The old dog got up, fell over. She got up, and fell over, again. We're at the emergency vet, the techs surround me, getting information. Tania, of an ancient breed called a Galgo, sits on the gurney like the sphinx she is. She's wheeled away, panting in pain.
It's an open concept emergency vet; everything is done out in the open. Next to me on the floor, two doodles are being treated for eating corn on the cob. The dogs vomit the milky white substance, and two young boys from the family side-step it to find what's left of the free snacks in the corner of the room.
Opposite me, in a large cage, a woman stands over her dog as it gets a transfusion. Her partner watches from a sofa directly in front of the cage. I'm reminded of Kafka's “A Hunger Artist.” When I mention this open concept later to my regular vet, a tech comments “They are trying to appeal to the younger crowd.”
In the center, just a few feet away from my docile hound, a Cane Corso mix is being given oxygen through a tube. I notice the owner doesn't have a hold of his leash, and my stress adjusts to this information. Just to the left of the cage, emergency surgery is performed on two white rabbits and it looks like something out of the show M*A*S*H. The vet shouts, mid-surgery, “We've lost a heartbeat!” and I wonder why this is being shown to us. The owners watch as the vet and techs make theatre of their beloveds, standing aside in profile as we watch them cry that ugly cry.
We are participants, even when we are watching. In Kafka's “A Hunger Artist,” watching is the attraction. From the 1800s into the early 2000s (David Blaine famously performed this stunt in 2003, from a glass box above the Thames), audiences paid money to watch mostly men waste away in a cage. It was written that the “watchers” were only looking for the performers to cheat, and most of them did in the late 1800s. Only a few, like Giovanni Succi, held to strict protocol and kept medical staff onsite to maintain proof. Pain as theatre, slow dying a spectacle, until it got old. Audiences routinely referred to hunger artists as clever frauds, sick freaks, and charlatans, as they waited for the hunger artist to surely fail, collapse, or cheat. Why? Going to see a hunger artist wasn't just about watching someone starve; it was a psychological battle between the performer and the public. I don't know how I would watch the performer; I doubt I would care for his chosen art, or how he was feeling. More than likely, I would look for subtle variances in his wasting.
I sat and watched Tania for a while. She had always been so stoic in her pain, barely crying out when maneuvered or moved. I gently stroked the tennis ball mass that had grown inside her hip, and I wondered briefly what a sighthound watches. I hoped that her stoicism was her will to live, and I wanted her to live, too, but not to suffer. I also wanted to be free of my own suffering, here in this room. I whispered to her that I loved her.
When offered a room at the open concept vet instead of remaining in the middle of the circus, I chose to stay. How much could I stand, especially given how highly sensitive I have always been? I lowered my eyelids, mostly out of tiredness, and my eyes welled up a little as I glanced at Tania, who was adjusting her body on the hard floor. A pushing through. But what can you do about suffering you can do nothing about? You have some control over your own suffering, and sometimes what you choose to watch, but how does your brain navigate bearing witness to the pain of others? Where do you file that pain?
Thomas de Quincey, in “The Palimpsest of the Human Brain”:
”...countless are the mysterious handwritings of grief or joy which have inscribed themselves successively upon the palimpsest of your brain; and, like the annual leaves of aboriginal forests, or the undissolving snows on the Himalaya, or light falling upon light, the endless strata have covered up each other in forgetfulness.”
If only it could be so beautiful as de Quincey describes — that covering over is less beautiful, especially for the particularly traumatic. I can only recall these recent events at the vet because they were so sad, so odd, yet there are sad memories that I cannot fully recall, or only vaguely. Conversations and details are gone — there are only silhouettes and tears.
And when was the last time we felt awe and it was forever imprinted? I can only think of an outing from over a decade ago, seeing Elphaba in Wicked rise above the stage, defying gravity, and me exclaiming “wow!” like a three-year-old seeing magic for the first time. I can still feel joy rising in my chest, my eyes growing wide, my cheeky grin as I looked at my theatre mate. Did you see that!? I can remember the soft smile and laugh of my friend, Tony, the green and black Wicked jacket I had just paid too much for, how far back we were in the theatre, and the lights so expertly illuminating the stage. It was a magical night, and my brain held onto every detail.
Greyhounds have a way of inching into your heart, with their long, regal noses, ever-mournful eyes, and in the case of Tania, her old face like melting snow. When I think back to just a few months ago, I can barely remember the faces of the other pet owners, or even their pets, such was my grief casting a veil over everything else I couldn't bear to witness. My mind was already filing this under “do not recall.” Has my brain learned to do this, as a matter of its own education?
de Quincey, again:
“A pall, deep as oblivion, had been thrown by life over every trace of these experiences; and yet, suddenly, at silent command, at the signal of a blazing rocket sent up from the brain, the pall draws up, and the whole depths of the theatre are exposed.”
Two months after the emergency vet visit, Tania died of cancer. She lay gently down on a pile of blankets, back at our regular vet's office. I kissed her, I watched her, I said goodbye. When I think of that day, my eyes well up, so I choose to remember when she made me feel awe: her silly galumphing gallop as she ran to me, the way she used me as a napkin after a meal, and always, the love in her eyes.
#essays #kafka #dequincey #palimpsest
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