You and me against the world

Last week I found a little dog and I took him into my care and gave him a home and gave him a name. The geek inside me called him Jean-Luc.

But let me say this:

He’s not a real dog. He’s a soft toy. Small. Not much bigger than my thumb.

I found him under my foot. On the ground. Just as I got out of my car at a Westfield’s carpark. I’ve been having a lot of bad luck at carparks lately. Scratches and stuff. Another story I suppose. And not one particularly worth telling.

But on this day, I found a little dog. And he had a bead for his left eye and a long thread where his right eye must have once been.

And so I picked him up and I took him home. I had saved him from the dirty car-oil-soaked concrete floor that would certainly have been his last stop before the garbage bin.

And at home I cut off the thread in his right eye so that from some distance he would look like he has both eyes intact. And as I was cutting, his mouth got stuck to my scissors.

He’s magnetic, you see. I remember now. I’ve seen him before on TV. Well not him him, but you know what I mean. The ads. I’d seem others like him before. They have a magnet about where their mouths should be. And they come with little metal toys that stick to them and you can pretend like you’re kinda playing tug-o-war with them.

Cute.

But Jean-Luc has no metallic toys. So he just sticks to my scissors. He even sticks to the fridge. It looks pretty ridiculous actually. A little dog holding on with his teeth on a smooth white surface. In this position, Jean-Luc looks every bit the toy that he is.

But I’ve given him a name. And I’ve given him a home.

Literally.

I made him a little dog house out of left-over cardboard. It even comes complete with a corrugated cardboard roof. And now he sits in my car, under which I had found him, in his little doggy house and he looks as happy as an inanimate object can be. And as I look into his cute puppy dog eye, I can’t help but smile a little.

eh… so I’m an idiot.

But I can make the world safe for you, Jean Luc.

A portrait

My friend is down in the basement of his father’s house. It’s cold and damp down there. He sits on a creaky wooden chair, at a creaky wooden desk and writes by the light of a candle. Of course there is also an electric bulb swinging from the ceiling. It is the twentieth century after all.

Actually no, it’s the twenty-first…

…but he still hasn’t gotten used to that.

And indeed when the draft blows out the candle, he can still see. He can still write. In fact, he doesn’t even notice the difference. But he is a romantic after all. And romantics write by candlelight. Romantics wear scarves and stare off blankly into the distance. Romantics write on parchment with feathered quills.

Brain to the hand. Hand to the quill. Quill to the parchment.

He is writing a poem to her. And it’s all bleeding out of his heart.

My friend loves and wants to be loved. He writes and wants to be written about. There are songs that touch his heart that he wishes had been written about him. Or by him. Or something like that. He just wants to be a part of it all.

But he knows it’s just a song. And even mouthing the words won’t make them his.

‘It’s about you’ he whispers.

And he writes.

And he writes.

And then the words become a blur. As the hand begins to ache. As the songs begin to deafen. And the bottle of gin becomes a bottle of air.

But there’s still a long way to go. There’s still a few hours left before daylight. And we haven’t even gotten to the tears yet.

* * *

‘Is this really what I am?’ he might say to me.

‘Probably not’ may be my reply.

But I doubt that his version would be any closer to the truth. He is a romantic after all. And romantics tend to paint when they could have just sketched. Skip when they could have just walked. Romantics sing when they could have just said ‘hello’.

And frankly, I think I just happen to like my version better.