Rituals and Effigies

 Every so often, I inflict some of my poetry on the innocent public--this is one of those times...from a chapbook I made once, entitled Rituals and Effigies... (note: the Chinese poems are free translations--the raw translation from the originals are in italics, and what I made of them follows below it)

RITUALS

 AND

 EFFIGIES

BY

Mark Mann

 Child Jesse

The earth is only lent

so my grandfather Jesse took it

into his lungs his skin his eyes

years miles below the tipple

buried in the great Maryland seam

until, more earth than man,

he began to give it back

black spittle black blood black tears

until the earth could say

child Jesse, let us begin again.

Childless

This fantasy     this collection of names

inspection tours of suitable colleges

these unopened albums       your very own key,

goodbye                       every new poem

your face         their swift hands

so very like mine

love as an involuntary signal

sent up into the long dark

tracing the empty sectors     the journal entries

addressed to the diminishing image

the fiftieth birthday arriving

like a goodbye      the mirror of a father

H3O                    the terrible rise of time

the golem in the living temple

so breathtaking this dark     so unlike a dark

so long     astonishing

Two Wheels

It’s a common tale, but this is how I remember mine:

I was six, maybe, and on my blue bike

at last without training wheels, and my father

held onto the back of the seat and pushed

promising, “ I won’t let go”

and down the alley we flew, getting faster,

getting better, and I told him

right there I loved him, that this

was the beginning of my life,

that when he was old I would return the favor,

that I understood him better than he ever knew,

that the truest moments live in the future,

that everything was practice for everything else,

and when I looked back he was so far

away I could hardly see him.

Traveling South

After Meng Haoran

Tree shed goose south cross

North wind river on cold

My home Xiang water bend

Far distance Chu cloud edge

Home tears travel in exhausted

Solitary sail sky edge watch

Lost ferry wish have ask

Level sea dusk wide

The trees have lost their gold to the southbound geese

The winds have frozen all the rivers north of here

My home at Xiang sits at the river’s mouth

So far south from Chu it crosses the border of the clouds.

Thinking how weary I am, how far from home, I cry

As, in the distance, a single sail cuts along the sky’s edge, and disappears.

I am lost-- too late to ask when the next ferry comes.

This sea is so quiet, so cold. This dark, so wide.

1978

As if you were 16 again, and I was 18,

and the sky was younger too, and the grass a lighter green,

and the summer longer, and sweeter, and slower and

the water was clearer as it tried to climb the sand

at Lake Logan, when we lied to our parents about something to do

with school, and took my mother’s car and filled it with our whole crew

and spent that entire day skin to shivering skin-- no, it must have been May

and too early to be wearing so little but you were 16 and I, 18, let’s say,

and your lips were numb you said, and I remember thinking they looked blue,

but we were young, and suffering for love was all we knew how to do. 

ARS POETICA

Poetry I

I like my poetry

underwater,

bending the light,

carrying new sound

to all my hidden creatures.

I want it to drift back to the moon,

down to the cold.

I want it to rise, amniotic and slow,

the litany of sky, tree, lake,

you, me, you.

Poetry II

If you are a traffic cop, the noise

you once heard when you were nine, coming

from your parent’s bedroom.

                                                If you are an uncle,

all the silences throughout the house.

                                                                          If you

play the piano or skin rabbits,

love the word “metastasize” 

in your mouth, outside in the snow

running with the neighbor’s adopted Chinese.

It will follow your wife to the elevator,

your mother to her grave, the Dutch elm

to certain valleys in West Virginia.

If you are busy becoming your father

around each corner, covets your loose change,

follows you home, a diseased stray,

a furious child.  The desert of your life.

Ghost Villanelle

Father, smoke and moon and glass

Arrangement in the barrows of

Some future boon that I will ask:

Your reasons for your wicked past

Your long reach for the smoke of love

Oh, father (and smoke and moon and glass)

Believe me and you’ll see how fast

The lies the moonlit patterns wove

Into this future boon I’ll ask

Will give your sons this ghostly cast

This need to learn the need that drove

This father of smoke and moon and glass

We rise, your sons, and turn at last

To look into the eyes that prove

There is no future boon we’d ask

That, granted, would repair the past.

We offer this imperfect love,

My father, my smoke, my moon, my glass

This boon, this light, this need to ask.

Red Wheelbarrow, Revisited

For every dependable

                            red wheelbarrow

          there must be one

         that cracked under the glaze

                 of the constant rain,

               and the many complaints

of those relentless white chickens

Dreaming of the Queen

after a study that revealed each night

 one-third of the people in England

dream of their queen

For some of us, Elizabeth II of England is a saucy minx

in fishnet hosiery, a bright red slash of a smile

on a face curiously knowing, as she reclines on a magnificent

rug made entirely of Pembroke Welsh corgi pelts.

Other nights, she is the friendly widowed neighbor,

the comfortable one the police bring along

to help carry the news your son has been killed by Arabs.

Yet, even though the part of you that’s always awake

knows you have never had a legitimate son

the fact that Elizabeth II of England occupies the next flat

but one doesn’t violate your dream-logic, and as you close

the door on the grateful policeman, you accept her kind offer

of tea and bickies, which she produces from her handbag,

and pours with immaculate, expert hands.

Each evening, the great shadow stretches over all of England,

and one-third of us, over twenty million sleeping souls, discover

her cleaning our bedrooms, repairing our cars, on the floor

of our nursery schoolrooms, playing with the flop-eared

class bunny named Charles. Sometimes we catch sight of her

running on the pitch at test matches, or riding in a pumpkin carriage

along a Dublin back lane, oblivious to the unblinking eyes in the windows.

More often in recent years, she dies in our guest rooms,

surrounded by her family, and our uncle Ted, who pats her hand

until the death rattle subsides.

How exhausted she must be! Each morning, returning to her corgis,

weary from a night of answering prayers, or ruining them.

She has a wash, poached eggs while reading her correspondence,

and then it’s out into the bright day and the official opening of a new factory,

trying not to think about the evening’s work that lay ahead of her.

Trying to smile as she waves to her cheering people.

Trying not to notice the wink of recognition from one-third of them.

Sacrifice to the Cat that Scared all the Rats 


After Mei Yaochen

Self have 5 white cat

Rat not invade my books

Today morning 5 white die

Sacrifice with rice and fish

See off it at middle river

Incantation you not you neglect

Before you bite one rat

Hold in mouth cry around yard remove

Want cause crowd rat frightened

Thought will clear my cottage

From board boat come

Boat in together room live

Dry grain although its thin

Evade eat drip steal from

This real you have industriousness

Have industriousness surpass chicken pig

Ordinary person stress spur horse drive

Say not like horse donkey

Already finish not again discuss

For you somewhat cry

When we lived together, my cat with five white spots,

The rats never touched my books

This morning, old friend, you died

From the boat I offered a sacrifice of rice and fish

And set you off from the middle of the river

Then I chanted for you, Five White, in remembrance

Of the day you caught a large rat

And carried it crying around our yard

To warn the riot of other rats to stay away

From our clean little cottage

When we had to come and live on this boat

and share this small room

with its thin but dry store of grain

I never worried about rat foulness or theft

because you were always on patrol.

Some say the chicken or the pig works harder.

Some people swear by their horses or donkeys.

I don’t argue with them today.

I cry for you a little, today.

Summer Ends at Alkire Lake/South American Coup d’etat


More often these mornings, we wake as if in mid-tango,
legs hooked, your arm traveling the length of mine,
Your morning breath west, mine east.

Autumn arrives by dark in mid-September. It cuts off
the root speech of the rose garden, creeps behind the mist
of the lake, calls to action the geese murmuring in the reeds.

It's anthem, swelling the curtains of our bedroom,
summons the sleepers to rise. The new season, its uniform
festooned with victory, waves from our balcony.

Skull Island

When the sailors drugged Kong and shipped him off to star on Broadway,

the natives of Skull Island, after an initial demonstration of grief,

got down to the business of creating a new god. 

At first they tried worshipping some of the giant lizards

of the island, but always they remembered how easily

Kong had defeated them, and soon attendance at the weekly services

dwindled to dangerous lows.

Next they considered the white adventurers who’d taken Kong, but gods

who supplant other gods and then leave are not reliable. Who next?

For a moment, the local shaman seemed up to the job,

but there wasn’t a man or woman or child among them

who had not seen him, from time to time, eat too much poi.

For a long period they worshipped nothing. They rose each morning

and looked to the empty altar beside the enormous gate,

and to the silent green mountain beyond that—the thanks they gave

for each new day’s bounty was received only by the indifferent sea air

and certain impious prehistoric birds. Weddings became joyless

rituals of financial alliance , and the lighting of funeral pyres

allowed the natives to rid their huts of the clutter of old Kong effigies.

That is all anyone knows for sure. I’m told they flirted, for a brief time,

with certain Hollywood religions—some left the island

and returned with tales of storefront mysticism, in lands ruled by invisible gods,

which made the wisest of them smile—for what can replace the certainty of a thousand drumbeats, and the redemption of witnessing your god rise from his lair

in the far sea cliffs, and the awe of his approach, and all of this ecstasy  purchased

with the simple gift of a stolen virgin in bottle-yellow hair?

Though You Said You Would Come

After Li Shangyin

Come be empty word go without trace

Moon slant tower on fifth watch bell

Dream be far part call hard call

Write reason hurry achieve ink not thick

Candle shine half cover gold emerald

Musk vapour tiny degree embroider lotus

Liu young already regret Peng shan far

More separate Peng shan ten thousand times

Though you said you would come tonight you are not here

The moon slants past the bell tower as it sounds the fifth watch

Better to sleep and dream you are too far to call

And believe the ink is too thin for me to write

But the candles bring life to my gold and emerald covers

Your perfume lingers on the lotus embroidery

Already I regret knowing how far the nearest Pengshan hill sits,

Knowing you must be ten thousand Pengshan hills away.

yuppie names

http://yuppiebabynames.blogspot.com/

Speaking of terrible names for our kids, the above site tracks them nicely. Hopefully, the info can be used when we round up all these people for the re-education camps...

Your Parenting Choices Suck!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dionna-ford/time-magazine_b_1507799.html

Years ago, in a little farce I wrote for the (late, lamented) CATCO Shorts Festival, I included a line in which a mother, talking about her son, says, " I breast fed him for a long time, till his high school barred me from the cafeteria." I thought, at the time, it was a joke playing on the absurdity of breast feeding someone long after babyhood. In my innocence, imagine my surprise to read this article, and the Time Magazine cover story from which it derived.

Ok, let's stipulate something right now. These women are wrong.

Moving on, the issue here seems to be--what's that? What are you saying? How dare I judge the parenting decisions of perfect strangers? Well...someone has to do it. Someone needs to hold these people up to ridicule. I volunteer. There is a third rail of social politics these days, which seems to be "Never criticize a woman's parenting." People avoid it at all costs, afraid of reprisals from the mommy warrior classes. Avoiding these topics allows dumbasses like Jenny McCarthy to get away with not vaccinating her kids, and calling herself an expert in autism research just because she can use Google. In fact, I don't remember anything about neurology being mentioned on her Playmate Data Sheet.

No. Not every parenting decision is sacrosanct, and correct in and of itself. Just because you aren't starving your child, doesn't mean you aren't an idiot. People may call it a difference in approach, or new age parenting, or maybe even an embracing of ancient methods (which we KNOW is not the case--in ancient times,  that three year old on the Time cover wouldn't be loafing around all day nursing, he'd be out in the fields, plowing behind a mule, and smoking unfiltered cigarettes).   Well, it's mocking time, my little friend (and I am assuming here that I'm bigger than you, so step off)

J'Accuse:

1. Breastfeeding

Breastfeeding past the age when the child can carry on intelligible dinner conversation seems like poor parenting to me. Why retard that developing verbal skill by jamming your breast into his face every time he starts a hilarious anecdote about pooping during nap time in pre-school? It's laziness disguised as parenting choice--get off your ass and open a can of Spaghettios like a normal person.

Ladies. Please. Breastfeeding a three year old? Never mind you, it makes the child look ridiculous. Look at the face of the kid on the Time cover. That's the last time you'll see it looking content, when you consider the 12 years of playground hell he's in for, for being the cover boy who nursed on his mommy while wearing big boy pants. And hey, if a child is old enough to cheat his chin toward the camera in the photo sessions, he's old enough to suck on a juice box. For christ's sake!

Dionne said in her article that her four year old does not look at her breasts with any kind of sexual context. Well, I tell you, after four solid years of nursing, neither does anyone else.

And while I am on it...public breast feeding...avoid it, please. I know, I know, it's perfectly natural. Well, so is lancing a boil, but I don't want to see that either. If I had to give up dragging on a cigarette in public, your child can give up dragging on a ...

2. Nakedness

Being naked in front of your kids is also a poor parenting choice. When they are babies, sure, who cares? But when they are old enough to point and say " Look, tits!" then maybe its time to put on the tube top. Some say it's perfectly natural, and this is how we teach kids not to be ashamed of their bodies. Bullshit. You are just too lazy to do the washing. This isn't Fiji, people. This is the American Midwest, and parents should wear slacks and a golf shirt, at minimum, at all times. Even in bed.

3. War Toys

My sister, probably after reading an article in which a celebrity parent (who always seems to be so amazed at parenthood, especially when their nannies tell them about the cute thing the kid did) mentioned she didn't allow toy guns in the house,  and decided to do the same thing. And my nephew pointed at her with his finger and said, " Pow!" Boys like guns. Most boys anyway. I myself dispatched so many Germans in my childhood my nickname was Audie Murphy. And this was in the 60s, when we weren't even at war with Germany. Let em play with guns. Don't feminize them. Not letting boys play with toy guns is really reverse judging--nowadays, we would NEVER discourage a boy who likes to play with dolls, would we? Don't judge the boy, just because he'd rather shoot Barbie than accessorize her. The same long-term breast feeders who claim it doesn't adversely affect the child's sexual development are usually the same people who say playing with toy guns will.

4. Deep Involvement

Be a person, don't be a professional parent. Believe me, your opinion stopped mattering to your child the day he or she made a friend. What do I mean by professional parents?...the ones who research everything, who involve themselves in all aspects of their child's life. Lighten up. Take the summer off--put some hotdogs and chips and Kool-aid out on the counter and relax. Read a book. Not a parenting book, unless it's Carrie. Accept that your children are secretive little newts who will come to you when they really need your counsel. And that will NEVER happen.

Take it easy. Low impact parenting is best. You don't need to join every committee in the PTO. You don't need to join the PTO. Show up to a few games, school plays, awards ceremonies. That's all you need to do. That's all your child wants you to do. Do you really think that by joining everything you'll  make a difference in policy and educational or social impact? Mommy, please!  My parents had me, then there was some childhood there for a few years, in which I saw them now and then, and then I was 18 and gone. This is healthy, and time-honored. Get out of your kids way.

It has been my experience that the people whose parents were extremely involved with their lives, are the people who tend to keep things from their parents even in adulthood. Conversely, laisse-faire parents tend to produce kids who enjoy their company (once they reach adulthood--no child enjoys his parents' company after the age of 6 --7 if he's still breast-feeding).

5. Names

Immature people give their kids stupid names, because they want the cool factor to reflect back on them. They don't think about the kid who has to go through life as Apple Martin. ( Actually, I have always believed Gwyneth Paltrow named her kid that in exchange for a healthy fee from Steve Jobs). It's like a bride who focuses everything on the wedding day, not so much the hundreds of days post nuptial. These parents are thinking only about the few years of people saying, " Oh what an interesting name!" and then later, to their friends, " What an idiot!"

Let the child's character be the most interesting part of her life. I submit naming a girl Jane or Sally, or a boy William or James requires them to rise above the commonplace nature of those names. A child named River Phoenix, however, may feel life is pointless and turn to drugs. Whatever happened to him, anyway?

And let's try to keep names somewhat consistent, please. No one named Seamus Moskovitz, or Jean-Baptist Zhang-wei. Please. Life is hard enough for all of us as it is.

So, I could go on, but I suspect you are tired.

Where I Fail As a Liberal...

I have always identified myself as a political liberal. Not "progressive", which is a cravenly concession to conservatives that they have succeeded in defining "liberal" is a pejorative word. I am a liberal. As such, unlike conservatives, the viewpoints I embrace have been on the right side of most social movements for the past couple of centuries--civil rights, women's suffrage, social security--I could go on and on.

 I am not talking about Republicans and Democrats, whose party philosophies underwent a magnetic reversal of the poles back in the late 19th century. When the Repubs were created, they were the radical, liberal party, opposed to slavery, while the Democrats were conservative, all about state's rights, which was code then and now for the suppression or reversal of personal rights and the law of the land. By the end of the 19th century, the Repubs were the party of the monied classes, and the Dems were the party of the people. So, enough with party affiliation...as someone once said, they ain't but a dime's worth of difference between them. I f you don't believe that,  look up how few the differences are between the Obama Administration and the previous Bush Administration. But do it on your own time--I am talking about other things here.

I am a liberal. Not progressive. And not that " social liberal, fiscal conservative" sort of hedge you hear a lot people call themselves. If anything, I am the opposite--I tend to be socially conservative, and fiscally liberal. There are many aspects to our social culture that I don't care for at all, or am uncomfortable with, or look upon with disdain. The difference between me and a conservative is that I am ok with those aspects of society existing and being protected by law, and conservatives aren't. And as far as fiscal matters, I think most of you have too much money and the government needs to relieve you of some of it. I think the government knows better than you what to do with your money, because you'll just keep it, or buy 4 wheelers, or pass it to your useless children, whereas the government will repurpose it to medical research, defense, infrastructure, schools, the poor.

So there we are. I can see some of my conservative friends and family--if they managed to make it this far--turning purple with apoplexy...

But there are some areas where my lib credentials kind of fail:

Environment:

Sorry, my brothers and sisters, I really don't care. No that's too harsh--I care, but not enough to do anything about it. And before you bombard me with stats, and pics of drowning polar bears, let me say again, I stipulate that all of it may be true. I believe the climate is changing, I believe man is causing a large part of it...it's just that if it's a choice between a documentary on the melting of the polar ice caps and a Reds game, it's strike three for the docu. We just got a blue recycling bin from the city. Unless Dani fills it, that thing is just gonna take up space in my garage...maybe I can use it to store the pesticides and weed killers that are cluttering up my shelves.

Food:

The bullshit about "organic" and "natural" and "slow food" and "eating locally" makes my ass tired. Literally. My ass hangs about six inches lower whenever I hear someone drool about the glories of their local veggie co-op. If I want an orange, and it's January, I am buying one. If I am looking for some ground beef, and the package I want states the animal was genetically altered, it's going in the cart. I hate politicizing food. I know the arguments for politicizing it, and they aren't persuasive to me. I think of the ancient days, when food was just food. You ate what you could get, and moved on. The world advanced to a global market for food, where out of the way exotic foods were available 24/7/365, and that, people,is a good thing. I know nothing can replace the smug feeling you get when you eat something grown within your county, but I'll stack up against it the smugness I feel eating Spanish grapes, Japanese beef, and Brazil nuts  all in the same day.

Crime and Punishment:

I get that society is to blame in many ways for a person's misdeeds. Our environment shapes, or misshapes, us. How else do you explain the massive number of bank robbers that came out of Charlestown, Mass., or the large percentage of smartasses that came from the Mann household back in the 60s? It's the environment.

I know that a person who murders another person is a complex mix of social and familial pressures, and these things culminate in an act of unspeakable rage. Maybe that person had a horrific childhood, and an adulthood of brutality and privation. Very sad. And it's something we should address as we strap him onto the gurney, and pump his arm full. I know, who among us is qualified to play God? Well...me. I volunteer. I'll play God. Bring me files, and I'll sentence to death the ones who need it. Because, even though I am not southern, I do adhere to the southern creed that "they is some folks need killin'"

NPR
I know, Pravda to the left wing. I listen to it every day. And every day, I laugh at it's pretentiousness, and grind my teeth at its...pretentiousness. Why? Jeez, where to I start?

Ok, style...these hosts reeeaallly wish they on the BBC. Why else do they say someone is "on holiday?" No one goes on holiday, not in America they don't. We go on a vacation. No one is "in hospital" or sitting "at table", either. Not here. Hospitals and tables are not states of being in America. They are things.  Here, we are "in A hospital" and we sit " at A table." If I ever hear Robert Siegel say he's goes to the 6th floor on a lift, I am gonna drive right to DC and kick his pretentious  ass. Also, NPR hosts, like their heroes on the BBC, ask questions the same way, prefacing it with " I wonder..." as in " I wonder, have you always been this pretentious and idiotic?" 

Another thing. Dead jazz musicians. Do you know how many jazz music stations there left in this country? 6. To cover the whole country. 6.

Ok, that's not true, I don't really know how many jazz stations there are in America, but if Columbus is any indicator, 6 can't be too far off. So...why does NPR feel the need to cover the death of every sideman who ever played a gig with someone who formed his own group after being a sideman for Charlie Parker? Or even live dead jazz musicians--the other day Terry Gross did an interview with a Dutch jazz drummer. DUTCH??? Not even American?

Why not cover the death of Shakespearean actors? There's a lot of them, in theatres all around the country. Surely some of them have died. But you never hear about that. Only dead jazz musicians. Why? Because it is assumed (wrongly) that an inside knowledge of jazz makes you seem cool. How else could these bespectacled, balding, sparse-bearded, early middle-aged liberals feel cool, unless talking about Coltrane's "incendiary and seminal" riffs on his Live at the Blue Spot bootlegged recordings? Reflected cool isn't very cool, guys.

Anyway, other than that, I say down with the rich and powerful, "bite me" to the privileged, and " I pity you" to the poor and average who have been conned by the fat cat Republicans to be their pawns on the front lines. Someday, you will all be re-educated...

If a performance fell in the theatre, and no one heard it, did it happen?

Sad as it is to say, I have decided not to go to any more live theatre. Or at least, I am cutting it down to a bare minimum. There are a number of reasons for this, but the main one is I simply can't hear much of the dialogue anymore. It's a combination of my increasing deafness, and the utter lack of skill in most stage actors to make themselves heard.

To be honest, I believe most of the problem lies with the latter, rather than the former. I believe this because I will often hear one or two actors perfectly clearly through the whole show, and their castmates, not so much. And I find I hear older actors better than younger ones, although this is by no means an absolute. It's turning me into a cranky old guy, and it's making my evenings in the theatre frustrating and pointless.

Let's face it, David Mamet is right, at least on this point. He said if you stand on a stage in a large theatre and you can't make yourself heard in the last row, get off the stage, because your training isn't over. Actors have gotten by for thousands of years without amplification...why do we subsidize this amateurish lack of attention to craft? I remember in my early days on the Schiller Park stage, the company had one body mic, but most of us didn't want it. Because to use it was to acknowledge you weren't skilled enough to make yourself heard across that large expanse of grass. Plus, a body mic taped to the face, or peeking out of the hair, is an eyesore.

I mean, it's a baseline skill--it's like not being able to draw and yet calling yourself a painter. I know lots of people who who paint abstracts, not because that's where their artistic sensibilities, after years of exploration, have led them, but because that's all they can do. I consider that invalid. Picasso could draw you as you stood there, photographically. He chose not to. He grew beyond it. If you are an actor, and can't or won't bother to learn to project, do TV or film or webcasts.

Of course, when I complain about this, I get the pained look, as if they are saying, "silly man...don't you know stage projection is old fashioned and out of date?" And you know who thinks this? People who CAN'T project.

I can't remember a single play I have seen in the last few years in which I heard everyone clearly. Unacceptable. Especially at today's ticket prices. Some theatres have headphones that they issue to help the hard of hearing, and Dani got a pair for me at the last show we saw at CATCO, but after a while, I took them off. Why should I go to the actors? It's their job to come to me. It's their job to bring their voices to my lone ear. If they can't or won't, then why should I help them in their amateurish ways?

I've tried to support my pals in the theatre, and attend their plays, but I just can't any more, sad to say. It makes me too angry. To any of my buds reading this post: you are not required to see me when I perform--let's just call it a wash.

Russell Brand

I have tried to like Russell Brand, but I have failed. I will say, however, he has managed to parlay a minimal talent and a single facial expression into a pretty healthy career, so there's that. In fact, his uni-expressionaism, as we'll call it, brought to mind another face from the massive flea market that is my brain...maybe he could play John Torrington, a sailor from a doomed polar expedition in the mid-1880s, who was unearthed from his permafrost grave a hundred years later...

Pepper

Tonight we took our 17 year old terrier Pepper to the vet, and had her put down. It's the bitter bargain we make-- there for them at the beginning, there at the end. Over the past summer, she became a very old dog, seemingly all at once--blinded by cataracts, deafer than me, crooked in her back from arthritis. She lost her house-training, and even seemed to lose her personality, which had always been formidable. She trembled much of the time, and often seemed not to recognize us. I have been feeling like Bob Cratchit this evening, looking at the empty place by the fire.

 The following is something I wrote about her a few years ago, entitled Our Wedding Dog:

Tonight, I have been sitting in my chair with my little dog curled under my arm, and we have spent a long time looking in each other's eyes, as we have been wont to do for many years. Pepper is 14 years old, a Yorkie/Schnauzer mix, and her formerly brown face is white now, and she spends most of her days drowsing on chairs and couches, or on any convenient lap. She is a stubborn old gal, and if she wants to jump up into my chair, and wriggle and push till she claims half the seat for herself, well, who am I to argue? Such a venerable old lady deserves all that she wants, and mostly what she wants is to be allowed to nap and feel the old clock inside her wind its way down.

We got her the weekend we were engaged. Dani and I were living in an attic apartment on the Hilltop, and the guy in the downstairs apartment raised and trained little terriers, and when Dani and I came home from a weekend's touring performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream (where we had announced our engagement to the stunned cast), he was outside with his kids playing with some little dogs, and when he saw us he asked if we wanted a dog. It seems he had given his mother one of his little puppies 2 years earlier, and when she moved to an apartment complex that didn't allow pets, she had to return Pepper to her son.

I think he was asking out of reflex, just something you say as a conversation starter, especially if you are a dog trainer. But I looked at her, and though it sounds lame, something passed between us. Maybe I was open because I had just gotten engaged to a woman I was deeply in love with, and had just finished a wildly successful weekend's worth of performances, and here was an offer to begin something like a little family. It felt right. I looked at Dani and she laughed--she later said she could tell right away this was going to happen. So we took her upstairs.

I spent a week holding her like a baby, protecting her from my cat Sugar, who was deeply offended that a dog had been brought into the mix. Sugar never warmed to her, and never missed a chance to swat her and send her yelping into another room. That whole week we looked into each other's eyes, bonding the way I imagine parents do with new-born babies. When the weekend came, we had to leave to do another set of shows out of town, and I asked the fellow downstairs to watch her for us. All weekend I worried she wouldn't remember us, that the week-long bonding hadn't been enough, but when we came home, it was like a scene from a movie: Pepper was in the yard playing with one of the neighbor's kids, and when she saw me, she ran top speed and launched into my arms and licked my face all over. That's when I knew she was ours for keeps.

Right away she established herself as my chair companion, and later she became part of our sleeping arrangement as well. Dani on my left, Pepper on my right, under my arm. I became quite used to this--in fact, once when I was in the hospital for a surgery, Dani was concerned I wouldn't sleep without a little creature nestled under my right arm, so she bought a little stuffed dog to tuck in with me during my week long stay.

Pepper has endured many moves, and many comings and goings of other pets, and not always happily. In fact, never happily. I don't think she has quite understood what we thought we were doing bringing all those other critters into the house. Especially Sonny, out Golden, who spends a generous part of his day, every day, for the last 6 years, finding ways to annoy her.

It has always been Mark, Dani and Pepper to our families. When my mother calls, her sign off is "give my love to Dani and Pepper." Family members have actually had her for sleepovers--she used to go with my sisters on their camping trips. Actors I worked with years ago, after getting back in touch, will ask after her health--she had a brief career on the stage herself, playing Toto in WoO, Sandy in Annie, and the family dog in Cheaper By The Dozen. But she's retired now. She lies on her warm blankets and dreams of her former stage glory.

Someday soon, the unbearable will happen. She has a bad heart murmur, and the vet assures us this will be the thing that takes her out. The day I got that diagnosis, two years ago, I drove her home from the vet, after first stopping at the store for some treats. I held her for a while, and we looked into each other's eyes, as we often do. Her bristly intelligent gaze was a bright as the day we got her ( and still is). I felt better that the knowledge of mortality is not a gift given to a dog. They live entirely and utterly in the moment. This makes it easier. We are entrusted with that knowledge for them.

So, these days, I let her have her way. She eats when she feels like it, goes outside whenever she asks, and sleeps when and wherever she chooses. She has given great value, our little wedding dog. She deserves our respect, and our love. Some of us who are childless need an outlet for our parenting instincts, I believe, and Pepper is in many ways my first child.