The Write Thing

If I could put words to my music, tonight would certainly involve Adriana Calcanhotto’s Mulher sem Razão. There is a lot of sense in that song, in many ways. My favorite lines are definitely the following:

Parta, pegue um avião, reparta
Sonhar só não tá com nada
É uma festa na prisão

Isn’t it the cruelest and truest of facts to actually accept that “dreaming alone does not mean anything, it is a party held in prison”? I guess it is, and that sometimes you do not know better than to have your party in prison. Why not? First of all, it is safer. Second…it still feels like a party.

Tonight, as I play the track from Maré in the background, I would say it is good to accept the fear, the risk of winning and losing (please let us face there are only very few win-win situations in life…somebody sooner or later pays for lunch). It is liberating in a way, it humanizes you. Admitting that fear is sometimes all you have is good enough to help you plod along and still cross the scary waters that separate you from your dream, whatever that is.

In this month of June, in a cold and H1N1-ridden Buenos Aires, only a few days after another commercial plane crashed with no real explanation, the uncomfortable question hangs in the air. We can have the party in prison and delude ourselves into thinking there will be a reason why we will not develop the fatal flu or our plane will not be buried in the cold waters of an unfathomable sea. We can have that limited range of security to build for ourselves…the cause why, regardless of how implausible it sounds. Yet, at the end of the day, we will still have a party in prison and there…we already know the guests.

After extensive pondering on the issue, I have come to the conclusion that dogs are better off than man. Hence, I would seriously suggest that the whole association of a “dog’s life” to a life of suffering and pain should be revised, if not altogether discontinued. Although research should be further pursued in this matter, I believe I am in a comfortable position to say that dogs in most cases have a much better life than man in today’s world.

But why am I saying this? Well, since the world changes in subtle ways, I must confess it took me a while to realize that the order of things was indeed being altered. Quite a few years ago, I would have definitely thought that dogs were sometimes very poor creatures misunderstood by their masters and in some cases exposed to the worst of mankind. Some of them still are, but the same could be said of man. Is a dog, for example, worse off than a homeless child?

However, I do not only think in extremes. In fact, I can simply think of how we travel in today’s world to realize that dogs can travel more easily than human beings. First of all, in today’s post-2001 world, traveling everywhere requires an inordinate amount of paperwork for the average homo erectus. Think of the required health insurance, passport, visa, statements declaring that you have no intention to overextend your stay and that there are sufficient funds on your bank account to finance your orgies in foreign lands. Now, what is requested of a dog if he wants to cross the Schengen’s frontier or simply be granted permanent residence in the US? Vaccines, and perhaps a couple of bureaucratic forms. Probably there will be no record of his digital paw prints, and he will not have to answer uncomfortable questions from immigration officials. Mind you…that dog will have easier access into foreign land than you ever will…and he will be able to stay forever.

Now, let’s go to the most interesting part of the analysis…the lesbian component. I think that lesbians in general are more likely to have a long-term relationship with their dogs than with a potential partner. Several factors here should be considered. First, dogs have a short life by human standards, which simplifies things…and, of course, it is always easier and more glamorous to remember a dead loved one than a living one. Second, dogs tend to be more accommodating to anything their owner would want, which saves you the hassle of typical marital arguments — of course, because dogs don’t speak.

In conclusion, provided that you can put up with the occasional barking, some questioning of your dominance, and the routine of a couple of daily walks, you should definitely fall in love with a dog. Mind you, I have fallen in love with a human being residing thousands of miles away, and getting anywhere near each other is laborious, so I really know what I am talking about. My dear friend, get yourself a dog now…it is not too late