I seen something that was very rare today. As I was driving to work I passed a dog, on it's own, which had just squatted down on the pavement and was curling off a huge pooh. It was a very small dog and a very huge turd, relatively speaking. If I had a shit that big, relative to my body size, it would have been like squeezing out a large brown cucumber.
Now I say this was rare for 2 reasons. Firstly, in this country I think it's fairly rare nowadays to see a dog wandering about on it's own, no owner in sight, no poopascoop at the ready. In France, where people are filthy and have no morals, it's probably a common sight. The second reason I thought of it as rare occurrence is that I don't often see dogs having a shit these days, call me insular if you will.
This scene had filled me with a sense of satisfaction and by the time I'd gotten to work I felt compelled to share the fact in a Facebook update. That prompted the questions, why was I so satisfied by seeing a dog have a crap and why did it play on my mind to an extent that I'm now writing about it.
Just a quick reality check for myself at this point: I am 33, I'm writing on the internet about a dog shitting on a pavement, there'd better be point to this.
Anyway, I started to think about why a dog and a log had caught my eye. The dog looked happy, he needed a pooh and he just jolly well sat down and let it out. We as humans are so constrained by the boundaries society and moral understanding/expectations place on us. Whether that is about bodily functions or otherwise, we are bound to act by a code of what is acceptable and what is not. We all have the nightmares about arriving in work and being totally naked, with an erection and having to have a wee in the corner, or is that just me? OK, maybe an extreme example, but our brains play out these mortally embarrassing scenarios whilst we sleep. Whether that is our brain's way of release, or simply to sub consciously prepare us for situations of emotional stress, or just to get it's own back for all the horrible things we put it through from day to day, who knows. But the fact stands, these scenarios are some of the things that petrify us most, because as humans, a civilised race (French excluded) we find the thought of doing this, or at least being caught doing this, abhorrent.
So what about the dog? He didn't give a shit, or rather, he did. He didn't care that I was watching him, or that other cars and other people were passing. He either didn't care about what people thought, or didn't have the self-awareness to understand. I have often felt quite jealous of my cats for this same reason. They only care about 2 things, food and security. As long as they've got those, nothing else matters:
Got fleas, don't care. Licking my arse in the front garden, don't care. Petrol prices gone up again, couldn't give a fuck as long as I've got a locking cat flap and some tuna.
That's their attitude to everything. Sometimes I wonder if I'd trade my self-awareness to live without boundaries and self imposed stress for a day.
They say "It's a dog's life" and now I know why. They can shit anywhere, that's why. But the shit isn't just brown and smelly faecal matter. The shit is their freedom from expectation and self-awareness that we humans hold so dear. So when I seen that dog laying a "dog egg" today a little bit of me felt jealous that I couldn't just squat down anywhere I like and shit on the idea that I have to conform to what society expects of me.
The sense of satisfaction I felt came from the knowledge that although the dog was just an animal and probably dependent on a human for it's ultimate survival, for that moment the image of it having a shit on the pavement embodied freedom. So from now on, when politicians or religious extremists or anyone for that matter, talk of freedom, I shall be thinking of that little dog and doubtless a smile will come to my face.
Confucius (should have) said: for a man to truly find his freedom, he must shit on the pavement.
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We were in George Square this morning drinking hot chocolate and eating muffins, watching the birds. One pigeon was squeezing out a volume of poo over a statue that made us wonder if the bird was created using some kind of TARDIS technology - you know, bigger on the inside than it looks on the outside!
I'm not sure what the bird had against James Watt that made it poo on his statued head. Perhaps the birds feathers are ruffled because Watt helped transform the world from an agricultural society to an industrial one. Perhaps he's outraged Watts technological advances took the rural and converted it to urban, which had the knock on affect of messing with the pigeons ancestors habitats. Or maybe it's because of Watts association with the electrical unit? After all, the night sky has never been the same since electricity came along. Electricity has made it possible to illuminate the night, causing light pollution that messes with birds migration, sleep and breeding behaviour, making them do mental things like chirp all night long because they think the amber haze of light pollution constantly in the distance is the coming dawn!
Him indoors suggested that a nice bit of installation art for George Square could be a large statue of a pigeon, with a cubical above it's head with a hole in the bottom (a la Slumdog Millionaire). Members of the public could interact and contribute to the art by going into the cubicle and opening their bowels. He felt it would serve as some kind of ironic statment about public displays of pooing and how it's become taboo.
Personally I don't think that birds have done anything to deserve us pooing on their heads, but I can understand why they reserve the right to poo on ours. We're unapologetically messing about with their world. Do we ever stop to consider that when they poo on our heads they are trying to get our attention? No. We prefer to bury our heads in the sand and pretend that it's lucky!
I like to think the pigeon I saw this morning was an activist because he chose Watts head to poo on. I will assume he was also a pacifist because he could have pooped on my head but didn't. But the reality is he was probably just a bird taking a hard earned dump after a night on the town eating discarded kebabs!
Anyway, back to the Installation Art idea, I think it's best to leave that kind of think to the likes of Tracey Emin. After much debate I decided I couldn't contribute to such a display, I could never poo in public and be as free as a bird - because this burd you cannot change!
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