as profound.So anyway. After a week I thought I loved you for your beautiful form and warm brown eyes. But after a month I realised that the beauty I loved was only pelt-deep, and I realised that you were more lovable for your gentleness and vitality. After three months, when you first wagged your tail for me, I was sure I loved you for your sweet and sociable nature. After a year, I loved you for everything.And still my love for you changes. Every day I see you, every time you wag your tail, or grin or 'talk' at me, or make that irresistible growly-rumbly noise before a walk; every move you make, the form of your body, your pleasure in your food, the sleek precision of your gait, the rough warmth of your pelt—everything about you is cause for celebration, for admiration, for delight. I love you, I really really do; and love changes, not each month or year, but each time I hug you or feed you, or call you "Mooshky" or sing those silly little songs for you as I mix your supper, or dry you after a muddy walk, or step over you because you've fallen asleep in the doorway again, or pet you with Aki when you curl up between us while we're watching House, or hold yowly conversations with you or just glance aside at your happy tongue-lolling expression as we run together.I thought that love would be a static thing, established and then left unchanged. I never knew, until I knew you, that love is ever-changing, ever fresh and ever new, renewing itself from moment to moment, always finding some new way to love something new about the one you love.Perhaps, learning the lesson of love, I'll learn to share it with a sexual relationship too. Or perhaps not; either way, I'll accept what comes. All that really matters is love; and, my very dear dog, my first true love is for you.I can't be with you today, but I send you all my love and I name you my Valentine.Love,Me. |
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| Waking up | [Sep. 28th, 2008|06:51 am]Footpad |
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| [Tags**|friends, love, travel, weddings] [Current Mood** | bleary]Six in the morning! Dawn glow in the east! I've woken up on a nearly-conventional schedule—I'm diurnal again! Maybe the jet-lag is finally beat.I'm sitting in someone's small comfortably-appointed office, wearing a medley of whatever clothes I could find on the floor. The clothes probably belong to keikan and Eddie, since they put me to bed in their bedroom. My last memory from last night is of borrowing sabertail to snuggle up against (and he's supremely snugglable—hard to explain, just try it and see), and dropping into an abyss of sleep so profound that I was only dimly aware of being physically picked up, dumped into bed, stripped of my outer clothes and tucked in like a child, whereupon the abyss claimed me once more.Yesterday was the marriage of toob and jakebe, and it was a beautiful event. The ceremony itself was held in a chapel of the San José University—a little wood-framed building with the right air of intimacy and serenity, and then we all trooped outside for a lavish potluck barbeque and buffet which left us all so stuffed that we didn't need to eat for the next twenty hours.This kinda reads like a placeholder post. I hope I'll have more to say later, possibly after someone's massaged the kinks out of my neck.) |
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