Treasures, stuff, junk

  • noble_dog1.jpgSat­ur­day morn­ing Clemen­tine the dog was being a lit­tle rest­less, so I sat down on her loveseat to see if a lit­tle focused affec­tion would calm her down. This loveseat is a piece of rented fur­ni­ture that we’ve long-since bought and paid for, which is a lit­tle galling, since it’s such an ugly thing. It’s got scratchy yellowy-black fab­ric, and we’d put it out on the curb for the garbage­men in a heart­beat except the dog has claimed it as her own. If she curls up in its smelly cush­ions or stands on its doghair-covered arms, she’s on top of the world. Sat­ur­day, though, the loveseat wasn’t hav­ing its usual effect. And when I sat down, Clementine’s rest­less­ness boiled into action. She jumped off the loveseat and then back up and then down again. I was look­ing at her in my best, “Explain your­self, Dog” man­ner when I caught her sur­rep­ti­tious glances into the cor­ner cush­ion and I knew. “Ohhh, you’ve got Trea­sure buried here.”

    These Trea­sures are usu­ally big, chunky dog-chew bones that she doesn’t feel like work­ing on when we give them to her. So she takes them firmly in her mouth and starts trot­ting off on a big hunt for the per­fect place to “bury” them — shov­ing them under a cush­ion or pil­low some­where, push­ing things around with her nose until she’s cer­tain all the boogey-men will be thrown off the trail, and then reclaim­ing them at some later time with a look of fero­cious pride.

    What’s sur­pris­ing is the change that comes over Clemen­tine when one of these ordi­nary chew-bones becomes a Trea­sure. When we give it to her, it’s just a thing, but as soon as she takes it away, it acquires a qual­ity of Pre­cious­ness. She sud­denly gets pos­ses­sive and a lit­tle bit sneaky. She’s never inclined toward any­thing aggres­sive, but she’ll eye us sus­pi­ciously if we’re too close when she’s bury­ing these things, and if we take the bone from her, she jumps around with a slightly wild-eyed out­rage. “Hey! Mine! No! You’re a bad dog!” It’s the only time she ever has a sense of per­sonal property.

    Since I don’t actu­ally want her chew bone (I’m funny that way), I hand it to her. She clomps onto it and starts a cir­cuit of the house. I holler up the stairs to Greg to close the bed­room door — please, Clemen­tine, not another nasty chew-bone stuck under my pil­low like a mis­be­got­ten gift for the tooth-fairy — and so after pac­ing back and forth upstairs, she comes back down with a slightly har­ried look. She goes into my newly orga­nized office where — I’m proud to say — she found no place to bury a bone. Kitchen? No. Foyer? No. Laun­dry room, din­ing room, den? No, no, no.

    Now, Clemen­tine is just a hound. She’s not some rocket sci­en­tist dog who has the abil­ity to hold onto a thought for a long time. Though the Trea­sure had briefly been an object of devo­tion, the fact that it presents a prob­lem with­out an answer makes her lose focus, which makes the chew-bone lose Pre­cious­ness. And the next thing you know, she sighs, plunks it down in her favorite spot, and just starts chew­ing on it. Which brings a cer­tain sat­is­fac­tion, since it is actu­ally what the man­u­fac­tur­ers (and Clem’s hum­ble own­ers) had in mind for it all the time. But there’s a loss in value. She doesn’t get sneaky about a bone she’s actu­ally chew­ing on. She doesn’t get pos­ses­sive. It’s not a Trea­sure any­more — now it’s just Stuff.

    This can be a good phase in the rela­tion­ship between dog and bone actu­ally, because once she stops car­ry­ing the silly things around and try­ing to stuff them into fur­ni­ture, she will some­times sit down and hap­pily crunch away on them for the five min­utes or so it takes to chew them up completely.

    But it’s also a tricky time, and I sensed that her dili­gence was wan­ing. Her atten­tion wan­ders, she starts to eye other things that seem more promis­ing. And over the course of a cou­ple min­utes, the object is deval­ued yet again. It’s not even Stuff now — it’s just Junk. She gets up and stretches, sniffs the bone as if she’s try­ing to remem­ber what it’s doing there, and saun­ters off.

    I know what this means. She won’t come back to it later. It’ll never be buried again like a Trea­sure, and it won’t be put to use like Stuff. Now it’s just Junk, and it’ll stay in the same spot she left it until I pick it up and toss it out.

    Trea­sure, Stuff and Junk. Know­ing the dif­fer­ence between them is some­thing I try to do all the time, espe­cially as I try to run the house and busi­ness with­out them run­ning me. We don’t have a lot of space to spare, and so I’ve had to learn the vast impor­tance of get­ting Junk out of the house. Today’s Pre­cious Object is tomorrow’s White Ele­phant (if that expres­sion is too old-fashioned to be under­stood, go HERE). The trea­sures can bring you joy, but they can also make you snap­pish, greedy and ungrate­ful. Stuff, on the other hand, can be use­ful, but you have to deal with it, make time for it, make room for it, and you have to put it to use. If you don’t, it’s in dan­ger of becom­ing Junk, and then it just takes up space and energy with­out giv­ing any­thing back. Junk you have to get rid of, or it will start slowly suf­fo­cat­ing you. Know­ing what’s what seems like it actu­ally matters.

    Because of course, no one’s out there to pick up my dis­carded chew-bones.

    noble_dog.jpg

    Related posts:

    1. Time stops at Grand Cen­tral Station
    2. It’s like an inter­net of smell
    3. Not giv­ing the poor our junk
    4. And win­ter makes that sloooow right turn
    5. The weather report

    May 11th, 2008 | Grace | No Comments |

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