Creature Comforts

Monday afternoon and I'm at my computer with a cup of tea and a mini Battenberg cake. All should be well in the world. However, my space button has gone weird since I banged it angrily this morning when I was attempting to write a post here and Blogger wouldn't allow me to until I had upgraded my blogs to the fancy new all improved version. Naturally I banged down hard on my keyboard in justifiable rage and repeatedly poked at the screen of my monitor, thinking this would somehow show Blogger I meant business and that I wasn't someone to mess with. Then I remembered I was alone in my living-room with only my high pitched squeally voice, my now smudgy monitor screen and a broken space button on my keyboard (that keepsdoing things likethis and I have tokeep constantlyediting it).

It crossed my mind that this incidence proves that there is absolutely no justice in this world. The meek and kindly (such as myself), end up with dodgy keyboards and consequently with sore fingers, whilst the truly bad blindly stumble forward happily without conscience, forcing unsuspecting innocents into getting Google accounts for their blog, their own keyboards and fingers in perfect working order. But I realised I was being a bit mad, and that this was not the best of theories.

So, how am I? Well, the Bearded Collie obsession has subsided only enough to prevent me from driving everyone I know completely crazy. I am still thinking of ways by which my suitability as a B.C. owner can be increased. Yesterday, I was even considering moving into my friend's shed. I convinced myself how nice it could be, me, the beardie and a little wood-burning stove, and she has a garden with ample room for dog romping activities.

Over the last day or two, I have been having a slow and disconcerting realisation about how I become attracted to people. I've realised that one of the primary factors that makes me fall for someone, or become intrigued or interested in them (even as friends), that far outweighs any other factor such as looks, financial standing, career status, fathering potential etc, is what kind of creature, in both appearence and manner, they most resemble.

Whilst I can, to some extent, pass this off as a poetic and therefore wonderful way to become involved with someone, it's probably not the most solid and tangible thing to base a relationship on. No matter how much they curl their neck like a penguin or lift their eyebrows like an owl, appear to have paws instead of hands, or look at you with their gentle panda eyes, it isn't necessarily the quality that's most going to make a relationship stick together.

From this train of thought, I have been somewhat unnerved to realise that a number of men I've been romantically involved with, have, in some way, reminded me of dogs, or have held doggy associations for me. I confess that a high pitched woof from a man can really turn me on. Somewhere I feel this to be very wrong. When Bob recently began impersonating the tiny coughing dog off the Japanese Ghibli film Howl's Moving Castle (see above), frankly, I could hardly contain myself.

Further, aswell as this potentially meaning that I have projected particular dogs onto my lovers (mangy dog, wolf, terrier, barkless dog), which in itself has some disturbing implications for my love life, it also could follow that I've been projecting some masculine archetype onto both my desire for a dog and my choice of dog. Shit! I began to panic today that maybe my longing for a Bearded Collie is just another version of the animus projection, that a Bearded Collie is in fact just some long-haired, furry-pawed bone-chasing version of Pete Doherty, an external projection of my furry wayward artist within. After all, Bearded Collies are supremely intelligent, lateral thinking, creative, individual, tender-hearted with a penchant for bouncing over very high fences that they're not meant to. Isn't that just what I go for in a man?

Oh, I hope not. I do not want to spend the next 6 months in therapy working through canine projections. And as I am happily ensconced in a relationship with an actual, real live man, and a lovely one to boot, it doesn't make sense that I would need a dog for this purpose.

Perhaps it's not such a bad thing to fall in love with people's creature-y natures. It is terribly restricting to have to be a human being all the time. I'd go crazy. Somewhere, I think we're all moved by the urges to nest and to burrow, to catch and to stalk, to bury our bone and bark into the wind. I certainly think it's a more valid reason to like someone than because of the size of their car, their bank balance or their pretty boy looks.

Sometimes, even being a worldly creature is too narrow, too restrictive. I know I need to be free to be otherworldly, at times, to dwell in universes very different from this one of earth, moon and stars. I sometimes need to be a strange creature from an unknown land, far, far away. And it is at times like these I want the company of all those other odd creatures who dwell in worlds unfathomable and strange, who can't altogether fit into a world of concrete and clay, and these creatures I call my friends, and sometimes, when the magic is right and our tails fit together, we fall in love.