Greek To Me
The Tale Of A Tail and A Dog Named Dog
©2008 Michael Raysses
Not too long ago and not very far away lived a dog. The dog wasn’t pedigreed and there was nothing remarkable about him beyond his status as the absolute embodiment of caninity. For all of you wordaphiles, caninity refers to that thing which makes a dog a dog and not a table, though, technically speaking, they both have four legs. It is its essential ‘dog nature.’ The word caninity isn’t listed in any dictionary, but then again, neither is “wordaphile.” If you keep in mind that this is a fable, these things will be much easier to accept.
Our dog was such a dog that when it came time for his master to name him, there was but one name that fit. Not surprisingly, he christened him “Dog.” And though it may have seemed to lack originality, it suited him more snugly than the fur he was coated in.
Despite all of life’s inconsistencies and contradictions, Dog lived a very dog-like existence. He fetched more than his share of balls. He respectfully sniffed more than a few bitches. And he still didn’t like it when his master watched him as he hunched and strained while doing his business, despite his imploring looks for a little privacy.
Dog loved his body. He marveled at the way it looked when he saw his reflection in a puddle of rain after a thunderstorm. Most of all, he loved his tail. He remembered the day he discovered it. He had been cleaning himself (why?—because he could, thank you very much), when he noticed it wagging seductively between his legs. With no thought whatsoever, he did what he felt irresistibly impelled to do, which is to say he bit it. He then felt a searing bolt shoot up his spine. The pain rocked his head back and reminded him of a carnival sideshow attraction where his master had paid for the privilege of using a large mallet to send a metal object zooming up a rail where it struck a bell. And people think dogs are weird, Dog thought…
After becoming aware of his tail, Dog could think of nothing else. He was constantly sensing its presence in his life. When it swished flies away; when it flattened out as he chased a bird in the park; even when he was doing nothing more than lying on the floor, his legs splayed underneath him, his tail wagging to a rhythm that he didn’t even hear, he was keenly conscious to it.
And then one day it happened.
He was really bored, and just to shake things up a bit, out of nowhere, he made one of those “woof” sounds. He knew it would drive his master to distraction, which it did, and if nothing else, it would get him to think about something other than his tail. But no sooner had his master finally asked his final “What is it, boy?” in a voice he typically used with babies and people of diminished capacity, than Dog’s eyes irretrievably fell on his tail once again. As much as he loved his tail, he began to be aware of the complexity of his connection to it. And that realization wasn’t all good. Lately, for instance, he realized that sometimes the tail was wagging even if he didn’t tell it to. Weren’t he and the tail one? And if not, where did he end and the tail begin? Dog began staring at it with a newfound intensity. For the first time, he decided that he was going to consciously exert dominion over the tail. That’s when he experienced the unthinkable.
As he looked at the tail it remained still, but inexplicably he moved. He felt as if he were going to faint or at least sneeze, so great was his shock. And just when he remembered that there was a new family of squirrels living in his favorite tree out back, it happened again—the tail wagged him. And for everything Dog didn’t know, i.e., what in God’s name did his master mean when he said “Speak!” he knew that the tail should never wag the dog.
I can relate to Dog. These days, I walk around shaking my head with amazement—I feel as if we are all living in a world where the tail is wagging the dog. We are the dog, technology is the tail. We’ve lost sight of the fact that the tail is just an evolutionary creation there to complement the life of the being to which it is attached. And the day we lose that perspective is a day to mourn the loss of our reason because once that happens, then any number of insane and inane conclusions are possible. We can strike terror in the hearts of others as a means of allaying our own sense of fear. We can desecrate the environment at will and fool ourselves into thinking it is necessary in the name of economic prosperity. And on the most personal level, we can enslave ourselves to gadgets designed to facilitate communication and deceive ourselves into believing that we are more connected and in touch than ever before.
If there was a postscript to the above fable, I am certain that in it Dog would release his consternation over his experience with the tyrannical tail, confident in the knowledge that all he had to do to reassert order was to relax into himself and his caninity. Why? Because he can.
Michael Raysses is a writer/actor/National Public Radio commentator who lives in Los Angeles. His email address is michaelraysses@hotmail.com